Abstract
This chapter will investigate and assess the legal requisites of prevention and preemption, particularly in the context of the UN Charter’s Article 51 — ”the self-defense article.” As a foundational pillar for analyzing the specific preventive/preemptive strategies of both the Bush and Obama administrations’ use-of-force policies in the fight against global terrorism, the chapter will evaluate the extent to which such strategic options have been accepted more generally as justifiable measures of self-defense. Simply put, what was the standing of prevention and preemption under international law, and more specifically, their position under the UN Charter jus ad bellum regime before the inception of the Bush doctrine? In addressing this question, the chapter will evaluate the ongoing debate over the scope of self-defense permissible in international law and specifically the standing of the preventive and preemptive use-of-force in three interrelated sections.
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Notes
Lawrence Freedman, “Prevention, Not Pre-emption,” The Washington Quarterly, 26, no. 2 (2003): 105–106.
Ibid. For further discussion of the concepts of deterrence, prevention and preemption, see, Francois Heisbourg, “A Work in Progress: The Bush Doctrine and Its Consequences,” The Washington Quarterly 26, no. 2 (2003): 73–88
James J. Wirtz and James A. Russell, “US Policy on Preventive War and Preemption,” The Nonproliferation Review 10, no. 1 (2003): 113–123
Jeffrey Record, Nuclear Deterrence, Preventive War and Counterproliferation, CATO Institute Policy Analysis (CATO Institute, July 8, 2004), http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/nuclear-deterrence-preventive-war-counterproliferation.
Richard Ned Lebow, “Windows of Opportunity: Do States Jump through Them?,” International Security, 9, no. 1 (1984): 147.
Jack S. Levy, “Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War,” World Politics, 40, no. 1 (1987): 91.
Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War (New York: Penguin, 1972): 49.
Anthony C. Arend, “International Law and the Pre-emptive Use of Military Force,” The Washington Quarterly, 26, no. 2 (2003): 91. This is notably almost an exact quote of the famous formula used by Webster in the “Caroline incident.”
Tom Moriarty, “Entering the Valley of Uncertainty: The Future of Pre-emptive Attack,” World Affairs, 167, no. 2 (2004): 72. Moriarty draws his distinction in the context of a hostile state’s acquisition of WMD, in particular, nuclear weapons.
Alberico Gentili, De Jure Belli Libri Tres, the Translation of the Edition of 1612, trans. John Carew Rolfe (Buffalo: William S. Hein & Co, 1995): 66.
Hugo Grotius, De Jure Bello Ac Pacis Libri Tres, the Translation of the Edition of 1625, trans. Francis W. Kelsey (Buffalo: William S. Hein & Co, 1995): 173.
Emmerich De Vattel, Le Droit Des Gens, Ou Principles De La Loi, Appliqués À La Conduite et Aux Affaires Des Nations Et Des Souverains, the Translation of the Edition from 1758, trans. Charles G. Fenwick (Buffalo: William S. Hein & Co, 1995): 249.
David M. Ackermann, International Law and the Pre-emptive Use of Force Against Iraq, Congressional Research Service: Report for Congress, 11 April 2003, http://www.au.al.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rs21314.pdf
Michael N. Schmitt, “Preemptive Strategies in International Law,” Michigan Journal of International Law, 24, no. 2 (2003): 526.
Malcolm N. Shaw, International Law, 4th ed. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997): 655–656.
Josel L. Kunz, “Individual and Collective Sell-Delense in Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations,” The American Journal of International Law 41, no. 4 (1947): 872–879
Ian Brownlie, International Law and the Use of Force by States (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963): 275
Hans Kelsen, The Law of the United Nations: A Critical Analysis of Its Fundamental Problems; with Suppl., [4. pr.] (New York: Praeger, 1964): 269, 797–798
Michael B. Akehurst, A Modern Introduction to International Law, 6th ed. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987): 261.
Björn Schiffbauer, Vorbeugende Selbstverteidigung im Völkerrecht: Eine Systematische Ermittlung des Gegenwärtigen Friedenssicherungsrechtlichen Besitzstandes aus Völkerrechtsdogmatischer und Praxisanalytischer Sicht, Schriften zum Völkerrecht?: SVR, ISSN 0582–0251 197 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2012): 304.
C.H.M. Waldock, “The Regulation of the Use of Force by Individual States in International Law,” in Haroldo Valladão (ed.), Recueil Des Cours, Collected Courses, Volume 81 (1952) (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers): 497, http://www.nijhofonline.nl/book?id=er081_er081_451–517.
Myres Smith MacDougal and Florentino P. Feliciano, Law and Minimum World Public Order: The Legal Regulation of International Coercion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961): 237., in. 261
James L. Brierly, Humphrey Waldock (ed.), The Law of Nations: An Introduction to the International Law of Peace, 6th. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963): 419.
Derek W. Bowett, Self-Defense in International Law (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958): 193–195; Brierly, The Law of Nations, 419.
Waldock, “The Regulation of the Use of Force by Individual States in International Law,” 497; Smith MacDougal and Feliciano, Law and Minimum World Public Order, 235–236; Brierly, The Law of Nations, 417–418; and Oscar Schachter, “The Right of States to Use Armed Force,” Michigan Law Review, 82, no. 5/6 (1984): 1633–1634.
Ibid., 271; Concurring, Kelsen, The Law of the United Nations, 914; Yoram Dinstein, War, Aggression, and Self-Defense, 3rd ed. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 168.
Brownlie, International Law and the Use of Force by States, 273; Louis Henkin, How Nations Behave: Law and Foreign Policy, 2nd. ed. (New York: Columbia Univ. Pr., 1979): 141–142
Albrecht Randelzhofer, “Article 2(4),” in Bruno Simma and Hermann Mosler, eds, The Charter of the United Nations: A Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994): 676.
Bowett, Self-Defense in International Law, 192; and, Thomas M. Franck, Recourse to Force: State Action against Threats and Armed Attacks (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 98.
Waldock, “The Regulation of the Use of Force by Individual States in International Law,” 498; Bowett, Self-Defense in International Law, 191–192; Smith MacDougal and Feliciano, Law and Minimum World Public Order, 238; Stephen M. Schwebel, “Aggression, Intervention and Self-Defense in Modern International Law,” vol. 81, Receuil Des Cours de L’Academie de Droit International (Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff, 1973): 581; and, Robert Jennings, Arthur Watts, and Lassa Francis Lawrence Oppenheim, eds, Oppenheim’s International Law: Peace, 9th. ed. (Harlow: Longman, 1992): 422.
There is a broad consensus in the literature on this point. See, Mark B. Baker, “Terrorism and the Inherent Right of Self-Defense (A Call to Amend Article 51 of the United Nations Charter),” Houston Journal of International Law, 10, no. 1 (1987): 33
Jack M. Beard, “America’s New War on Terror: The Case for Self-Defense Under International Law,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, 22, no. 2 (2002): 583; and Ackermann, International Law and the Pre-emptive Use of Force Against Iraq.
For further in-depth discussion of the Caroline incident, see, Robert Y. Jennings, “The Caroline and McLeod Cases,” The American Journal of International Law 32, no. 1 (1938): 82–99
Martin A. Rogoff and Edward Collins Jr., “The Caroline Incident and the Development of International Law,” Brooklyn Journal of International Law, 16, no. 3 (1990): 493–528.
In its judgment, the Tribunal ruled: “It must be remembered that preventive action on foreign territory is justified only in case of ‘an instant and overwhelming necessity for self-defense, leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation’ (The Caroline case, Moore’s Digest of International Law, II, All).” See, International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg), “Judicial Decisions IMT (Nuremberg): Judgment & Sentences, 1 October 1946,” The American Journal of International Law, 41, no. 1 (1947): 205.
It is beyond the scope of this Chapter to examine in detail the pacific methods of dispute settlement under the Charter. For such a discussion, see, Peter Malanczuk, Michael Barton Akehurst, eds, Akehurst’s Modern Introduction to International Law, 7th. rev. ed. (London: Routledge, 1997): 273–305, 385–387
Hugh M. Kindred, International Law: Chiefly as Interpreted and Applied in Canada, 6th ed. (Toronto: Emond Montgomery Publications, Limited, 2000): 329–396.
M. Elaine Bunn, “Pre-emptive Action: When, How, and to What Effect?,” Strategic Forum, no. 200 (2003): 7.
Ashton B. Carter, “How to Counter WMD,” Foreign Affairs 83, no. 5 (2004): 73–76.
For the contrary view on this point. See, Christopher Greenwood, “International Law and the Pre-Emptive Use of Force: Afghanistan, Al-Qaida, and Iraq,” San Diego International Law Journal, 4 (2003): 7–38
Terence Taylor, “The End of Imminence?,” The Washington Quarterly, 27, no. 4 (2004): 57–72.
Michael C. Bonafede, “Here, There and Everywhere: Assessing the Proportionality Doctrine and US Uses of Force in Response to Terrorism after the September 11 Attacks,” Cornell Law Review, 88, no. 1 (2002): 183.
Thomas W. Dowler, I. I. Howard, and H. Joseph, “Countering the Threat of the Well-Armed Tyrant: A Modest Proposal for Small Nuclear Weapons,” Strategic Review 19, no. 4 (1991): 34–40
Robert W. Nelson, “Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons,” FAS Public Interest Report: Journal of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), 54, no. 1 (2001): 6.
Bonalede, “Here, There and Everywhere: Assessing the Proportionality Doctrine and US Uses of Force in Response to Terrorism alter the September 11 Attacks,” 184; and John Alan Cohan, “Formulation of a State’s Response to Terrorism and State-Sponsored Terrorism,” Pace International Law Review, 14, no. 1 (2002): 105.
Ibid., 533; Oscar Schachter, “The Lawtul Use of Force by a State against Terrorists in Another Country,” Israel Yearbook on Human Rights, 19 (1989): 227; and Cohan, “Formulation of a State’s Response to Terrorism and State-Sponsored Terrorism,” 104.
Alberto R. Coll, “The Legal and Moral Adequacy of Military Responses to Terrorism,” American Society of International Law Proceedings, 81 (1987): 299.
Antonio Cassese, “The International Community’s ‘Legal’ Response to Terrorism,” International & Comparative Law Quarterly, 38 (1989): 590.
The well-known reason for this lailure is connected to continued disagreement on how to legally separate between what many states perceive as legitimate actions by national liberation movements and terrorist attacks. Compare Gilbert Guillaume, “Terrorism and International Law,” International & Comparative Law Quarterly, 53, no. 3 (2004): 593. This can be criticized as a false dilemma as national liberation movements employ political violence, targeted at agents and objects of the state as opposed to terrorists, who chose civilian targets. We would like to thank Vesselin Popovski for drawing our attention to this point.
Antonio Cassese, “The International Community’s ‘Legal’ Response to Terrorism,” International & Comparative Law Quarterly, 38 (1989): 590.
Rowles, James P., “Military Responses to Terrorism: Substantive and Procedural Constraints in International Law,” American Society of International Law Proceedings, 81 (1987): 314.
Francis A. Boyle, “Military Responses to Terrorism: Remarks,” American Society of International Law Proceedings, 81 (1987): 295–296.
Christian Henderson, “The 2010 United States National Security Strategy and the Obama Doctrine of ‘Necessary Force,’” Journal of Conflict & Security Law, 15, no. 3 (2010): 422
Mary Ellen O’Connell, “Evidence of Terror,” Journal of Conflict and Security Law, 7, no. 1 (1 April 2002): 30.
Kimberley N. Trapp, “Back to Basics: Necessity, Proportionality, and the Right of Sell-Delense Against Non-State Terrorist Actors,” International & Comparative Law Quarterly 56, no. 1 (2007): 145.
Antonio Cassese, “Terrorism Is Also Disrupting Some Crucial Legal Categories of International Law,” European Journal of International Law, 12, no. 5 (2001): 997.
John Norton Moore, “The Nicaragua Case and the Deterioration of World Order,” The American Journal of International Law, 81, no. 1 (January 1987): 151.
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© 2014 Aiden Warren and Ingvild Bode
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Warren, A., Bode, I. (2014). Self-Defense in International Law: Preemptive/Preventive Requisites. In: Governing the Use-of-Force in International Relations. New Security Challenges Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137411440_3
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