Law of Armed Conflict

To be clear about what happened tonight: the law did not fail. The law was enforced by five people, and the five people were removed.

A constraint that depends on a removable signature is a constraint on the signatory.

For the record, because we will be arguing about this for a decade:

Article 5 cannot be invoked. Its machinery runs through a Council in which the attacking party holds a seat and a veto, and it was drafted to describe an attack from outside the Alliance.

There is no clause for this.

The word being used is "internment," and it is the correct one. These are the armed forces of a state now in armed conflict with the host state, on the host state's territory.

Eleven days ago they were allies with base passes. The law changed the moment the missiles hit Keflavik, not this morning.

"There is no war."

There has been an armed attack by the forces of one state on the forces of two others, on the sovereign territory of a fourth, with fatalities. The legal threshold was crossed at 02:40 on 9 February and it does not depend on anybody using the word.

The internment at Lakenheath is lawful precisely because there is a war. You cannot have the first half of that sentence without the second.