Context: In September 2021, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States announced AUKUS , a trilateral security partnership that will provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines using US and UK technology. The deal, which involves transferring weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) to a non-nuclear-weapon state, represents the most significant challenge to the nuclear non-proliferation framework since its creation . The submarine deal cancelled Australia's existing $90 billion contract with France for conventional submarines, triggering a major diplomatic crisis with Fr
Context: The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been repeatedly accused by African states and the African Union of disproportionately targeting African leaders and situations, with all of its completed trials involving African defendants despite mass atrocities occurring on every continent. The most prominent example is the 2009 indictment of Omar al-Bashir of Sudan for genocide and war crimes in Darfur, the first ICC warrant against a sitting head of state, which he evaded for over a decade while travelling freely across Africa with the support of AU member states. This became a glo
Context: In early 2011, during the Arab Spring , Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi launched violent crackdowns on protesters in Benghazi, threatening to massacre civilians and hunt opponents "house by house." The UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973 , authorising "all necessary measures" to protect civilians including a no-fly zone, and NATO forces launched airstrikes that ultimately contributed to Gaddafi's overthrow, marking the first time R2P was invoked to authorise military intervention against a functioning state. This became a defining global politics case study because Libya