Embassies In Armed Conflict

An examination of how embassies work and cope during wartime, with a focus on the experiences of the British, American, and Indian embassies

In Embassies Under Siege, eyewitnesses present nine representative crises in vivid detail, examining the recurring challenges posed to diplomatic missions. The authors, all career Foreign Service officers, provide more than just frightening firsthand accounts of vulnerable people facing great peril. They also suggest useful lessons for protecting diplomatic personnel abroad. Many of these suggestions have already been implemented, and as old problems continue and new crises develop, the lessons learned from these cases prove invaluable. Through stories of great physical courage, professionalism, and resourcefulness, Embassies Under Siege paints a clear picture of the unique type of individual serving in the Foreign Service today.

Embassies are integral to international diplomacy, their staff instrumental to inter-governmental dialogue, strategic partnerships, trading relationships and cultural exchange. But Embassies are also discreet political spaces. Notionally sovereign territory ‘immune’ from local jurisdiction, in moments of crisis Embassies have often been targets of protest and sites of confrontation. It is this aspect of Embassy experience that this collection of essays explores and Embassies in Crisis revisits flashpoints in the recent lives of Embassies overseas at times of acute political crisis. Ranging across multiple British and other embassy crises, unusually, this book offers equal insights to international historians and members of the diplomatic community.

The so-called Colonels&’ coup of April 21, 1967, was a major event in the history of the Cold War, ushering in a seven-year period of military rule in Greece. In the wake of the coup, some eight thousand people affiliated with the Communist Party were rounded up, and Greece became yet another country where the fear of Communism led the United States into alliance with a repressive right-wing authoritarian regime. In military coups in some other countries, it is known that the CIA and other agencies of the U.S. government played an active role in encouraging and facilitating the takeover. The Colonels&’ coup, however, came as a surprise to the United States (which was expecting a Generals&’ coup instead). Yet the U.S. government accepted it after the fact, despite internal disputes within policymaking circles about the wisdom of accommodating the upstart Papadopoulos regime. Among the dissenters was Robert Keeley, then serving in the U.S. Embassy in Greece. This is his insider&’s account of how U.S. policy was formulated, debated, and implemented during the critical years 1966 to 1969 in Greek-U.S. relations.

A fascinating history of American diplomacy in the Second World War and the ways US ambassadors shaped formal foreign policy.

The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations has for over 50 years been central to diplomacy and applied to all forms of relations among sovereign States. Participation is almost universal. The rules giving special protection to ambassadors are the oldest established in international law and the Convention is respected almost everywhere. But understanding it as a living instrument requires knowledge of its background in customary international law, of the negotiating history which clarifies many of its terms and the subsequent practice of states and decisions of national courts which have resolved other ambiguities. Diplomatic Law provides this in-depth Commentary. The book is an essential guide to changing methods of modern diplomacy and shows how challenges to its regime of special protection for embassies and diplomats have been met and resolved. It is used by ministries of foreign affairs and cited by domestic courts world-wide. The book analyzes the reasons for the widespread observance of the Convention rules and why in the special case of communications - where there is flagrant violation of their special status - these reasons do not apply. It describes how abuse has been controlled and how the immunities in the Convention have survived onslaught by those claiming that they should give way to conflicting entitlements to access to justice and the desire to punish violators of human rights. It describes how the duty of diplomats not to interfere in the internal affairs of the host State is being narrowed in the face of the communal international responsibility to monitor and uphold human rights.

This book provides a modern and basic introduction to a branch of international law constantly gaining in importance in international life, namely international humanitarian law (the law of armed conflict). It is constructed in a way suitable for self-study. The subject-matters are discussed in self-contained chapters, allowing each to be studied independently of the others. Among the subject-matters discussed are, inter alia: the Relationship between jus ad bellum / jus in bello; Historical Evolution of IHL; Basic Principles and Sources of IHL; Martens Clause; International and Non-International Armed Conflicts; Material, Spatial, Personal and Temporal Scope of Application of IHL; Special Agreements under IHL; Role of the ICRC; Targeting; Objects Specifically Protected against Attack; Prohibited Weapons; Perfidy; Reprisals; Assistance of the Wounded and Sick; Definition of Combatants; Protection of Prisoners of War; Protection of Civilians; Occupied Territories; Protective Emblems; Sea Warfare; Neutrality; Implementation of IHL.