The international legal norm that prohibits forcible annexations of territory is foundational to modern international law. It lies at the core of three projects that have been central to the enterprise: (1) to settle title to territory as the basis for establishing state authority; (2) to regulate the use of force across settled borders; and (3) to provide for people within settled borders collectively to determine their own fates. Prohibiting forcible annexations is integral to each of these projects independently, and by tying them together, has had a transformative effect on the legal system as a whole. However, its significance is widely overlooked or misunderstood. Analysts have also largely failed to appreciate that it is now caught up in a broader contest over the future world order and at risk of erosion.

This Article reinterprets the 1976 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) to show how it might rationally strengthen protections for the environment against intentional damage by states, particularly during armed conflict. The Article applies the orthodox rules of treaty interpretation to analyze in depth the Convention text, the travaux préparatoires, and available subsequent state practice, aiming to determine how the somewhat opaque Article II of ENMOD and its definition of “environmental modification technique” is best understood. It concludes that ENMOD has a broader potential application than it has historically been given.

About a decade ago, the neural network of the international financial system underwent an identity crisis. Since its establishment in 1973, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) had become the world's dominant system for transmitting information about financial transactions, handling up to 20 million messages per day across 212 jurisdictions. The Belgium-based company reached this position by providing customers with a reliable, confidential, and global system to exchange information. “[W]e have always maintained the position that we are like the internet,” Swift chief executive officer Gottfried Leibbrandt said in an October 2012 interview, “we connect everybody and we do not listen in on the conversation.” In other words, to borrow a phrase from its website, “Swift is neutral.”