CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

organisations/arrangements acting under the auspices of the UN (Article 53) and, within
certain limitations, in self-defence (Article 51). Thus, Skubiszewski goes on to argue,
‘there is in the Charter not only a ban on the use or threat of force but also an attempt to
centralize the competence to employ force in international relations.’ 160 Even the right
to use force in self-defence, as contained in Article 51, is limited to action ‘until the
Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and
security.’
The right of intervention, erstwhile recognized by classical international law as lawful
in certain circumstances (by a suzerain or protecting state, by authority of a treaty or for
humanitarian purposes), is suspended by the legalist paradigm established by the UN
Charter. Furthermore, non-intervention is made a principle without exception by UN
General Assembly Resolution 2131 (XX) of 21 Dec 1965 which incorporates the
‘Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and
the Protection of their Independence and Sovereignty’:
No state has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason
whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other state. Consequently
armed intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted interference
against the personality of the state or against its political, economic and cultural
elements are condemned. 161
We can see, then, that the underlying value hierarchy of the Charter paradigm is firmly
based on a Westphalian privileging of the sovereignty of states, preferring order to
justice. As Anthony Arend says:
Although justice – the promotion of human rights, the encouragement of selfdetermination,
the rectification of economic problems, the correction of past
wrongs and the equitable resolution of a host of other problems – remained a
goal of the United Nations, it simply was not to be sought at the expense of
peace. The framers of the Charter believed that a greater harm would be done to
the international system by using force to promote justice than by allowing a
particular injustice to continue. Thus, no matter how just the cause, any threat or
use of force against the existing political or territorial integrity of a state was
considered unlawful. 162
Contemporary debate about a right to humanitarian intervention or of the necessity for
preventive war, for example, clearly runs entirely contrary to this foundation. Indeed, it
can be argued that although on the one hand the UN Charter represents the apogee of
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