The role and relevance of public international law in global security discourse: Planetary defense in the context of international law

• Authors: ŠVEC Martin
• Year of publication: 2022
• Type: Appeared in Conference without Proceedings
• MU Faculty or unit: Faculty of Law
• Description: Military conflicts have been considered among the major threats to global security. Our traditional perception of threats and their severity is well reflected by the UN Charter. Its very first sentence reads as follows: “We the peoples of the United Nations determined “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.” The maintenance of international peace and security has become a central mission of the United Nations, founded in 1945 after the Second World War. Traditional global security concerns such as armed conflict and the risk of nuclear confrontation led to the establishment of a relatively robust system consisting of various institutions (e.g., the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs), legal frameworks (e.g., the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons). What is more, “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security” has been conferred upon the Security Council (it should be emphasised that this paper has no ambition to discuss its effectiveness and whether its met original expectations). However, the global security environment in the 21st century is significantly different. Today, environmental, economic, and societal risks have been identified as more pressing than geopolitical risks. According to Global Risks Report 2022, a series tracking global risks perceptions among risk experts and world leaders in business, government, and civil society, published by the World Economic Forum, climate action failure, extreme weather, biodiversity loss, are viewed as the most pressing risks our generation faces. The international community did not realize some global threats 70 years ago such as climate change, some global threats faced by our generation are completely new such as cybersecurity. Same global threats were known, however, technologies needed for their mitigation were developed only recently– an asteroid impact threat. Global institutions which may have had some success in the 20th century are now unfit for purpose. There is a widespread sense that the international community is increasingly unable to keep pace with the global security environment in the 21st century. Adoption of new frameworks or the adjustment of those already being adopted appears to be inevitable. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2019, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pointed out that global challenges are more and more integrated, and the responses are more and more fragmented. While the inability of the international community to effectively respond to various global challenges has been extensively addressed by research, this paper aims to analyse a threat that the international community is going to face in the future – an asteroid impact threat. An asteroid impact threat is unique. Large asteroids pose an impact risk to humankind and the Earth as a whole, however, even smaller asteroids are likely to cause panic, destabilize regions or even continents, tiger migration waves, and severely impact the global economy. What is more, asteroids are often associated with large uncertainty in orbital elements putting at risk any place on Earth. Most of the techniques that have been proposed to avoid an Earth impact event are linked to altering the trajectory of an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. A kinetic impactor that changes the orbit of an asteroid by a direct hit of a spacecraft at a very high relative speed is currently being considered as the most feasible solution. So far, no planetary defense mission has ever been carried out. The author argues that an asteroid impact threat represents a unique opportunity to demonstrate that a truly global response to a global challenge is both possible and desirable.