Complex Legal Frameworks and Complex Operational Challenges: Navigating the Applicable Law Across the Continuum of Military Operations

Modern conflicts and stability operations pose complex challenges for both military and civilian actors tasked with promoting the rule of law during conflicts and stability operations. Military operations can occur both during armed conflict and in situations that do not qualify as armed conflict, such as disaster relief or humanitarian intervention. The now oft-used term "stability operations" encompasses U.S. military activities conducted "outside the United States in coordination with other instruments of national power to maintain or reestablish a safe and secure environment, provide essential governmental services, emergency infrastructure reconstruction, and humanitarian relief."