Rein Müllerson
Biographic Data
| ID | 1321103 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rein Müllerson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rein |
| FAMILY NAME | Müllerson |
| SIGNATURE | MÜLLERSON R |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 26 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 27 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
From Kissinger’s Nightmare to European Quagmire
The emerging multipolarity and its acceptance by the great powers could recreate the conditions necessary for the functioning of international law and a relatively peaceful world. And the U.S. and other Western societies can benefit from this, too. Aris Roussinos is right that “just as the bipolar order of the Cold War world, by restraining liberalism’s inherent tendencies to radicalization and hubris, made the Western world safe for a tempered a…
Trump—More Like Gorbachev Than Deng
Trump’s policies may accelerate the coming of a world where a balance between different centers—America, China, Europe, India, Russia, and potentially some others—will, sooner rather than later, replace the historical anomaly where one center seeks to control the whole world
On Some Geopolitical and Societal Tendencies Threatening Peace and Stability
Today’s world is less stable than the Cold War international system. Why the high expectations for a peaceful world that existed thirty years ago didn’t materialize? This article singles out two interrelated trends that stem from mistakes made when it seemed that the humanity, having learned from history, was stepping into a period of the “end of history”. However, this end of history mindset forms the very basis on which today’s negative tendenc…
What Went Wrong
Russia's military operation in Ukraine, illegal in terms of the pre-1990s international law and probably a geopolitical miscalculation, has caused a shock incomparable even with that of the 2003 American attack on Iraq that was proudly baptised Operation Shock and Awe. Remarkably, neither the twenty-year-long war in Afghanistan waged by the U.S. and its allies, nor the destruction of Libya in 2011, nor the multiple military interventions in Afric…
The Nation-State
At the turn of the millennia, the ideas of withering away of the Nation-State became, once again, widespread. The latest wave of globalisation was supposed to lead to a borderless world, where goods, money, capital and workforce would move without hindrance. Multinational companies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), big cities, regions (e.g., California or Bavaria), supranational entities, like the European Union, and even individuals would …
Undemocratic Liberalism, Liberal Imperialism and the Rise of Populism
The roots of the currently intensifying conflict in Western societies between the cosmopolitan elites and the masses voting for populist parties lie in the inherent dialectical contradiction between democracy and liberalism exposed and exacerbated by the negative aspects of hyper-globalization. The liberal West, infected by the Fukuyamian germ, tried to make the whole world uniform by using policies of liberal imperialism. Liberalism may indeed s…
Self-defence against Armed Attacks by Non-State Actors
Armed attacks in the sense of Article 51 and customary international law can be carried out not only by States, but also by non-State actors (NSA). Self-defensive responses to attacks by NSAs, due to their specific characteristics, may contain a combination of elements of anticipatory self-defence and defensive reprisals. If a State, from the territory of which an attack originates, is unable to prevent an NSA attacking a third State, it has to a…
Human Rights Are Neither Universal Nor Natural
Differences between various theories of human rights have so far been mainly those of within the same Western worldview, which has either ignored other viewpoints or treated them with condescension. To avoid abstract theorizing on the nature of human rights without studying concrete societies, which had previously existed or exist today, without the analysis of why some of them had become slave-owning societies while others had evolved into liber…
Dawn of a New Order
The most significant development in global politics following the end of the bi-polar Cold War era has been the rise of a multi-polar state system. This has led to the emergence of major potential super-powers, global rivalry, international terrorism and the gradual weakening of the one remaining hegemonic, uni-polar state after the Cold War - the US. The idealistic hopes following the collapse of communism have evaporated and Cold War competitio…
Ideology, Geopolitics and International Law
Since the Cold War, high—some would say nai&x0308;ve—expectations of a world in which law, impartially interpreted and applied, would have primacy over politics have not materialized. Differing visions of desirable and possible world orders are accompanied by propaganda warfare where even international law is used as a tool of hegemonic dominance or, on the contrary, as an instrument to counter such dominance. Instead of the Cold War rivalry betw…
Ukraine
The end of the Cold War should also have meant the coming of the flourishing of international law, many (myself included) naively believed. However, the “uni-polar moment” that gained momentum in the 1990s, though its life-span turned out to be rather short, saw a gung ho attitude towards foundational principles of international law such as non-use of force and non-interference in internal affairs of states. NATO's 1999 operation over Kosovo, the…
F.F. Martens - Man of the Enlightenment
Martens -his treatment of the so-called mission civilisatrice of European nations and the potential clash of the two roles an international lawyer may have to perform: in the service of international law and representing national interests of his/her country or other clients. Both of these aspects in Martens' work have not lost their topicality; it is illuminating to draw parallels between his time and today's world
Human Rights Diplomacy
Processes of Dissimilation and Assimilation in Humankind's Evolution
In the process of proliferation from Africa, communities of Homo sapiens became more and more different in terms of the colour of their eyes and skin, the languages they spoke, the songs they sang, the animals they hunted or domesticated; now a reverse process seems to be slowly taking place. Of course, many differences remain and there is a strongly positive side to that. However, today in the emerging global megapolis, a painful process of assi…
Precedents in the Mountains
International law, especially its customary part, evolves to a great extent through acts of State practice serving as precedents. If States do not want that their behaviour becomes law (i.e. if they prefer to act contrary to Kant's categorical imperative), they claim that certain acts of their behaviour are so unique, so peculiar that they must not be considered as contributing to the change of law (they express their opinio non juris). In the 19…
Democratisation through the Supply–Demand Prism
The New Cold War
1. There are more and more of articles and books devoted to the same theme: things are getting worse and worse in Russia and only those ignorant Russians, who “are not like us” and certainly not Europeans (J. Dimbleby, “Seduced by a Smile”, The Sunday Times, 24 February 2008, News Review, p. 1), do not see that the Kremlin is not only menacing the West but also bad for Russia too. Last autumn, one of the most prolific neocon authors Robert Kagan …
Promoting Democracy without Starting a New Cold War
Journal Article Promoting Democracy without Starting a New Cold War? Get access Rein Müllerson Rein Müllerson * *Professor of International Law, King's College, London; Marco Polo Fellow of the Silk Road Institute, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an; member of the Institut de droit international (email: [email protected]). This paper was completed on 20 December 2007. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar C…
Being Tough on Terrorism or Respecting Human Rights
Today the world has become too small to remain too different-liberal-democratic and authoritarian-totalitarian, rich and poor, healthy and mired in epidemics. Such variations also constitute a fertile ground for terrorism. The concepts of East and West, South and North have all emerged as Homo sapiens, starting from an African village, spread throughout the world. Today we are creating the global village of planet Earth. In this village, differen…
The Abm Treaty
The Cold War years may have been in a way a good period for international lawyers and other international relations specialists: things were rather predictable and any fundamental change seemed to be out of the question. Today much has changed. What was just recently unforeseeable has become a reality in which unforeseeability is the norm. What about international law in this context
Ordering Anarchy
Humanitarian Intervention
Humanitarian Intervention: Preliminary Considerations 2. Humanitarian Intervention Prior to the UN Charter 3. The UN Charter: Origins and Text 4. Intervention During the Cold War (1945-89) 5. Incidents of Intervention After the Cold War 6. The United Nations and Humanitarian Intervention 7. Regional Organizations and Humanitarian Intervention 8. Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention Conclusion Appendix. United Nations Documents Bibliography Index
On humane governance
Journal Article On humane governance: toward a new global politics Get access On humane governance: toward a new global politics. By Richard Falk. Oxford: Polity. 1995. 288pp. Index: £45.00; ISBN 0 7456 1227 x. Pb.:£13.95; ISBN 0 7456 1228 8. Rein Müllerson Rein Müllerson 1King's College London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 72, Issue 3, July 1996, Pages 558–559, https://doi.…
Human rights in a changing world
Journal Article Human rights in a changing world Get access Human rights in a changing world. By Antonio Cassese. Oxford: Polity. 1994. 245pp. Index. £35.00; ISBN 0 7456 0723 3. Pb.: £11.95; ISBN 0 7456 1409 4. Rein Müllerson Rein Müllerson 1King's College London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 71, Issue 1, January 1995, Pages 137–138, https://doi.org/10.2307/2624026 Published…
Minorities in Eastern Europe and the Former USSR
Humanitarian Intervention
Humanitarian Intervention: Preliminary Considerations 2. Humanitarian Intervention Prior to the UN Charter 3. The UN Charter: Origins and Text 4. Intervention During the Cold War (1945-89) 5. Incidents of Intervention After the Cold War 6. The United Nations and Humanitarian Intervention 7. Regional Organizations and Humanitarian Intervention 8. Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention Conclusion Appendix. United Nations Documents Bibliography Index
Ukraine
The end of the Cold War should also have meant the coming of the flourishing of international law, many (myself included) naively believed. However, the “uni-polar moment” that gained momentum in the 1990s, though its life-span turned out to be rather short, saw a gung ho attitude towards foundational principles of international law such as non-use of force and non-interference in internal affairs of states. NATO's 1999 operation over Kosovo, the…
The New Cold War
1. There are more and more of articles and books devoted to the same theme: things are getting worse and worse in Russia and only those ignorant Russians, who “are not like us” and certainly not Europeans (J. Dimbleby, “Seduced by a Smile”, The Sunday Times, 24 February 2008, News Review, p. 1), do not see that the Kremlin is not only menacing the West but also bad for Russia too. Last autumn, one of the most prolific neocon authors Robert Kagan …
Sources of International Law
As this discourse is devoted to the sources of international law in Soviet doctrine and the diplomatic practice of the USSR, I think that it is necessary to begin by characterizing my understanding of the contemporary Soviet doctrine of international law. In Western countries, the Soviet doctrine of international law is often regarded as monolithic, without internal contradictions and discussions. It is not so, though I would agree that there are…
Human Rights Are Neither Universal Nor Natural
Differences between various theories of human rights have so far been mainly those of within the same Western worldview, which has either ignored other viewpoints or treated them with condescension. To avoid abstract theorizing on the nature of human rights without studying concrete societies, which had previously existed or exist today, without the analysis of why some of them had become slave-owning societies while others had evolved into liber…
On humane governance
Journal Article On humane governance: toward a new global politics Get access On humane governance: toward a new global politics. By Richard Falk. Oxford: Polity. 1995. 288pp. Index: £45.00; ISBN 0 7456 1227 x. Pb.:£13.95; ISBN 0 7456 1228 8. Rein Müllerson Rein Müllerson 1King's College London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 72, Issue 3, July 1996, Pages 558–559, https://doi.…
Human Rights and the Individual as Subject of International Law
Human Rights and the Individual as Subject of International Law: A Soviet View Get access Rein A. Mullerson Rein A. Mullerson * Director of the International Law section of the Institute of State and Law of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar European Journal of International Law, Volume 1, Issue 1, 1990, Pages 33–43, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.ejil.a035777 Publi…
Sources of International Law
As this discourse is devoted to the sources of international law in Soviet doctrine and the diplomatic practice of the USSR, I think that it is necessary to begin by characterizing my understanding of the contemporary Soviet doctrine of international law. In Western countries, the Soviet doctrine of international law is often regarded as monolithic, without internal contradictions and discussions. It is not so, though I would agree that there are…
Human Rights and the Individual as Subject of International Law
Human Rights and the Individual as Subject of International Law: A Soviet View Get access Rein A. Mullerson Rein A. Mullerson * Director of the International Law section of the Institute of State and Law of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar European Journal of International Law, Volume 1, Issue 1, 1990, Pages 33–43, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.ejil.a035777 Publi…
Minorities in Eastern Europe and the Former USSR
Human rights in a changing world
Journal Article Human rights in a changing world Get access Human rights in a changing world. By Antonio Cassese. Oxford: Polity. 1994. 245pp. Index. £35.00; ISBN 0 7456 0723 3. Pb.: £11.95; ISBN 0 7456 1409 4. Rein Müllerson Rein Müllerson 1King's College London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 71, Issue 1, January 1995, Pages 137–138, https://doi.org/10.2307/2624026 Published…
On humane governance
Journal Article On humane governance: toward a new global politics Get access On humane governance: toward a new global politics. By Richard Falk. Oxford: Polity. 1995. 288pp. Index: £45.00; ISBN 0 7456 1227 x. Pb.:£13.95; ISBN 0 7456 1228 8. Rein Müllerson Rein Müllerson 1King's College London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 72, Issue 3, July 1996, Pages 558–559, https://doi.…
Humanitarian Intervention
Humanitarian Intervention: Preliminary Considerations 2. Humanitarian Intervention Prior to the UN Charter 3. The UN Charter: Origins and Text 4. Intervention During the Cold War (1945-89) 5. Incidents of Intervention After the Cold War 6. The United Nations and Humanitarian Intervention 7. Regional Organizations and Humanitarian Intervention 8. Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention Conclusion Appendix. United Nations Documents Bibliography Index
Ordering Anarchy
The Abm Treaty
The Cold War years may have been in a way a good period for international lawyers and other international relations specialists: things were rather predictable and any fundamental change seemed to be out of the question. Today much has changed. What was just recently unforeseeable has become a reality in which unforeseeability is the norm. What about international law in this context
Being Tough on Terrorism or Respecting Human Rights
Today the world has become too small to remain too different-liberal-democratic and authoritarian-totalitarian, rich and poor, healthy and mired in epidemics. Such variations also constitute a fertile ground for terrorism. The concepts of East and West, South and North have all emerged as Homo sapiens, starting from an African village, spread throughout the world. Today we are creating the global village of planet Earth. In this village, differen…
Democratisation through the Supply–Demand Prism
The New Cold War
1. There are more and more of articles and books devoted to the same theme: things are getting worse and worse in Russia and only those ignorant Russians, who “are not like us” and certainly not Europeans (J. Dimbleby, “Seduced by a Smile”, The Sunday Times, 24 February 2008, News Review, p. 1), do not see that the Kremlin is not only menacing the West but also bad for Russia too. Last autumn, one of the most prolific neocon authors Robert Kagan …
Promoting Democracy without Starting a New Cold War
Journal Article Promoting Democracy without Starting a New Cold War? Get access Rein Müllerson Rein Müllerson * *Professor of International Law, King's College, London; Marco Polo Fellow of the Silk Road Institute, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an; member of the Institut de droit international (email: [email protected]). This paper was completed on 20 December 2007. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar C…
Precedents in the Mountains
International law, especially its customary part, evolves to a great extent through acts of State practice serving as precedents. If States do not want that their behaviour becomes law (i.e. if they prefer to act contrary to Kant's categorical imperative), they claim that certain acts of their behaviour are so unique, so peculiar that they must not be considered as contributing to the change of law (they express their opinio non juris). In the 19…
Processes of Dissimilation and Assimilation in Humankind's Evolution
In the process of proliferation from Africa, communities of Homo sapiens became more and more different in terms of the colour of their eyes and skin, the languages they spoke, the songs they sang, the animals they hunted or domesticated; now a reverse process seems to be slowly taking place. Of course, many differences remain and there is a strongly positive side to that. However, today in the emerging global megapolis, a painful process of assi…
Ukraine
The end of the Cold War should also have meant the coming of the flourishing of international law, many (myself included) naively believed. However, the “uni-polar moment” that gained momentum in the 1990s, though its life-span turned out to be rather short, saw a gung ho attitude towards foundational principles of international law such as non-use of force and non-interference in internal affairs of states. NATO's 1999 operation over Kosovo, the…
F.F. Martens - Man of the Enlightenment
Martens -his treatment of the so-called mission civilisatrice of European nations and the potential clash of the two roles an international lawyer may have to perform: in the service of international law and representing national interests of his/her country or other clients. Both of these aspects in Martens' work have not lost their topicality; it is illuminating to draw parallels between his time and today's world
Human Rights Diplomacy
Ideology, Geopolitics and International Law
Since the Cold War, high—some would say nai&x0308;ve—expectations of a world in which law, impartially interpreted and applied, would have primacy over politics have not materialized. Differing visions of desirable and possible world orders are accompanied by propaganda warfare where even international law is used as a tool of hegemonic dominance or, on the contrary, as an instrument to counter such dominance. Instead of the Cold War rivalry betw…
Dawn of a New Order
The most significant development in global politics following the end of the bi-polar Cold War era has been the rise of a multi-polar state system. This has led to the emergence of major potential super-powers, global rivalry, international terrorism and the gradual weakening of the one remaining hegemonic, uni-polar state after the Cold War - the US. The idealistic hopes following the collapse of communism have evaporated and Cold War competitio…
Human Rights Are Neither Universal Nor Natural
Differences between various theories of human rights have so far been mainly those of within the same Western worldview, which has either ignored other viewpoints or treated them with condescension. To avoid abstract theorizing on the nature of human rights without studying concrete societies, which had previously existed or exist today, without the analysis of why some of them had become slave-owning societies while others had evolved into liber…
Self-defence against Armed Attacks by Non-State Actors
Armed attacks in the sense of Article 51 and customary international law can be carried out not only by States, but also by non-State actors (NSA). Self-defensive responses to attacks by NSAs, due to their specific characteristics, may contain a combination of elements of anticipatory self-defence and defensive reprisals. If a State, from the territory of which an attack originates, is unable to prevent an NSA attacking a third State, it has to a…
Undemocratic Liberalism, Liberal Imperialism and the Rise of Populism
The roots of the currently intensifying conflict in Western societies between the cosmopolitan elites and the masses voting for populist parties lie in the inherent dialectical contradiction between democracy and liberalism exposed and exacerbated by the negative aspects of hyper-globalization. The liberal West, infected by the Fukuyamian germ, tried to make the whole world uniform by using policies of liberal imperialism. Liberalism may indeed s…
The Nation-State
At the turn of the millennia, the ideas of withering away of the Nation-State became, once again, widespread. The latest wave of globalisation was supposed to lead to a borderless world, where goods, money, capital and workforce would move without hindrance. Multinational companies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), big cities, regions (e.g., California or Bavaria), supranational entities, like the European Union, and even individuals would …
What Went Wrong
Russia's military operation in Ukraine, illegal in terms of the pre-1990s international law and probably a geopolitical miscalculation, has caused a shock incomparable even with that of the 2003 American attack on Iraq that was proudly baptised Operation Shock and Awe. Remarkably, neither the twenty-year-long war in Afghanistan waged by the U.S. and its allies, nor the destruction of Libya in 2011, nor the multiple military interventions in Afric…
On Some Geopolitical and Societal Tendencies Threatening Peace and Stability
Today’s world is less stable than the Cold War international system. Why the high expectations for a peaceful world that existed thirty years ago didn’t materialize? This article singles out two interrelated trends that stem from mistakes made when it seemed that the humanity, having learned from history, was stepping into a period of the “end of history”. However, this end of history mindset forms the very basis on which today’s negative tendenc…
Political science (23 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (16 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Law (11 works) · Political economy (8 works) · Democracy (7 works) · Economics (7 works) · Cold war (6 works) · Global Peace and Security Dynamics (6 works)