California firefighters battled wind-whipped wildfires that tore across the Los Angeles area, destroying homes, clogging roadways as tens of thousands fled and straining resources as officials prepared for the situation to worsen early Wednesday, The Associated Press reported.
Day: January 8, 2025
Thousands of residents have been forced to evacuate the Los Angeles area as wildfires continue to tear through the region Wednesday. The Palisades Fire, which was first reported at 10:30 AM PST on Tuesday, was fanned by wind gusts of up to 60 MPH into Tuesday night, leaving the Los Angeles area under major evacuation orders.
As of Wednesday morning, the fire had spread to at least 2,921 acres and was 0% contained, with an expectation that its only going to spread due to the strong Santa Ana wind gusts and low humidity fueling the fires.
A second fire, the Eaton fire, was reported by CalFire on Tuesday evening, and had spread to 2,227 acres by Wednesday morning. It, along with three other reported fires in Los Angeles and Riverside counties, were 0% contained on Wednesday morning.
The fire has burned through homes and businesses in the Pacific Palisades, but official numbers on how many structures have been destroyed have not been released yet Nearly 70,000 people in the LA region were without power early Wednesday.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who declared a state of emergency Tuesday night, said early Wednesday morning that the state had deployed over 1,400 firefighters to the region to fight these “unprecedented fires.” As of early Wednesday morning, no fatalities had been reported. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
See photos of the massive fire below:
President-elect Donald Trump’s recent statements about his administration’s foreign policy toward Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal has given rise to international consternation. In particular, his statements about annexing Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal – the first in his words by the “use of economic force,” the remaining two with the possibility of military force explicitly on the table– have been sufficiently worrisome to inspire foreign leaders to respond.
What’s been missing from the commentary and analysis is a regional treaty, which serves the national security interests of the United States. Indeed, it would be wise for the incoming administration’s national security team to reassure the world of the United States’ continued commitment to the treaty, as it is a bulwark against military aggression in the region. The statements alone by an incoming president weaken the underpinnings of this international legal agreement.
Amidst justified concerns about brazen “imperialist designs,” the incoming new administration would be well-advised to consider its obligations under treaty law to defend the territories concerned. I am not referring here to the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty – although Canada and Denmark (under whose jurisdiction Greenland falls) are NATO members, article 5 therein also binding the United States to assist such allies should an armed attack against them take place. The legal obligations the second Trump administration may have vis-à-vis Canada, Greenland, and indeed Panama, refer to an older treaty that is a forerunner to NATO: the 1947 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, also known as the “Rio Treaty,” of which the United States is a founding member.
Conceived in the fires of World War II and built on such precedents as the 1939 Panama Declaration, the 1940 Havana Declaration, and the 1945 Act of Chapultepec – all instruments aiming to shield the Americas from the ongoing European conflict – the Rio Treaty has been characterized as the “multilateralization of the Monroe Doctrine” due to its overarching principle of continental solidarity in the face of an attack against any country located in the Western Hemisphere. Thus, it becomes necessary to better understand the “What?,” the “Who?,” and the (perhaps most important) “Where?” regarding this instrument of mutual continental defense.
What does the Rio Treaty require?
As for the first question, what the Rio Treaty provides is a legal architecture for the collective defense of the American continent, based on the principle of continental solidarity (Preamble, para. 3; Art. 3, para. 2), similarly to what the NATO treaty does for the Euro-Atlantic. Article 3(1) of the Rio Treaty thus provides that:
“The High Contracting Parties agree that an armed attack by any State against an American State shall be considered as an attack against all the American States and, consequently, each one of the said Contracting Parties undertakes to assist in meeting the attack in the exercise of the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations”.
But the Rio Treaty goes even further. Beyond the traditional justification for exercising the right to self-defense, namely an armed attack, Art. 6 expands the grounds for the activation of this instrument of mutual defense. Shortly after its inception, Joseph Kunz once systematized all the hypotheses included in the Rio Treaty as follows:
“(1) Armed attack within the region of Article 4 [more on this region below], by a non-American or by an American state;
(2) Armed attack outside of the region of Article 4, but within the territory of an American state;
(3) Armed attack outside of the region of Article 4 and outside the territory of an American state;
(4) Aggressions which are not armed attacks, whether inside or outside the region of Article 4;
(5) Threats of aggression, extracontinental or intercontinental conflicts, or any other fact or situation which might endanger the peace of the Americas” (p. 115).
Thus, the conditions for the activation of this collective self-defense pact, while building on the traditional justification of armed attack enshrined in Art. 51 of the UN Charter, are also quite expansive as they cover acts of aggression that might not be considered armed attacks. An important case in point, to which I shall return toward the end of this essay, is the activation of the Rio Treaty by the United States in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which whether construed as an “armed attack” or not, certainly qualified as a fact or situation that endangered the peace of the continent and of the world.
The measures that may be deployed to address such attacks or acts of aggression are also regulated in Art. 8 of the Rio Treaty, which mirrors the escalatory rationale incorporated in Arts. 41 and 42 of the UN Charter:
“For the purposes of this Treaty, the measures on which the Organ of Consultation may agree will comprise one or more of the following: recall of chiefs of diplomatic missions; breaking of diplomatic relations; breaking of consular relations; partial or complete interruption of economic relations or of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, telephonic, and radiotelephonic or radiotelegraphic communications; and use of armed force”.
It is important to underscore here that such measures adopted by the Organ of consultation of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the States parties to the treaty are binding upon each signatory to the Rio Treaty pursuant to Art. 20 therein, “with the sole exception that no State shall be required to use armed force without its consent.” With that qualification in mind, Professor Gene A. Sessions affirmed that “[t]he treaty so converted the right of collective self-defense in the Western Hemisphere into an obligation” (p. 269).
Who has the obligation to enforce the Rio treaty?
As for the “Who” or the States upon which said obligations rest, it is also important to highlight that the Rio Treaty distinguishes between “States” (i.e. any State of the world), “American States” (i.e. any State located in the Americas, whether North, Central, or South America, as well as Caribbean States), and finally the “High Contracting Parties” (i.e. those countries that signed and ratified the treaty). Importantly, the United States is a founding member of the Rio Treaty and a State party to this instrument, and so is Panama. On the other hand, Canada and Denmark are not. Therefore, the obligations set forth in the Rio Treaty bind the United States wherever the aforementioned conditions triggering the treaty occur, which leads to the third question about the territorial scope of this instrument.
Where does the Rio Treaty apply?
Indeed, the “Where?” is perhaps the most important question about the Rio Treaty in the context of the current discussion on neo-imperialist expansion by the United States. Article 4 of the Rio Treaty, in exacting detail, defines the contours of an Inter-American Security Zone that spans from the North to the South poles, encompassing the entirety of the Americas and the Caribbean, as well as Greenland but excluding Iceland. This means that, whether they are signatories to the treaty or not, Canada and Denmark (as far as its Greenland territory is concerned) are also included within the territorial scope of this instrument, a crucial legal consideration that has not been sufficiently discussed in the current controversy.
What is the practical significance of the Rio Treaty?
Finally, perhaps the most relevant point for policymakers right now is the “So what?” question. What does it matter that an old relic from the Cold War includes within its territorial scope the regions that are under the magnifying glass during the 2024-2025 U.S. presidential transition? The President-elect has openly declared that one of the main drivers for his expansionist push of late is national security. That vital interest — national security — also lies at the heart of a collective security arrangement such as the Rio Treaty, only expanded to a continental scale. That includes Canada, Greenland, and Panama, all places where the United States may already find itself legally obligated to comply with the measures adopted by the States parties to the Rio Treaty should a threat to national and continental security materialize in the Western Hemisphere. After all, the Rio Treaty is very clear when it says that “any other fact or situation that might endanger the peace of America” may activate the security measures envisaged in said instrument. Much cheaper and more practical than buying Canada or buying/occupying Greenland and the Panama Canal would be to activate this instrument of collective security, in cooperation with all the other signatories, in case national and regional security are indeed threatened. In other words, the treaty is designed to provide the very security that concerns the President-elect. The treaty is also designed to safeguard U.S. and regional interests more broadly against foreign aggression anywhere in this part of the Western Hemisphere.
In that sense, it might be helpful to conclude by looking back on the track record of the Rio Treaty in practice. Starting with a few invocations during the Cold War out of political motivations, the Rio Treaty has a mixed record when it comes to is effectiveness. It was not effectively activated when the United Kingdom and Argentina went to war over the Falklands/Malvinas isles in the South Atlantic (arguably because the armed attack on that occasion was initiated by an Argentine dictator against a European power who happened to be a U.S. ally). It was indeed activated in 2019 to put political and economic pressure on the Maduro regime in Venezuela, enabling the implementation of smart sanctions, but to little ultimate effect and with a rather feeble legal ground upon inspection of the letter and spirit of the treaty (as explained here and here).
At the same time, the Rio Treaty has been activated during some of the most critical moments in American history when there have been existential threats to the national security of the United States and, by implication, to the security of the entire continent: In 1962, in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis; and again in 2001, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, when another Cold War instrument, the NATO treaty, was also invoked.
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With all these antecedents in hand, the incoming U.S. administration would be wise to take stock, not only of the assets (present or potential) the United States has, but also of its liabilities and its international obligations within the hemisphere it inhabits. The ripple effects of weakening the existing diplomatic and legal security arrangements in the region does not serve U.S. or regional interests well.
Image: Flag map of the Americas (Patchman123 – Wikimedia Commons)
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