Has Any US President Damaged Global Alliances More Than Trump?

n this episode of SOS America, Charles Feldman speaks with leading international law expert Oona Hathaway about the foundations of the global order created after World War II, and whether today’s political climate is weakening the rules that have governed international relationships for decades.
They discuss:
- What the post-war international order actually means
- Whether Donald Trump is the first US president to openly violate that order
- America’s historical record on international law
- Whether Trump represents a more dangerous break from past presidents
- How ignoring laws and treaties can damage trust between nations
- Why presidential disregard for legal norms can have long-term global consequences
- Hathaway explains why international law depends not only on enforcement, but on belief and mutual respect — and what happens when world leaders undermine that system.
If leaders act as though laws don’t matter, does that signal to the world that the rules themselves are meaningless?
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#Trump #InternationalLaw #Politics #SOSAmerica #OonaHathaway #CharlesFeldman #WorldOrder #ForeignPolicy #Democracy #GlobalPolitics #USPolitics #InternationalRelations

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, so as you say, if he were to carry out those threats, clearly it would be a war crime, right? So destroying an entire civilization, taking out all of the civilian infrastructure, clearly those are not lawfully permitted and those would be war crimes.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

What's worse? Is it worse for an administration to uh try to make an argument even though they know that the argument is is ridiculous? Uh or is it better to do what Trump is doing, which is just to not bother to make up a lie and just go ahead and do it?

SPEAKER_00 0:36

I think the lawyers are just being completely ignored. Uh yeah. So I don't think that it's something fundamental has changed in the world. I think something pretty fundamental has changed in the administration.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Welcome to another episode of SOS America. I'm Charles Feldman. Nice to have you on board for this episode. Uh Ona Hathaway is uh an American legal scholar, uh especially as international law and U.S. foreign relations. She's over at the Yale Law School. Um she's also the president of the American Society of International Law, and I'm going to get into that a little bit later in this podcast. And uh I want to get in on this episode uh, this whole notion of international law and whether or not the United States still abides by such a thing. Uh, for those of you who've been following this podcast, you know that we started off eight or nine months ago, and then we revisited with him uh just the last episode with Irwin Chemarinsky, who is the uh dean of the law school over at Berkeley. And the question on the table for Irwin was whether we are following the U.S. Constitution, uh, which it was very clear from our discussion, uh, I don't think he thinks we are at the moment, or at least not in many uh uh respects. So the question on the table for this podcast uh is really what about international law? Are we following that? Are we breaking it? Uh, what are the ramifications? And so without any further ado, uh Ona, thank you for joining us on SOS America.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Uh I don't normally like to uh read stuff on the podcast, but I'm going to start off because I think this uh sets up our discussion better than almost anything else. And this is, these are your words from uh your keynote address uh when I guess you you took over as president of the uh uh Society of International Law. So uh bear with me, folks, if you don't like people, if people don't some people don't like when people on a TV screen read to them, but I think it's important. Uh so here's what you said. I will not pretend that this is an ordinary moment to be taking on this role. We gather at a time when international law is under strain in ways we have not seen in generations. The foundational principles of the international order, the institutions we built to enforce them, the courts we entrusted to judge them, all are being tested from many directions at once. Long settled commitments are being discarded. Norms that seemed beyond question a decade ago are being debated again. The post-war international legal order can no longer be taken for granted. Your words, yes? Yep, absolutely. I meant every word. And strong words is that. So let's take it actually from the very end of that of that uh graph. When you say that um the post-war international order can no longer be taken for granted, give me some examples of why you think that is the case.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Yeah, so the post-war legal order, you know, put in place after World War II, grounded in the United Nations, and the United Nations Charter, is based on the fundamental commitment that states have made not to resort to force unilaterally. Um and the UN Charter in Article 2.4 says that states can't use force against one another. The only exceptions to that are if they get authorization from the UN Security Council or if they're acting in their own self-defense. And this was a critical innovation. I mean, it's it's important to note that for much of the history of the modern state, states have gone to war with one another for a whole host of reasons. And in a book I wrote with Scott Shapiro, the internationalists, we trace the fact that for hundreds of years, the way in which states related to each other was if one had a grievance against the other, there was a legal claim, there's a violation of a treaty, the interference of trade relations, any number of things. They would go to war. That was the normal way in which states resolved their disputes with one another. And there was a decision made to reject that. There was a decision made first in 1928 in the Caleb Brian Pact to outlaw war. And then the UN Charter after World War II creates UN creates this UN organization to enforce this idea that we're no longer going to resort to force. And the whole modern international legal system is grounded in that principle. And I use the words not take great, we can't take for granted the post-war legal order anymore, because I think many of us have kind of taken for granted that we live in a world where states don't just go to war with one another because they have some grievance. But that is a critical underlying principle that has brought us unparalleled peace and prosperity for the last 80 years. And we're at this moment where the United States is really testing that. These are all violations of the UN Charter. And they put that system that we fought for in World War II, that we uh wrote the UN Charter and put this prohibition on use of horse at its core. It's that's all being put at risk. Um and so that's what I wanted to bring to attention of the listeners. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

You know, it's interesting. You mentioned uh the UN Charter. I remember longer longer time ago than I really would care to remember when I was an undergrad. Uh I was I took a course about the United Nations, and I actually wrote a paper at the time where I made the argument that the UN was not a very uh effective organization. I remember the professor at the time was very upset by what my position was. But that was what I said. And to be honest, I don't actually remember now what my arguments were, but that is what the gist of it was. Um so let me almost resurrect what my notion was all those years ago. Uh has the UN ever really been effective at truly preventing uh whether you want to call it a war or military action or what does Putin call the war in Ukraine?

SPEAKER_00 8:15

A special military operation?

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Yeah, special military operation. Has the UN actually ever really stopped any of that?

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Well, look, we have to separate out two things. So we have the United Nations as an organization, and then we have the United Nations Charter as a treaty commitment that states are making to one another. And the two are obviously overlapping because the UN Charter creates a United Nations organization, but those commitments that are made in the charter exist independent of the organization itself. So, look, if we look at the organization, it's got its faults, obviously. The Security Council um is the sort of governing body of the United Nations. We wrote for ourselves a privileged role. Um we created five permanent seats that all have a veto. One of them is the United States, and so we can veto any operation that's authorized by the Security Council. But because we're not the only ones with a veto, um, uh Russia, France, UK, China um have them as well. It's sometimes very hard to get any kind of uh enforcement operation authorized because you've got to get those five states to all agree to it. So as an organization, it's had its real limits. And, you know, there's lots of talk about Security Council reform. And, you know, I've been part of a lot of those conversations. Frankly, they're not really gonna go anywhere because the UN Charter also creates a veto for those same five states over any changes to the charter. So let's so let's acknowledge that as a peacekeeping operation, it's got its serious limits because the Security Council is highly unlikely to authorize much in the way of significant operations to prevent or stop an illegal war. Though I will say its peacekeeping operations have largely been extremely successful in addressing internal conflicts. I mean, there's lots of good scholarly research on that that suggests that's been extremely important. And the UN is a whole host of other organizations too. You know, so you've got UNESCO, you've got all of these other organizations that are part of the UN ecosystem that do a lot beyond what the Security Council does. But let's just let's just stipulate for the moment what I think is the basic idea of your point, which is like Security Council not so great at stopping wars, right? It just doesn't great at that, right? But that's not the whole thing, right? There is the charter creates this prohibition on use of force in Article 2.4, and then the only exception is Security Council authorization or self-defense under Article 51. That fundamentally shifted states' expectations of one another. It created a completely different international legal order grounded in this idea that when you have a legal claim against another state, when they do you wrong in some way or another, you don't just invade them. You don't just go to war with them, right? Which used to be what we would do, right? You had, you know, state failed to pay a debt, you go to war against them. I mean, we much of southwestern United States is because Mexico failed to pay debts to the United States, and the US went to war and took a lot of land in repayment of that debt. What the UN does, UN Charter does, is it creates a set of expectations about how states are going to are going to treat one another, that they're not going to go to war to resolve their disputes or going to try to negotiate them or bring it to dispute resolution. And that works not so much because states are saying, hey, the UN Charter is there and I'm going to obey the UN Charter even though it's not in my best interest. It works significantly because it changes every state's expectation about what other states are going to do if they break those rules. So just to give an example, I mentioned that the United States went to war against Mexico and the Mexican-American War took all this territory. The legal justification for that was that Mexico had failed to repay significant debt to American citizens. If a state was to try to do that today, um, to go take territory because another state failed to pay debts, almost everyone would think that is outrageous. They would put in place sanctions, they would they would kick them out of international organizations, they would have all kinds of diplomatic sanctions, the kinds of things, frankly, that happened to Russia when it invaded Ukraine. You know, look at what happened to Russia when it invaded Ukraine. Security Council can't do anything because it's Russia, which has a veto on the Security Council. Um so the UN as an organization wasn't playing a key role. But states as a whole had this conviction that something fundamental had been broken, and they reacted to it by refusing to buy Russian natural gas and oil, by um putting in place economic sanctions, by kicking them out of the Olympics, by kicking them out of the Council of Europe, by kicking them out of the GA. I mean, a whole host of consequences that followed from that illegal action. And it wasn't like states were saying, like, you know, that uh that they're mandated by the UN Charter to do these things, but they did cite the fact that you're breaking a basic covenant of the modern international legal order, which is this prohibition on use of force and this commitment not to use military force to resolve your disputes. And that was critical to how states responded. So what I think we're seeing now is a bit of a breakdown in that because with the United States now joining Russia in violating the UN charter, it's weakening that set of assumptions. It's weakening those expectations, it's weakening the idea that we can count on states not to use force to uh to you know resolve their differences. And that is the the that creates the possibility of a much more dangerous and violent world. And that's what really concerns me.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Is is Donald Trump the uh the first president in modern times, anyway, to uh uh you know, sort of uh you enumerated some of the uh violations of international uh order uh when we started uh the episode a few minutes ago. Um is he the first to do that, or is he just one out of a long line of Republican and Democratic presidents, but perhaps he has done it to a much larger degree?

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Yeah, I mean, look, I would not say that we have a perfect record before Donald Trump. Um, you know, the Iran, the Iraq war jumps to mind as, you know, an example that at least the rest of the world regards as a manifest violation of the UN Charter. We had an argument about why that wasn't a violation of the Charter because Security Council, we argued, had authorized it. Most states thought that that was a bad argument. Um, though it's interesting to note that we bothered to make the argument. Um, you know, we we we actually tried to claim that this was a lawful use of military force. And also, we've been waging a counterterrorism campaign throughout the Middle East since 9-11, um, on a theory that we have a right of self-defense against non-state actor groups. That was a theory that many states didn't agree with, at least when we started it. Um, more states have come around to that view. So I wouldn't say that our record is completely perfect, but what I would say is that presidents, even those that were acting at some odds with what international lawyers thought was the right reading of the UN Charter and the other applicable international rules, most of them bothered to make arguments about why what they were doing was lawful. And um and you you haven't seen, I can't think of an example of a war that a president has launched that is so clearly in violation of international law and so clearly in violation of the of the constitution. So I know you talked to Irwin about the constitutional provisions and war powers. You know, what's so outrageous here is like he's not even bothered to get congressional consent for this war. He has not even really briefed them in any significant way, clearly in violation of the constitution and war powers resolution and in violation of the UN Charter. And that is really what's distinctive about this war is it's a major war that violates kind of all the applicable laws.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

You you you know, you mentioned that with the Iraq war, at least the president of the administration at the time uh made an effort to make an argument, but of course the argument on uh you know weapons of mass destruction was a lie. I mean, it just was not true. So uh what's worse? Is it worse for an administration to uh try to make an argument, even though they know that the argument is is ridiculous? Uh or is it better to do what Trump is doing, which is just to not bother to make up a lie, uh, just go ahead and do it?

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's it's kind of sad that we're in this position, right, where we're having this this is the debate, you know, that we're having. But look, uh, you know, I mean my uh obviously as an international lawyer, my preference is that we abide by the law and the best reading of the law, and that we're not in the position of doing either of these things. But if we have to choose um between these two options, I think it is better for the US government to try to make an argument, however implausible one might believe it to be, about why what they're doing is consistent with international law. Because if they fail to do that, if they basically ignore the law altogether, um as the president has largely done in these recent um operations, that suggests that the law is not even like worthy of addressing it all. Like it doesn't, it's it's completely irrelevant to what we're doing, and that we can just sort of act without having to even try to explain ourselves. That really undermines the legitimacy of the law in a pretty fundamental way, even more so than making an argument that um, you know, in the end turns out to be false or based on false intelligence, or even is is a bad legal argument. You know, the argument about, you know, this Security Council resolution actually authorized it when everybody else thought no, you know, Security Council authorization didn't authorize it. You have to get you have to come back to us to authorize the Iraq war. Whatever the case may be, it's better to accept that this is an applicable legal framework and work within it than it is to just kind of throw it out altogether. Now, I should mention that the Trump administration has issued in last week a um a kind of thin legal opinion trying to explain why the Iran war is lawful under the UN Charter. Um it's interesting because it is a kind of like recognition, like, oh gosh, we probably should try to explain ourselves. Um, was it so there's something? The basic explanation, and I mean it's it's it's it's a pretty absurd explanation. Basically, it boils down to um we've been at war with Iran for 47 years.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

Okay, yeah. So the 47 year argument. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we don't have to prove that that we have a kind of lawful basis for this particular instance because we've been at war with them all along. And so, you know, you don't have to prove it every time. That's sort of the claim. I think most international law, every international lawyer I know thinks that's a really bad argument. Um, but it's at least something, but it's also revealing that it comes so late in the game, right? I mean, it it's it's coming so far into this military operation that now they're finally, you know, getting around to offering a legal argument that's so patently just trying to kind of put lipstick on a pig. You know, it's so patently, you know, just trying to kind of ex it uh expose, come up with a legal justification for something the president has decided to do. And you know, the fact that the administration is not On the same page. You've got members of the administration making all kinds of different arguments about what they're doing, what they're up to, what their purposes are, what the aim is. Um, you know, it suggests that nobody's on the same page about the aim of this military operation and and uh about the legal basis for it. So so it feels very put together at the last minute, but I I just, you know, don't do have to acknowledge they have at least come around to acknowledging that they need to try to do something. Yeah, exactly. It's something.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

But what do you think has changed? Uh if previous presidents or previous administrations have at least uh tried to come up with uh an explanation for what they were doing, even if uh, as we talked about the Iraq War uh with the weapons of uh mass destruction that didn't exist, even if it was a fabricated uh uh argument. If previous administrations at least tried to make that effort, why does this administration uh uh choose, do you think, not to? What has changed in the world? Is it just as simple as, well, it's a personality, Donald Trump is a unique personality and feels he can do what he wants, or is there something else that is at play here that has allowed him to so far get away with what he is doing? Because he is getting away with what he's doing.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Yeah, so I don't think that it's something fundamental has changed in the world. I think something pretty fundamental has changed in the administration. And and what I think has changed is that I think the lawyers are just being completely ignored and kept out of the conversations and the decision making. Um, you know, when I worked at the Department of Defense now 10 years ago, um, there was a group called the Lawyers Group, which is the top lawyers from each of the major national security agencies. And we were on secure video conference uh calls pretty much every single day. Um, and whenever there was a military operation being considered um by the National Security Council, there was a parallel legal process that was going on that was vetting all of the legal options. So it was in sync with the deputies uh committee meetings and then the and then the principal committees before the president would make a decision about which of these things to authorize. And that was happening in tandem. And the the principals were taking into account the legal opinion. They would know, you know, okay, like the lawyers agree, like this is okay. The lawyers say, you know, no, this is really in a gray area, or the lawyers say this is clearly illegal. Um, and they would take that into account. I the evidence that I am seeing from the Trump administration about how they're handling things suggests that the that's not happening, or or that is really like fundamentally broken down because they don't seem to be on the same legal page. Um, we all know that they've been firing Jags in the Department of Defense. We know that the lawyers seem to be, you know, not seen as particularly valuable players in this administration. And so I just think they just are not thinking about the law as they're as they're working up these operations. They seem to think of it as sort of an impediment that it's easy to just sort of discard. And I think that shows, you know, it shows because they're making decisions that are not taking adequate account of the legal constraints, and they don't even have a good argument prepared to explain why what they're doing fits within the legal framework. And that suggests that they just haven't brought the lawyers in. So I think that's part of it. Um, and I think Trump feels like he can get away with it because he's gotten away with it domestically, right? I mean, he breaks laws all the time and he's never really held to account. And so why not international law? You know, he means he's yeah, I think that that's part of the attitude of this administration that they can kind of get away with breaking the law and nobody's really gonna hold them to account. And so far, the truth is he seems to be right.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Well, I was gonna say, I mean, uh, what international mechanism is there? I mean, the UN, I guess in theory, but we've already kind of touched on on the uh ineffectiveness in some ways, anyway, of the UN. What would prevent him uh in the next year and a half that he has uh in in power, right? What would prevent him from going along his merry way doing even a lot more damage to the international order? Uh who stops him?

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Yeah, I mean, look, there are two answers to that. The first is that the international community is not in a position to stop him. You know, they're not gonna come in and say, like, Donald Trump, you have to stop this war. I think that's I think they're not, you know, they're not gonna come to the military defense of Iran. Um, that's just not gonna happen. Um, I think what you are seeing is that um some of our allies are just saying, I'm out, you know, I'm I'm not gonna help. I'm not gonna participate. You can't use my military bases, you can't overfly my airspace. We're not gonna help with this at all. And of course, Trump has been complaining a lot about the fact that NATO is not coming in to assist, but that's because they think this is illegal and they don't want to be a part of an illegal war. Um, so I think that's one consequence you're seeing. I mean, when it came to the boat strikes, you can see that um the president was um, you know, he he was making these decisions to destroy these boats without consulting with our allies. And the allies again said, we're not gonna share intelligence, we're not going to assist in any way. These are these are big deals in the world of uh of international diplomacy for our long-standing allies to be refused to share intelligence with us. So that's one response we're we're seeing. I think, though, that we're we're not gonna see the full impact of this for a while because I think a lot of the world has built their um their plan for their own self-defense around a United States that's prepared to come to their rescue. You know, so NATO and NATO allies are built around this idea that like the United States will come to our defense if Russia attacks. And they have not invested in a military apparatus that allows them to defend themselves adequately. So in the short term, they just don't feel that they can stand up to the president in the way that I think they would want to. But they're investing fast. I was in Germany all fall. They're, you know, pouring money in their military. And in a not very long, they're going to have the fourth largest military in the world. And they're going to be in a much better position to be able to defend themselves, and then they'll be in a much better position to be able to stand up to the United States. But right now, that's just not an option that they have. In terms of who can stop him, I think really the only answer is Congress. Um, now, Congress is not done much. No sign. No sign of that. I agree. Like Congress has not done much. I mean, look, uh, the midterm elections is gonna determine a lot. Um uh the Republicans in Congress seem prepared to continue to sign off on everything that the president does, even though they recognize that it's clearly unlawful in many cases. Um, but when the midterms happen, if one or both houses switches parties, we're gonna see a shift. Um, and you already see the Democrats, you know, bringing every month a bill to the floor to uh reject the Iran war and to try to pull back funding uh from the Iran war. It's been going down because they don't have a majority in either house. But I think that um you're gonna see a much more significant pushback from Congress after the midterms if one or both houses shift uh to the other side. And and in the end, really that's what that's the only thing that's gonna stop this. I think the only thing that's gonna stop it is Congress stepping in and doing its job, um, actually, you know, serving the purposes that the Constitution give it. Um, and if they're not willing to do that, then then we're really in trouble.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

So uh Chemarinski said that in his view, the war was unconstitutional because it didn't involve the authorization or for that matter, consultation with the Congress as mandated by the Constitution. You're saying that the war uh with Iran uh is a violation of international law. Um if you take those two things together, if it is both a a uh unconstitutional and also in an internationally illegal war, does that and I'm I'm genuinely uh puzzled by the answer if there's an answer to this, does that by definition make almost any action the U.S. takes of war crime?

SPEAKER_00 31:33

No. So there are two different uh bodies of law that are relevant here, and it's worth maybe taking a step back and explaining that. Sure. So there's there's the UN Charter, which we've been talking about, which is really the government this question of whether you can use military force. Now, when you wage an illegal aggressive war that's a uh manifest violation of the UN Charter, that can be what's called a crime of aggression. This is one of the crimes that was prosecuted prosecuted against the Nazis at Nuremberg, was a crime of aggression because Germany waged an illegal war, and many of the Nazis who were tried were tried for what they called at the time crimes against peace. Um, this is also a crime that can be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court. So that's about like launching an illegal war. And it is true that everything that you're doing during that illegal war, as you're continuing to prosecute um engage in that illegal war, you're you're committing more and more crimes of aggression, you know, and everybody who's part of it is committing the crime of aggression. So there is that. Um there is a separate uh body of law um called international humanitarian law. The main treaties there um are the Geneva Conventions. These are the laws that were put in place after the war in 1949 and then uh added to it with uh additional protocols in the 1970s and through customary international law that govern the conduct of war. So the basic rules are you can't target civilians. Um, you have you can only use military force against military objectives. That even when you're using force against military objectives, if you know you're gonna hurt civilians, you have to make sure that the harm to civilians is not disproportionate to the military advantage you anticipate. So this is the collateral damage problem and sort of minimizing the harm to civilians, even when you're aiming it at a lawful military objective. That you're supposed to take to you know that you're supposed to take precautions uh to not put in place excessive harm against civilians. So it's all you know, central focus around protecting civilians, um, and and things like you know, you don't kill those who are wounded, um, you you know, allow military, you allow medical um uh personnel to operate and treat both sides. So it's all these rules about how you conduct the war. Serious violations of those rules are war crimes. Um you intentionally kill civilians, that's a war crime. You uh destroy a building um that has a military purpose, but you know, say it's next to a school and you know that you're gonna kill a lot of kids, that may be a war crime too, if it's disproportionate.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Um but to be but to be a a a war crime, uh, does it necessitate that there is action, or does the mere threat uh of committing what would be uh a war crime itself a crime? And and I ask that because, you know, if if uh I don't have to be, if I kill somebody, obviously I'm gonna be uh prosecuted. But it's also a crime if I threaten to kill somebody. I don't actually have to do it. Just the mere threat can be uh and often would be prosecuted, right, as a as a state crime. So is when the president makes the kinds of statements he has made about, you know, uh bombing uh uh Iran, uh destroying their entire civilization, uh getting rid of every bridge and and oil refinery in the country, those threats, which if there were action would be war crimes, right? Do the threats themselves constitute a crime?

SPEAKER_00 35:33

Well, so as you say, if he were to carry out those threats, clearly it would be a war crime, right? So destroying an entire civilization, taking out all of the civilian infrastructure, clearly those are not lawfully um permitted and those would be war crimes. So then the question you're asking is well, is just threatening that a war crime? There is a provision within the additional protocols that um that states that threaten threats that are meant to terrorize the population are prohibited and could be, and though that could be a war crime. I don't think it's ever been prosecuted, to be frank. Um and um I'm not sure that it ever would be prosecuted, but it's clearly unlawful. Um, as is uh Secretary of Defense uh Hegcess's uh threat to give no quarter, which basically means, you know, somebody's wounded or or captured that you would kill them. You know, that's that's clearly illegal as well. And threats or orders to give no quarter are also themselves illegal. Um so there are some instances in which the threats that both the president and secretary of defense have made are violations of our international legal commitments and illegal, whether they would be independently prosecuted, you know, highly unlikely, but but but are themselves illegal. And, you know, there are real questions that have been raised about whether the way in which the war is being conducted is consistent with our with our obligations as well. Lots of civilians have been killed in this war. Um, you know, that famously the the Minab girls' school that was destroyed and killed lots of children, um, the worst civilian casualty incident in decades um from the U.S. military.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Um that's the one, by the way, for those, for those uh uh who may not be familiar with it, that's the one, the the school where initially uh the U.S. was trying to say it was Iran that actually uh bombed the school. It turns out that the evidence doesn't support that. Anyway, no, I hadn't.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

No, you're right. I mean, they tried to sort of initially say, oh, that wasn't us. Um, and then, you know, people were sending pictures of like, you know, of the munitions that made it extremely clear that it absolutely was the United States. And then, and also the internal investigation within DOD had said it was it was the United States that was responsible for it. We don't know the all the details of why that happened. It is probably the case that they were using outdated targeting information because it had at one point been an IRGC building and it was next to an IRGC building, and but it had been operating as a school for well over a decade. That's an example where the law would say, you know, you have an obligation to make sure that you're working with up-to-date information. You know, you should not be targeting a building when there's ample available information that this is being used as a school. You know, there's pattern of life, you know, video information be amply available that makes it clear that this is not an army building. You've got young people being escorted in and out at the beginning and end of the school day. If you've been watching it for even a moment, you would have been able to see that. So that raises real questions about how the targeting decisions are being made. Um, how much are they using AI guided targeting? Um, how are the how much are they overseeing and checking the AI-generated target lists? Um, what are they doing to ensure that there are not um unnecessary civilian casualties taking place in the course of these, in the course of these strikes? Um and here I have to say that part of what raises concerns for me is the fact that the Secretary of Defense has been dismantling the um the um infrastructure that had been put in place in previous administrations to try and minimize civilian harm. They've they have undone a civilian harm mitigation action plan that was put in place. They have fired a lot of people whose job it was to ensure that they were mitigating civilian harm. And, you know, they've made clear from the beginning that this is not a priority for them. So you've got the combination on the one hand, you see these strikes that raise real questions about, you know, is there are the required legal processes in place to ensure that these are lawful targets? You've got a secretary of defense who's talking about maximum lethality, not tepid legality, and you know, stupid rules of engagement, he calls them, which are rules that are meant to protect people. And then you have a lot of civilians being killed. So it raises real questions as to whether there are um whether we're properly following the rules, um, and whether, in fact, you know, the laws that are put in place that we agreed to to protect civilians and to protect our own troops, frankly, um, whether those are being adequately followed. So I'm hopeful that at some point there will be a full investigation of how this war is being conducted and that we'll learn, you know, what was and wasn't done to actually follow our legal obligations.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

It would be uh soothing to think that a uh future president, whoever he or she may end up being, uh would uh try or or or at least uh uh uh give lip service to trying to reverse some of these things that we you were just talking about, all the things that have been dismantled by the current administration. Uh but it's always easier, right, to break something than to repair it. So is the solution just oh, we just have to wait for a change uh of administration, and some future president is going to see the light and realize that these other things have to be reconstituted and the people who were fired, at least those positions have to be re-restaffed. Is it in a way that simple? Or it it sounds to me like this is going to take many, many, many more years to repair than the time it took to destroy.

SPEAKER_00 42:04

Yeah, I think that's always true. Um, as you say, you know, destruction is much quicker than rebuilding, and that will be true here as well. I should say that I I also worry about, you know, that's assuming that we get to a rebuilding phase. Um and I don't think we should take for granted that that's what's going to happen. You know, obviously that requires uh role political commitment to ensure that, you know, those who believe that uh law should be conducted consistent with our international legal obligations are elected into office, whatever party they are. And there's no guarantee of that. And, you know, I think things could get a lot worse before they get better. The president's only been in office for a little over a year. Um, we've seen this dismantling of some of these internal systems, but it's still the case that people's training and the internal value system of the military is still very much shaped by these international legal obligations that we have. You know, members of the military are trained uh understanding what those rules are, what the Geneva Conventions require, understanding what it means to fight a war lawfully. You know, if this uh lack of commitment to the legal rules continues, um if it um if if the willingness to sort of tear down the rules and um undermine these commitments continue, you know, we're I think things could get a lot worse. I think things could get a lot worse because right now I suspect there's a kind of culture war going on within the Department of Defense that there are a lot of people who remain deeply committed to our legal obligations and who are doing their best to try and keep it legal. Um, and they're pushing. Back against some of the forces going the other way. And I think this is one of the reasons we've seen so many generals fired, so many top uh personnel kicked out is because they kind of held the line. They refused to engage in illegal uh military operations. Those people are getting cleared out. Um and uh and so I think we could see things get worse. Um and I and I worry very much about that.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

You know, I'm I have to admit I'm a bit of a fan of horror movies. So when you say that things could get worse, what in your view would be that worst case scenario? How how bad would it get, and in what way would it be manifested?

SPEAKER_00 44:44

Well, look, I mean there are um we're seeing civilian casualty events in Iran, those could go up. You know, we've seen the president make these threats about destroying civilian infrastructure, but for the most part, he hasn't yet carried them out. Um and, you know, I think some of that is because there is pushback um internally and externally. I think that, you know, the fact that many people have said, wait a minute, that would be a war crime. Um, I think that has penetrated um into some of the conversations that are happening within the administration about how to how to conduct this war. But it's also the case that there are a lot of people, I believe, within the Department of Defense who are saying, we don't think that's right. You know, we don't think that we should destroy a water treatment plant and leave people without access to water that they need in order to survive. We don't think that we should destroy all of the power plants and destroy basically the civilization's capacity to function for quite some time. We don't think that we should destroy schools and hospitals and uh, you know, all the oil treatment plants and depots and the like. I mean, that would be catastrophic environmentally. That would be make it impossible for the civilian population to be able to live a normal life when this is over. It's gonna take already, you know, a very long time to rebuild. Um, and if any of those things actually happen, um it will it will just be catastrophic for the civilian population and it will take a generation, if not more, uh, to to recover from that. Um so I think that you know, we have people who care about the law to thank for the fact that those strikes have not been happening, I think. And, you know, I I worry that those voices of caution um are not going to be as effective over time. And so that's how I think it could get worse, is that these many threats that the president has been making about, you know, it's gonna be Bridges Day or, you know, power plant day or whatever, he hasn't actually done those, thank goodness. Um, but if he does, it's gonna make the life of civilians who have, you know, nothing to do with this war, who are not responsible for it, who, you know, bravely in many cases were protesting this regime, who don't support it, who the president said he was waging this war in support of, it's gonna make their lives really miserable. Um and, you know, that that would be a real tragedy. Um, and and so far, thank goodness that hasn't happened, and I hope it doesn't. Um, but but that's part of what I worry about.

SPEAKER_01 47:36

Professor Owner Hathaway, thank you so much for taking your time to be with us on SOS America. For those of you uh who watch or listen, as always, we welcome your comments. If you'd like to subscribe, it is absolutely free. So why not? You got nothing to lose. Until the next episode of SOS America, I'm Charles Feldman. Thank you for being with us.