Warfare is changing - and rapidly. New technologies, new geopolitical alignments, new interests and vulnerabilities, and other developments are changing how, why, and by whom conflict will be waged. Just as militaries must plan ahead for an environment in which threats, alliances, capabilities, and even the domains in which they fight will differ from today, they must plan for international legal constraints that may differ, too. This volume considers how law and institutions for creating, interpreting, and enforcing it might look two decades ahead - as well as what opportunities may exist to influence it in that time. Such assessment is important as the U.S. and other governments plan for future warfare. It is also important as they formulate strategies for influencing the development of law to better serve security, humanitarian, and other interests. This volume examines not just specific questions, such as how might a particular technology require adaptive interpretation of existing law, but also grand ones, such as whether law is capable at all of keeping up with these changes.

Is the current international legal regime capable of deterring and stopping mass atrocities? Recent events in Darfur again raise this familiar question of whether international law facilitates the kind of early, decisive, and coherent action --especially with respect to military force --needed to combat genocide effectively.

In this report, Matthew C. Waxman argues that an international legal regime that puts decisions about international intervention solely in the hands of the UN Security Council risks undermining the threat or use of intervention when it may be most potent in stopping mass atrocities. The features of the UN Charter that help resolve security crises peacefully make it difficult to generate the rapid action needed to deter or roll them back. Waxman urges the United States and other Security Council members to take steps to improve the responsiveness of the existing Security Council. He insists that they signal the willingness, if the UN fails to act in future mass atrocity crises, to take the necessary action to address them.

This report explores how the US military might improve co-ordination with relief agencies and with European allies in such operations. It examines the dynamics of complex contingency operations, provides an overview of the relief community, and delineates barriers to better co-operation.

This title examines how the urban physical, social, and political environment constrains aerospace operations; identifies key operational tasks that aerospace forces can help accomplish; and discusses strategies and technologies that can improve success in urban operations.