Lawfare

Lawfare is the use of international law as a component of grand strategy. A Council on Foreign Relations conference defined it as ...a strategy of using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve military objectives. Each operation conducted by the U.S. military results in new and expanding efforts by groups and countries to use lawfare to respond to military force.

It is also seen as a form of asymmetrical warfare to counter superior military force. American conservative legal theorists, such as Jack Goldsmith, and organizations, such as the Federalist Society, regard it with considerable concern. Goldsmith, however, is a relative moderate compared to Dick Cheney and some of his advisers, such as David Addington, who based much of the George W. Bush Administration policies in dealing with terrorism on American immunity to international law. George W. Bush, for example, ruled, on February 7, 2002, wrote "I determined.... that members of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces are unlawful enemy combatants who are not entitled to the protections that the Third Geneva Convention provides to prisoners of war."