Beyond Bilateral Agreements: Are Foreign Military Bases Adequately Regulated Under International Law?

This paper interrogates the widely-held assumption that foreign military bases exist in a regulatory vacuum outside bilateral Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs). Employing doctrinal legal analysis grounded in the customary law of state responsibility (ARSIWA), alongside a contemporary case study of the 2026 Diego Garcia/Iran episode, the paper argues that the accountability gap is not one of substantive law but of organisation. It demonstrates that pre-existing doctrines; attribution of armed forces' conduct, the conditional and bounded nature of host-state consent, and due diligence/complicity obligations under Article 16 ARSIWA; already regulate sending and host state conduct independently of any SOFA. The paper's central argument is that responsibility under international law tracks control rather than territory, and that this unifying principle, though never formally codified, already underlies existing jurisprudence. Drawing on the precedent of the Montreux Document for private military companies, the paper concludes by advocating for a consolidated framework that would not create new obligations but merely restate and organise binding rules that already exist, thereby reducing the asymmetries bilateral arrangements currently produce.