In his inaugural lecture delivered on Wednesday 22nd February 2023, Professor Milanovic argued that coercion can be understood in two different ways or models. First, coercion as extortion, as a threat to engage or continue engaging in some activity (which itself may be lawful or unlawful) in order to extract some kind of concession from the victim state – in other words, an act targeting the victim state’s will or decision-making calculus. Second, coercion can be understood as the actual deprivation of the victim state’sability to make its sovereign choices, which may be done even through acts like cyber operations that the victim state may be unaware of. Professor Milanovic argued that many of the difficulties surrounding the notion of coercion arise as consequence of failing to distinguish between these two different models.

Follow the link below to listen to Marko’s lecture delivered on Wednesday 22nd February 2023.

Revisiting Coercion as an Element of Prohibited Intervention in International Law