Following the military forces of the United States and the United Kingdom, private military firms (PMFs) make up the third largest contingent in Iraq. These corporate warriors are large enough to launch invasions of small sovereign states and are often employed by whomever has sufficient funds to retain their services. Such entities create serious challenges for modern international law. In their article, Virginia Newell and Benedict Sheehy approach the PMF conundrum from a number of different perspectives so as to better elucidate the difficulties that states have had, are having, and will face in the future, as they strive to effectively utilize, and at the same time regulate, PMFs. The first part of the article concentrates on the definitional problems one encounters when attempting to conceptualize PMFs and their activity. The second part explores the different types of interactions between PMFs and states and queries whether the key to effective regulation is to focus on the nature of the interactions. The final part explores the variety and efficacy of the different state regulatory regimes that have been imposed on PMFs.
Dissipators are the components that are integrated into the flexible net barrier to absorb the impact energy during rockfall events. Upon impact, the dissipator experiences dynamic loads which makes its quasi-static characterization under low loading rate not totally adequate to describe their behavior observed on-site. This article aims to address this gap by conducting new high loading rate tests on snake dissipators under conditions that closely replicate real-case rockfall scenarios, enabling a more accurate characterization of their performance. A dynamic mechanical model of this dissipator was established and compared to the quasi-static one. This comparison highlighted the presence of a dynamic effect in the response of the snake dissipator indicating the inaccuracy of the use of quasi-static characterization. In addition, a loss of snake dissipator effectiveness was observed under dynamic loading compared to the expected effectiveness retained under low loading rate. This decrease indicates an overestimation in the performance of the snake dissipator in the flexible barrier when relying only on quasi-static characterization. Moreover, the numerical simulations also highlighted the sensitivity of the performance of the barrier by the dissipator mechanical model.
In this paper, we detail and critique dominant narratives of war crime apologia. These narratives portray the circumstances of a war crime, the perpetrator’s character and motives, and the broader context in which the crime occurred, in ways that minimise or negate the perpetrator’s moral, and sometimes legal, blameworthiness. In section one, we identify and critique three broad categories: (1) individualising narratives (‘uncommon practice’), (2) excusatory narratives (‘essence of war’), and (3) justificatory narratives (‘tragic necessity’). Drawing on a range of real world examples, we outline the features of these narratives and the underlying theory of moral responsibility and blameworthiness on which they implicitly depend. In section two, we elucidate the role of these narratives in the promotion and perpetuation of socially, politically, and legally harmful attitudes towards war crimes. By advancing self-serving perpetrator-centric views about responsibility and blame, these narratives cultivate a cultural and legal toleration and, in some cases, celebration, of atrocity. They also perpetuate a distorted image of war itself, as a space that cannot accommodate moral and legal restraints. This image of war, we argue, weakens the post-Geneva consensus about the reach and limits of battlefield violence and makes the future commission of war crimes more likely. In conclusion, we consider how these narratives could be challenged within military institutions, and in the political and social realm.
