This August, the world will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions on the Law of War.  These seminal treaties were negotiated following the horrors of the Second World War.  Their object was to lay down rules to limit the savagery of armed conflict.  Every country in the world has signed them, making the Geneva Conventions the most ratified of all treaties.    But are the 75-year-old Geneva Conventions sufficient in a world where the technology portrayed in the...

Two years ago, on February 24, 2022, Russia launched a massive invasion of neighboring Ukraine.  The International community responded with military aid and sanctions.  The U.N. expelled Russia from the Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Russia failed to capture Ukraine’s largest cities or topple Ukraine’s government.  The fighting has ground to a bloody stalemate with hundreds of thousands of casualties on...

September was the hottest month in recorded history.  Last summer, smoke from Canadian forest fires blanketed the United States.  Maui ignited.  Libya was deluged by flooding of biblical dimensions.  Sea levels rose as glaciers and ice sheets melted at an accelerating rate. The world’s great rivers and lakes are drying up, while climate migrants are pouring across borders. Is it too late to stop climate change? What can the international community do to respond to this existential global...

May 30, 2023 Two-months ago, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.  He’s been charged with orchestrating the abduction of thousands of Ukrainian children and transferring them to Russia for adoption. It’s the first time a major world leader has been indicted by the International Criminal Court.  How will this affect the course of world events?  I’m Michael Scharf and in the next broadcast of Talking Foreign Policy, our expert...

February 21, 2023 Case Western Reserve University School of Law   Since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the situation there has gone from bad to worse.  Today, 20 million Afghans are starving and millions are internally displaced.  The Taliban is back in power.  They are once again providing sanctuary to terrorist groups that threaten the United States. They have decreed that Afghan girls shall not have access to education above the sixth grade. In a recent report to...

January 23, 2020 Case Western Reserve University School of Law

October 24, 2022 Case Western Reserve University School of Law

March 21, 2022   Case Western Reserve University School of Law

Sept. 28, 2021   Case Western Reserve University School of Law