Migrants as a Weapons System

• Author: Aaron R. Petty
• Position: Appellate Immigration Judge, U.S. Department of Justice, Board of Immigration Appeals; Judge Advocate, U.S. Air Force Reserve
• Pages: 113-139

Migrants as a Weapons System

Aaron R. Petty*

It takes a particularly evil mindset to see that people and their vulnerability

and humanity can actually be used as a means to achieve political ends.

1

Franco Ordo~

nez, Authoritarians Are Using Migrants as Weapons. The White House Frets It’s on

the Rise, NAT’L PUB. RADIO, (Dec. 13, 2021), https://perma.cc/3S6D-VDLM.

Ivo Daalder, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO

[T]here is nothing in the world today that cannot become a weapon.

2

Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui, Colonels, People’s Liberation Army

I. THE PROBLEM

It has been suggested that Vladimir Putin intentionally targeted civilians in

Ukraine, at least in part, to create refugees for the purpose of destabilizing

European neighbors.

3

Anne Appelbaum, There Is No Liberal World Order, ATLANTIC (Mar. 31, 2022), https://perma.cc/

7HVP-979Z (“His army targeted civilians, hospitals, and schools. His policies aimed to create refugees

so as to destabilize Western Europe.”).

The displacement of civilians would have been of second-

ary importance to occupying Ukrainian territory, but an important Russian objec-

tive nonetheless. Even as a second-order effect, it would have illustrated to

neighboring states what could happen to them if they resist Russian suzerainty,

while concurrently fomenting domestic dissention simply by the presence of

large numbers of displaced people. While the means Russia elected—intentional

targeting of civilians—caught many by surprise,

4

the attempt to coerce European

countries through the instrumentalization of displaced Ukrainians should not

have surprised anyone.

As recently as December 2021, just two months before Russia’s invasion of

Ukraine began, U.S. officials accused Belarusian leader Alexandr Lukashenko of

bringing migrants from war-torn nations to Belarus in order to create a humanitarian

* Aaron R. Petty, Appellate Immigration Judge, U.S. Department of Justice, Board of Immigration

Appeals; Judge Advocate, U.S. Air Force Reserve; Adjunct Professor, University of Illinois College of

Law; Senior Research Associate, Refugee Law Initiative, School of Advanced Study, University of

London. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the

views of the United States government, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Defense

or any other institution with which the author is affiliated. © 2022, Aaron R. Petty.

1.

2. QIAO LIANG & WANG XIANGSUI, UNRESTRICTED WARFARE 16 (trans. 1999, Echo Point Books &

Media 2015).

3.

4. Arguably, this should not have been a surprise either. Although intentional attacks against civilians

not directly participating in hostilities are prohibited, civilians are often directly targeted in armed

conflict despite the prohibition. Vanessa Holzer, Persecution and the Nexus to a Refugee Convention

Ground in Non-International Armed Conflict: Insights from Customary International Humanitarian

Law, in REFUGE FROM INHUMANITY? WAR REFUGEES AND INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW 101

(David James Cantor & Jean-Francois Durieux eds., 2014).

113

crisis to force concessions from EU member states.

5

Ordo~

nez, supra note 1. It has also been reported that Lukashenko enticed these individuals,

primarily Iraqi and Syrian Kurds and Afghans, through travel agents promising easy access to the

European Union. Kelly M. Greenhill, When Migrants Become Weapons, FOREIGN AFF. 155–164, 155–

56 (Mar./Apr. 2022) https://perma.cc/VLS7-VM44 [hereinafter Greenhill, When Migrants Become

Weapons]; Mark Galeotti, How Migrants Got Weaponized: The EU Set the Stage for Belarus’s Cynical

Ploy, FOREIGN AFF. (Dec. 2, 2021), https://perma.cc/79FT-EG5J.

People from countries in

Africa, the Middle East, and as far afield as Cuba were seen trapped and dying,

trying to cross into Poland and Latvia while largely unprotected from the northern

European winter.

6

Ordo~

nez, supra note 1; Aleksandra Jolkina, Legalising Refoulement: Pushbacks and Forcible

‘Voluntary’ Returns from the Latvian-Belarus Border, RLI BLOG ON REFUGEE L. & FORCED MIGRATION

(Aug. 22, 2022), https://perma.cc/2R43-YZRD.

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, described the

situation as “not a migration crisis,” but as a “hybrid attack.”

7

Ordo~

nez, supra note 1. On the definitional issue of what constitutes a “hybrid attack” and how it

differs from, for example, gray zone competition, see Tarik Solmaz, “Hybrid Warfare”: One Term,

Many Meanings, SMALL WARS J. (Feb. 25, 2022), https://perma.cc/BH4S-ATS6.

She said, “This is

an attempt by an authoritarian regime to try to destabilize its democratic neigh-

bors. This will not succeed.”

8

But, at least in part, it did succeed. The European

governments that had previously refused to recognize Lukashenko as the lawful

president of Belarus following his questionable election in 2020 now had to rec-

ognize him as the de facto leader—even if only for the purpose of sanctioning

him.

9

Lukashenko made the same threat to flood the EU with asylum seekers if

his demands were not met twice previously, in 2002 and 2004.

10

Stephen M. Walt, The World Has No Answer for Migration, FOREIGN POL’Y (Nov. 30, 2021)

https://perma.cc/G2ZR-CAC3.

In 2002, he

declared, “if the Europeans don’t pay, we will not protect Europe from these

flows.”

11

In response, member states “pledged to spend more than half a billion

euros to enhance their border security and deter future attempts at coercion.”

12

The weaponization of migration has a long

13

and generally successful history

of being employed by weaker powers to significant effect against stronger ones.

It is especially successful against liberal democracies, because accepting large

numbers of refugees en masse is often a politically charged and domestically

5.

6.

7.

8. Ordo~

nez, supra note 1.

9. Greenhill, When Migrants Become Weapons, supra note 5 at 155 (“[A] key objective appears to

have been to discomfit, humiliate, and sow division within the EU for failing to recognize him as the

legitimate winner of the flawed 2020 Belarussian presidential election and for imposing sanctions on his

country after he brutally suppressed the pro-democracy protests that followed.”); Ordo~

nez, supra note 1.

10.

11. KELLY M. GREENHILL, WEAPONS OF MASS MIGRATION: FORCED DISPLACEMENT, COERCION, AND

FOREIGN POLICY 19 (2010) [hereinafter GREENHILL, WEAPONS OF MASS MIGRATION]; see also Kelly M.

Greenhill, When Virtues Become Vices: The Achilles’ Heel of Migration Social Policy, in HANDBOOK ON

MIGRATION AND SOCIAL POLICY 199, 201 (Gary P. Freeman & Nicola Mirilovic eds., 2016) [hereinafter

Greenhill, Virtues].

12. GREENHILL, WEAPONS OF MASS MIGRATION, supra note 11, at 5–6.

13. MARK GALEOTTI, THE WEAPONIZATION OF EVERYTHING: A FIELD GUIDE TO THE NEW WAY OF

WAR 137, 141 (2022) (“Innocent people are, and arguably have been, weapons of war. Ethnic cleansing,

displacing communities considered hostile or just alien, is a miserable corollary of conflict.. .Civilian

lives have always been not just subjects of war but its objects and, sometimes, its weapons.”).

114 JOURNAL OF NATIONAL SECURITY LAW & POLICY [Vol. 13:113