With college campuses across the United States roiling amid protests regarding the Israel-Hamas war, the question of the U.S. role in the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has been brought to the fore. Although humanitarian protections for civilians are enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, critics argue that Washington has been selective in its enforcement of international law.
The world is in a new era of war that has pushed international humanitarian law to the breaking point—and the United States is partially to blame, writes the legal scholar Oona Hathaway. In the wake of 9/11, Washington weakened its constraints on the use of force in ways that are now reverberating in conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere. “If the law of war is to survive today’s existential challenges,” Hathaway writes, “the United States and its allies need to treat it not as an optional constraint to be adjusted or shrugged off as needed but as an unmoving pillar of the global legal order.”
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