scholarly journals Presidential Policy Guidance: Procedures for Approving Direct Action Against Terrorist Targets Located Outside The United States and Areas of Active Hostilities

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (6) ◽  
pp. 1209-1225
Author(s):  
Rita Siemion

With the rise of terrorist threats emanating from outside the territory of the United States and simultaneous advancements in armed drone technology, the United States began a rapidly escalating lethal drone program in the years after 9/11. While the first U.S. drone strike occurred in Yemen in 2002 during the George W. Bush administration, President Barack Obama dramatically increased the number of drone strikes during his first term.

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (spe) ◽  
pp. 88-103
Author(s):  
Solange Reis Ferreira ◽  
Kelly Ferreira ◽  
Tullo Vigevani

The article shows how domestic aspects influence the United States national and international climate policy. To accomplish the task, the authors analyzes the discussions when Bill Clinton was ruling the country, a time during which global discussions were forwarded. The paper recalls the debate in the Bush administration and the growing polarization since Barack Obama took office.


2016 ◽  
Vol 110 (4) ◽  
pp. 646-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley S. Deeks

When President Barack Obama came into office in 2009 in the midst of serious, ongoing terrorist threats to the United States, he confronted important choices about how to approach the bodies of international law that regulate the resort to force and the conduct of armed conflict. By many accounts, the Bush administration had taken a maximalist approach to those bodies of international law, staking out broad substantive claims about what international law permitted in resorting to force and in detaining and treating members of Al Qaeda, and asserting those claims publicly and frequently.The Obama administration has repeatedly taken a notably different tack, employing an approach that we might characterize as “executive minimalism.” That is, the Obama administration has signaled to other states its interest in self-constraint by making fewer bold substantive and rhetorical claims related to the jus ad bellum and jus in bello. It has pursued this objective partly by establishing various policies that authorize a narrower scope of action than what some believe international law permits. In particular contexts, it has also been more hesitant as a rhetorical matter to assert precise legal claims about what international law allows or where international law's limits lie. Accordingly, the Obama administration has sometimes taken action in the face of two (or more) possible legal theories without articulating its specific rationale.


Author(s):  
Tony Smith

This chapter examines the United States' liberal democratic internationalism from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. It first considers the Bush administration's self-ordained mission to win the “global war on terrorism” by reconstructing the Middle East and Afghanistan before discussing the two time-honored notions of Wilsonianism espoused by Democrats to make sure that the United States remained the leader in world affairs: multilateralism and nation-building. It then explores the liberal agenda under Obama, whose first months in office seemed to herald a break with neoliberalism, and his apparent disinterest in the rhetoric of democratic peace theory, along with his discourse on the subject of an American “responsibility to protect” through the promotion of democracy abroad. The chapter also analyzes the Obama administration's economic globalization and concludes by comparing the liberal internationalism of Bush and Obama.


Author(s):  
V. Iordanova ◽  
A. Ananev

The authors of this scientific article conducted a comparative analysis of the trade policy of US presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. The article states that the tightening of trade policy by the current President is counterproductive and has a serious impact not only on the economic development of the United States, but also on the entire world economy as a whole.


2021 ◽  
Vol 115 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-572

On February 25, 2021, the United States conducted a strike targeting Iranian-backed militia group facilities in Syria. The strike, which came in response to a February 15, 2021 attack on U.S. interests in Iraq, marked the Biden administration's first known exercise of executive war powers. As domestic authority for the strike, President Joseph Biden, Jr. cited his authority under Article II of the U.S. Constitution and did not rely on the 2001 or 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs). For international legal authority, Biden relied on individual self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, stating that Syria was “unwilling or unable” to prevent further attacks on the United States by these non-state actors within its territory. The strikes garnered mixed reactions from Congress, where efforts are underway to repeal or reform extant AUMFs as well as the War Powers Resolution (WPR). The Biden administration is also undertaking a review of current U.S. military policy on the use of force, and during this process, it has prohibited drone strikes outside of conventional battlefields, absent presidential approval.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 297-301
Author(s):  
Mohamed S. Helal

On March 19, 2011, the United States, its European allies, and its Arab partners launched an eight-month intervention in Libya. This was said to be necessary because Mu'amar Gaddafi, Libya's longtime ruler, was responding to mass protests against his over forty-year dictatorial reign by waging war on his own people. As President Barack Obama explained, without international intervention “the calls of the Libyan people for help would go unanswered. The democratic values that we stand for would be overrun. Moreover, the words of the international community would be rendered hollow.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 54-64
Author(s):  
Santiago E. Bejerano

Given the geostrategic importance of Cuba for the entire American continent and the increasing complexity of the nature of security as such, and accordingly, of the mechanisms of ensuring it in the modern world, the problem of drug trafficking is rather high on the agenda of the U.S.-Cuban relations. The article examines the issue of combating drug trafficking in the context of bilateral relations between Cuba and the United States in order to assess the prospects for joint efforts on this track. The author presents a retrospective of mostly unilateral initiatives by U.S. presidents that did not lead to real tangible results, in particular due to the prevailing erroneous approach of militarization in the fight against drug trafficking. The new century requires new forms and a qualitatively higher level of interaction. With a noticeable warming in the dialogue with Cuba under Barack Obama the situation has changed in many respects, and quite a few initiatives of bilateral nature began to bear fruit. Nevertheless, with Donald Trump’s rise to power, there is an obvious setback in the rapprochement, in proof of which the author gives examples of specific destructive steps, although this position of the administration met if not open criticism, then proposals for alternative scenarios of the development of contacts between the states. The potential that exists in both countries for cooperation in this area can be realized provided that the interests of common security prevail over political disagreements and state channels of cooperation are strengthened, with the dynamics of this process being reflected in the situation in the region as a whole.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-304
Author(s):  
Benjamin Safran

AbstractHannibal's cheering and shouting along with his request for audience participation during the 2015 premiere of his composition One Land, One River, One People caused a stir and created discomfort among the Philadelphia Orchestra audience. I interpret his work as an example of a successful musical direct action within contemporary orchestral music. By exposing and subverting the traditions of the classical concert experience, One Land, One River, One People highlights social boundaries within the genre of classical music itself. I apply Robin James's (2015) concept of Multiracial White Supremacy, or MRWaSP, to contemporary orchestral classical music of the United States. Under late capitalism, MRWaSP helps to explain the potential appeal to an orchestra of commissioning Hannibal, who is known as a “genre-crossing” composer rooted in classical and jazz. Yet I argue that the way in which Hannibal performs his identity along with the piece's inclusion of audience participation allow the music to resist functioning as expected under MRWaSP. Rather than promoting a sense that—as one might expect from the title—we are all “one people,” I see the piece as revealing racial difference and as speaking truth to power.


2018 ◽  
pp. 135-173
Author(s):  
Charles Kurzman

Shifts in American foreign policy have had little effect on Muslim attitudes toward the United States—even the shift from the administration of Barack Obama to that of Donald Trump barely changed Muslims’ survey responses or the prevalence of revolutionary violence. So why should the United States bother to take Muslim sensibilities into account? Following the lead of Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and remarkable American humanitarians of the past century, this chapter proposes that the United States reorganize its counterterrorism policy around the interests of its liberal Muslim allies, rather than expose them to the dangers of militarism and authoritarianism.


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