For much of the last decade, international lawyers have approached artificial intelligence (AI) primarily, if at all, as an object of legal regulation. The central questions have become familiar: How should international law regulate AI? Which existing legal rules apply to emerging technologies? Are new treaties required? Can established doctrines of state responsibility, international humanitarian law,…

A century has elapsed since one of history’s most hypocritical, enduring, and consequential betrayals of principle. Following World War I (WWI) and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, an independent Kurdistan was about to emerge. In Europe the Treaty of Versailles had implemented the principle of self-determination for ethnically-defined peoples, giving birth to new nation-states. Likewise in the…

The evolution of samoopredelenie or self-determination dates back to the early 20th century when these terms were used by the Russian Bolsheviks and the West respectively to advance ideological and political objectives. Now once again the concept of self-determination and its subject, i.e., people, have been variously invoked to justify support for the people of Ukraine writ large,…