CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

The UN Charter paradigm does, of course, allow for the use of force. In addition to
using force in their own self defence (but only ‘until the Security Council has taken
measures necessary…..’ 48 ), states may use force collectively or individually under UN
auspices when the UN Security Council determines ‘the existence of any threat to the
peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression’ 49 that cannot be resolved but by use of
force. In fact, though, as General Sir Hugh Beach has pointed out 50
UN Peacekeeping – much the most frequent use of armed force under the aegis
of the United Nations * – falls into neither of these categories. There is no
explicit warrant for such action in the Charter and it has had to be improvised on
the hoof. …. The key features are:
the more or less voluntary consent of all parties to the presence and
activities of the mission;
the peacekeepers’ impartiality in relation to the parties;
the minimum use of force, only in the last resort and only in selfdefence.
They have no enemies and they are not there to win.
The key thing of note is that both morally and legally the focus in the legalist paradigm
is on the personality of the state. Even peacekeeping, despite its humanitarian intent, is
at the behest or at least with the consent of the states-party; it offers no mechanism for
intervention on behalf of individuals or groups of people(s) under threat from the state,
internally. In Walzer’s characterisation of the legalist paradigm, collective action is
interpreted as law enforcement – giving it a direct analogy with the situation in national
law. However, just as national police forces were (and still are in many countries)
reluctant to intervene in ‘domestic’ issues, the UN has been prohibited by its Charter
from unsolicited intervention in the ‘domestic’ issues of its member states. The
‘aggression’ to which Walzer refers is, in international legal terms, aggression by states
against states. This does not sit comfortably, indeed it cannot be squared at all, with the
value-set emergent at the end of the second millennium that has placed the premium on
the rights of the individual. This would require a much broader understanding of
‘aggression’ to include the internal aggression of states or sub-state groups against
individuals or groups within a state.
* As at 16 Apr 2006 the UN listed (http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/index.asp) a total of 45 concluded
and 15 on-going ‘peacekeeping’ missions.
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