Overview

One might ask why the Soviet Union so adamantly promoted the definition of aggression and aggressive war while, as many have noted, conducting military actions that appeared to violate the very definition they espoused in international treaties and conventions. Lawfare: Use of the Definition of Aggressive War by the Soviet and Russian Governments demonstrates that through the use of treaties the Soviet Union and Russian Federation practiced a program of lawfare long before the term became known. Lawfare, as applied in this work, is the manipulation or exploitation of the international legal system to supplement military and political objectives. This work is unique in that it not only traces the evolution of the definition of aggression and aggressive war from the Soviet and Russian Federation perspective, it looks at that progression both from the vantage point of leading edge legal legitimacy and its concurrent use as a means of lawfare to control other states legally, politically and equally as important, through the public media of propaganda.

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9781443821360

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Reviews

Bartman sheds new light on the little-known efforts of the international community in the inter-war period to define and outlaw aggression both by states and by individual state officials. She demonstrates a significant Soviet role-a role that has often been overlooked in accounts by other writers-in the origin of the post-World War II Nuremberg trials and the crime of aggression that was formulated there. Writing with a sweep of history, Bartman puts international legal doctrine into historical context and argues persuasively that the Soviet government used, and at times misused, this doctrine as a weapon in the propaganda war with the West. Finally, she shows how the avid advocacy of norms on aggression came back to haunt the USSR, and after it even the Russian Federation, when they used armed force in dubious circumstances in neighboring states. A must read for anyone who follows international diplomacy and the history of warfare. -John B. Quigley, President's Club Professor of Law, Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University By approaching the international law in a historical setting and exposing how efficient this weapon can be in advancing one's own national interests concealed as high international principles of law, the book constitutes a novel approach on the subject and invites to the rethinking of our understanding of international diplomacy and international law. Silviu Miloiu, Valahian Journal of Historical Studies, Vol 14, Winter 2010

Author Information

Christi Scott Bartman holds a JD from the University of Toledo and a PhD in Policy History from Bowling Green State University.

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