This panel, held the night of Saturday, Jan. 25, discussed the nature of international law and warfare.
Panelists focused on the current international environment, the limits of sovereignty and the means by which states can cope with the threat of terrorism.
The panel's title, "Shifting Paradigms," acknowledged that traditional 'states' may no longer be the principal actors in today's new global arrangement.
Jack Blum, former special counsel to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that today's situation involves not only sovereign states, but also international groups that cannot be neatly affiliated with state governments.
"The minute you've got cross-border crime you have a maze of complexities," Blum said.
According to Blum, the global community needs a legal recourse that falls short of invasion for states dealing with international terrorists. Blum called full-blown military engagement "crude and counterproductive."
He said, however, that some more moderate military options may be necessary to apprehend international criminals and diffuse potential crises - in short, even sovereignty can have its limits.
States must be willing to "surrender some measure of sovereignty so we don't end up with criminal states... where the only solution is invasion," Blum said.
Walter Gary Sharp, retired Lieutenant Colonel of the U.S. Marine Corps, began his segment by asking provocative questions about the rights of sovereign states and their authority to act.
"The nature of terrorists and the nature of states are changing," he said.
Sharp identified three "immutable principles of law" that were currently pertinent to the situation. These included a nation-state's inherent right to self-defense, a state's right to use all elements of its national power to defend itself and, lastly, the current lack of any body of law that can coherently address the current terrorism situation.
Sharp implored the global community to seek clarification of the term "war on terror," stressing that differentiating between an armed conflict and an issue of law enforcement "defines the legal authority that our national government has" and holds serious domestic implications.
Sharp said that the so-called "war on terror" is a misnomer, and that we are no more at war on terror than at war on a social issue such as teenage pregnancy.
"No matter how terrible it is, it is still a law enforcement issue," he said.
Colonel John Alexander of the United States Army recognized the amorphous nature of terrorist threats, but also reminded the audience that terrorism is not the only military threat in today's world.
"We cannot disregard traditional warfare threats that are out there," he said.
Junior Peter Maher and sophomore Jaclyn Silbermann, who conducted research in Israel and the West Bank on Hamas over winter break, presented their work.
