Friday Lecture: 'Revisiting Coercion as an Element of Prohibited Intervention in International Law' - Prof Marko Milanovic, University of Reading Law School

This lecture is a hybrid event. There is a sandwich lunch at 12.30 pm in the Old Library at the Centre. All lecture attendees welcome.

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Lecture summary: In this lecture, based on an article in the American Journal of International Law, Professor Milanovic will examine the notion of coercion as an element of non-intervention. International law prohibits States from intervening in the internal and external affairs of other States, but only if the method of intervention is coercive. Building on recent developments in State practice, especially in the cyber context, Professor Milanovic argues that coercion can be understood in two different ways or models. First, as coercion-as-extortion, a demand coupled with a threat of harm or the infliction of harm, done 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, as coercion-as-control, an act depriving the victim State of its ability to control its sovereign choices. Many of the difficulties surrounding the notion of coercion arise as a consequence of failing to distinguish between these two different models. Coercion-as-extortion consists of imposing costs on the victim State, so as to cause it to change its policy choices. This is precisely how coercion has traditionally been understood in this context, as “dictatorial” intervention. Coercion-as-control, by contrast, is not about affecting the victim State’s decision-making calculus – the victim State’s leadership may even be entirely unaware of the actions taken against it – but consists of a material constraint on its ability to pursue the choices that it wanted to pursue. Consider here, for example, a cyber operation against the elections in another country, which may be entirely unrelated to any demands or threats by the coercing State.

Marko Milanovic is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Reading School of Law. He is co-general editor of the ongoing Tallinn Manual 3.0 project on the application of international law in cyberspace and Senior Fellow, NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence. He is also co-editor of EJIL: Talk!, the blog of the European Journal of International Law, as well as a member of the EJIL’s Editorial Board. Professor Milanovic served as Vice-President and member of the Executive Board of the European Society of International Law. He was formerly Professor of Public International Law and Co-Director of the Human Rights Law Centre at the University of Nottingham School of Law, and held visiting professorships at Michigan Law School, Columbia Law School, Deakin Law School, the University of Bologna, the University of the Philippines College of Law, and the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. 

Pre-reading material: AJIL article in draft: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4504816

Chair: Dr Federica Paddeu

Please note this lecture will not be recorded.

The Friday Lunchtime Lecture series is kindly supported by Cambridge University Press & Assessment.