Comments
On December 5, 2016, the White House released a Report on the Legal and Policy Frameworks Guiding and Limiting the Use of Military Force, laying out the domestic and international legal bases for the United States’ use of force throughout the world. As stated in the forward written by President Obama, the report describes “how [the] Administration has ensured that [its] uses of force overseas are supported by a solid domestic law framework and consistent with an international legal framework predicated on the concepts of sovereignty and self-defense embedded in the United Nations Charter.” Additionally, “it describes how the United States has applied rules, practices, and policies long used in traditional warfare to this new type of conflict.” Finally, he states that “the report recounts actions [the] Administration has taken to institutionalize a policy framework to ensure that, in carrying out certain critical operations, the United States not only meets but also in important respects exceeds the safeguards that apply as a matter of law in the course of an armed conflict—particularly in the areas of the preservation of civilian life, transparency, and accountability.”