FOREWORD INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE NEW COLD WAR.

• Date: 22 March 2023
• Author: Scharf, Michael P.,Peters, Emma,Scharf, Michael P.^Peters, Emma
• Published date: 22 March 2023
• Author: Scharf, Michael P.

I.

This double issue of the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law contains articles generated from the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center's 2022 annual symposium, titled "International Law and the New Cold War."

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, foreign policy experts optimistically declared that the world had entered the "post-Cold War age." (1) Within the U.N. Security Council and other international organizations, it was a heady period of unprecedented collaboration and accomplishment. (2) That all ended when Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine in the early hours of February 24, 2022,3 prompting The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to reset its famous Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight, the closest to apocalypse in its 76-year history. (4)

As in the last Cold War, countries around the globe were forced to choose sides in a clash characterized "as a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, between the rules-based order set up after World War II and the law of the jungle where might makes right." (5) Described as "a major breaking point in history," (6) the invasion and international response triggered a succession of novel international legal responses.

First, Ukraine brought a case before the International Court of Justice, which ordered provisional measures to protect Ukraine from being subject to the use of force by Russia based upon Russia's false allegations of genocide under the Genocide Convention. (7) Then, the International Criminal Court (ICC) swung into action, immediately announcing the launch of a sweeping investigation into Russian atrocities. (8) At the same time, proposals were being developed for a groundbreaking ad hoc tribunal to prosecute the crime of Russian aggression, a crime outside the ICC's jurisdiction. (9) Meanwhile, the United States and its European allies imposed hard-biting sanctions on Russia and its leaders. (10) For its part, the United Nations General Assembly performed a brazen end-run around a Security Council paralyzed by the Russian veto by resurrecting the seldom-used Uniting for Peace mechanism. (11) It then deployed that mechanism to condemn Russia's act of aggression, (12) reject as illegal the Russian annexation of territory in Eastern Ukraine, (13) suspend Russia from participating in the U.N. Human Rights Council, (14) and establish a register to catalogue the damage to Ukraine for eventual compensation. (15)

In the midst of these historic developments, on September 30, 2022, Case Western Reserve University School of Law's Cox International Law Center brought together two-dozen leading experts from the academy, the U.S. government, and international organizations to examine how the Ukraine crisis and other recent events are transforming international law and international institutions. In addition to four panels featuring leading international law experts...