Stockton Legal Perspectives: Prof. Michael Schmitt, Professor Emeritus, U.S. Naval War College

I have a long history with the Naval War College. I came here in 1995 as an Air Force officer in the senior class. After graduation, I stayed for two years as a military faculty member. Then I came back in 2007 and 2008 as a visiting professor, the Charles Stockton visiting professor. And then in 2011, I returned for a final time as the chairman of the law department, what is today known as the Stockton Center. I retired in 2019, and now I'm a professor emeritus. This is perhaps among all the PME institutions, the premier place to consider how international law relates to conflict. That's my field of study. So the Stockton Center used to be called the International Law Department. And before that, the Oceans Law and Policy Department has always been a global thought leader in international law, as it applies on the battlefield and other situations of conflict. These events are absolutely crucial because if you look at who's here among the 200 participants, you have military officers from around the world. You have representatives from the State Department and its equivalent around the world. You have the most prestigious academics in our field. So it's really an opportunity for the community to come together and consider the topic of the day to exchange views, to test our own views with an audience that really understands the issue. War, like many activities, is governed by law. To the extent U.S. officers comply with the law, they advance the security interest, the strategic position of the United States. When I went to War College, we often talked about the strategic corporal, the individual who's fairly junior that violates the law of armed conflict, the law of war, and that creates a negative strategic consequence. So our students, unlike most other institutions in the world, our students actually go out and apply what they've learned. What they've learned is warfare, and they need to know what the rules are. Well, I gave two presentations here. I gave a keynote. My keynote was to express a degree of concern about the state of law of armed conflict in modern conflicts. We have two in particular, Russia and Ukraine. And then, of course, the other is Hamas and other organized armed groups in Israel. And in both those conflicts, you have a party that has adopted violations of the law of armed conflict, has a tactic, and even has a strategy. So what I spoke about in the keynote was the extent to which I'm nervous about that, and to the extent to which I'm nervous about the reaction of the international community to that.