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co-belligerence

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Co-belligerence is the waging of a war in cooperation against a common enemy with or without a military alliance. Generally, the term is used for cases where no formal treaty of alliance exists. Likewise, allies may not become co-belligerents in a war if a casus foederis invoking the alliance has not arisen. Co-belligerents are defined in the Encyclopaedic Dictionary of International Law as "states engaged in a conflict with a common enemy, whether in alliance with each other or not".

~9 min read

Encyclopedic overview

8 sections
Contents
  • Legality
  • Historical examples in World War II
  • Germany and the Soviet Union as co-belligerents in Poland
  • Finland as co-belligerent with Germany in the Continuation War
  • The Allies as co-belligerents with former enemies
  • Recent usage
  • See also
  • References

Co-belligerence is the waging of a war in cooperation against a common enemy with or without a military alliance. Generally, the term is used for cases where no formal treaty of alliance exists. Likewise, allies may not become co-belligerents in a war if a casus foederis invoking the alliance has not arisen. Co-belligerents are defined in the Encyclopaedic Dictionary of International Law as "states engaged in a conflict with a common enemy, whether in alliance with each other or not".

== Legality == Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, nationals of a co-belligerent state are not regarded as protected persons if their state has normal diplomatic relations with an allied nation. Article 4 of the convention states:

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “co-belligerence” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.