Rethinking the law of armed conflict
Overview
The law we have wasn’t designed for the wars we fight, in which civilians and combatants are rarely separate or readily distinguishable. This project corrects that fundamental flaw with law so that it can serve both its humanitarian purpose and our strategic interests.
Recent armed conflicts present a paradox. Military officials routinely claim that conflicts, such as the recent war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, are the most precise in history. Yet thousands of civilians continue to be killed. This project shows the reason so many civilians continue to be killed is that the law we have was never designed for modern warfare, in which states are heavily reliant on air power, and enemy combatants are not generally separate or readily distinguishable from civilians. This truth about the limits of the legal protections codified nearly fifty years ago in the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions was explicitly and repeatedly recognized at the Protocols’ negotiating conference. Yet states have effectively blinded themselves to these limits and continue to apply the law as if it were adequate to the conditions in which we fight. This project seeks to remedy the legal blindness by asking—and answering—how the law should be constructed if we want to protect civilians, and do so while serving our strategic interests in eliminating enemy threats and establishing durable security.
Team
Project director
Dr Joshua Andresen
Associate Professor of National Security and Foreign Relations Law
Biography
Joshua (JD, Yale; PhD, Northwestern) is an international lawyer working in national security and human rights law. His areas of expertise range from the law of armed conflict and international human rights law to anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism, including sanctions compliance and the regulation of cryptocurrencies and exchanges. Joshua’s recent writing has focused on legal questions that arise in modern conflict and counterterrorism operations due to power asymmetries, the geography of the battlespace, and technological developments, with influential pieces appearing in the Yale Journal of International Law, the Harvard National Security Journal, and an anthology by Oxford University Press. Given the practical focus of his work, Joshua has been called upon to advise states, provide expert opinions for international tribunals, and contribute to the work of UN Special Rapporteurs.
Prior to Surrey, Joshua was Senior Policy Advisor for Europe, Russia, and Central Asia in the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He was also an Attorney-Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, where he worked in the Office of the Legal Adviser for African and Near Eastern Affairs and in the Office of the Legal Adviser for United Nations Affairs. Joshua’s work at the State Department was supported by a Robina Human Rights Post-Doctoral Fellowship from Yale Law School. Joshua’s international law and human rights experience includes work at the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the High Court of Bombay. While in law school, Joshua also worked to defend people facing the death penalty with the Southern Center for Human Rights and the Equal Justice Initiative. Prior to his law and policy work, Joshua was Associate Professor of Philosophy at the American University of Beirut.
Research outputs
- Andresen, Joshua (2025) ‘It’s Time to Rethink the Law of Armed Conflict’
- Andresen, Joshua (2023) ‘Fighting Terrorism under All Applicable Law’
- Andresen, Joshua (2021) ‘The Paradox of Precision and the Weapons Review Regime’
- Andresen, Joshua (2017) ‘Putting Lethal Force on the Table: How Drones Change the Alternative Space of War and Counterterrorism’
- Andresen, Joshua (2016) ‘Due Process of War in the Age of Drones’
- Andresen, Joshua (2016) ‘Transparency, Review, and Relief: The Far Reaching Implications of the Kunduz Report’
- Andresen, Joshua (2014) ‘Challenging the Perplexity over Jus in Bello Proportionality’.