ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the status of international regimes governing the use of armed force and arms control, as well as how the changing face of global violence has created special problems, and opportunities, for global governance in the security issue-area. The 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol is just one of many international regimes that impose restrictions on the use of various kinds of weapons, including both conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction. Foreign involvement in civil wars in the post–Cold War era, not only in Kosovo but also in Somalia, Haiti, Sierra Leone, and other places, frequently has been justified as humanitarian intervention. When the United States attacked Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, Washington invoked a right of self-defense among its main legal arguments to support the invasions. Intrastate and extrastate conflicts pose special problems today for implementation of prisoners of war conventions and other rules governing treatment of combatants.
