US lays out legal case for bin Laden raid, Libyan intervention

By Julian Pecquet - 07/16/12 03:57 PM ET

The State Department on Monday released its annual digest of U.S. views on international law for the year 2011, which covers the raid against Osama bin Laden and the NATO intervention in Libya.

The digest, unsurprisingly, concludes that the May 1, 2011, raid in Pakistan was “lawful.” While most of the administration's legal justifications are well known, the report does offer some insights into the disagreements with some U.S. allies about the geographic scope of the conflict against al Qaeda — the administration thinks it extends beyond “hot” battlefields like Afghanistan — while providing new details about the U.S. reaction to the so-called Arab Spring.

“The Arab Awakening presented a variety of challenges for the practice of international law in 2011,” reads the introduction to the 2011 Digest of United States Practice in International Law. “In addressing events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and elsewhere, the United States government carefully applied what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called 'smart power,' utilizing a wide array of foreign policy tools to fit the needs of the particular circumstance.”

The report goes on to detail the myriad questions of international law that arose as the Libyan campaign got under way — and the U.S. response to them.

“Various additional legal issues arose during the U.S. response to the situation in Libya,” says the report, “including those related to securing a protecting power, addressing the situation at the United Nations Human Rights Council, recognizing the new Libyan government, and arranging for funds to be made available to the new government using assets of the former regime that had been frozen pursuant to Security Council resolutions.”