CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

Chapter 2 (see Section CHAPTER 22.2 examined in detail the failings of the legalist
paradigm as it is represented in the UN Charter model. To summarise, the Charter
model has failed because of its inherent structural limitations – most particularly the
veto enjoyed (and too often inappropriately used) by the P5; because it lacks the
enforcement mechanisms necessary to complete the analogy with domestic law; because
too little faith has been shown in the institutions for peaceful dispute resolution; because
of a changed value-set that places individuals not states at the heart of the system; and
because it was designed to meet the needs of an age when inter-state aggression was
perceived as the most likely threat to peace and has proved incapable of meeting the
demands of a changed world in which internal strife, state oppression of minorities,
failed or failing states are now perceived as the greater threat. The discussion at Section
3.2 , above, concluded that in the geo-strategic environment that has emerged since the
end of the Cold War, the security of Western nations can no longer be taken to be
synonymous with territorial defence. In view of the broader threats to security and in
particular the repercussions of failing states, intervention may not only be a
humanitarian requirement but a matter of self-defence. A will, arguably an imperative,
to intervene has emerged that neither the mechanisms nor the institutions of the UN
Charter paradigm have been able to support.
3.3.2 The Will to Intervene
It is commonly held that the ending of the Cold War super-power stand-off created the
conditions for intervention; that the Bosnian wars of the mid-1990s focussed Western
attention; and that NATO’s intervention in Kosovo was the watershed. In fact there is
plenty of evidence of earlier intervention, with justification at least partially based on
humanitarian grounds. Africa provides several suitable examples, such as the
Tanzanian deposition of Idi Amin in Uganda (1979) 51 and more recently Rwandan,
Ugandan and Angolan intervention in Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo. 52 Nor
were the 1990s the first occasion on which the UN and the international community had
felt it necessary to examine the issue of intervention. There was substantial debate on
the issue following the 1971 Indian intervention in (then) East Pakistan. Setting the
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