International Law

School of Law

International Law

Revisiting Coercion as an Element of Prohibited Intervention in International Law
Professor Marko Milanovic

International law prohibits states from intervening in the internal and external affairs of other states, but only if the method of intervention is coercive. We know coercion when we see it – for example when Russia threatened Ukraine with military action, a threat which it later fulfilled,demanding ‘legal guarantees’ that NATO would not expand eastwards nor place weapons systems on Ukrainian soil. But what is coercion really beyond the obvious examples most lawyers would agree on? And how is to be understood in the novel context of malicious cyber operations, for instance those interfering with elections or attacking public health infrastructure in other states?

In his inaugural lecture, Professor Milanovic will argue that coercion can be understood in two different ways or models. First, coercion as extortion,as a threat to engage or continue engaging in some activity (which itself may be lawful or unlawful) in order to extract some kind of concession from the victim state – in other words, an act targeting the victim state’s will or decision-making calculus. Second, coercion can be understood as the actual deprivation of the victim state’s ability to make its sovereign choices, which may be done even through acts like cyber operations that the victim state may be unaware of. Professor Milanovic will argue that many of the difficulties surrounding the notion of coercion arise as consequence of failing to distinguish between these two different models.

The event is open to the public and free to attend, but booking is essential.