Legitimate use of military force against state-sponsored - Air University

quarantine Cuba and the Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor. Matt S. Nydell addresses this
comparison, writing,
US officials repeatedly and consciously rejected the article 51 self-defense
argument as a legal basis for the action. The administration was concerned that
reliance on the doctrine of self-defense would set a bad precedent and weaken the
requirement that self-defense not be invoked except in case of ‘‘armed attack.”
Instead, the U.S. action was explained in terms of the collective security
provisions of the OAS [Organization of American States] Charter. Israel,
however, had no collective security device to invoke, and had only self-defense
under article 51 as a justification.
Nydell, “Tensions between International Law and Strategic Security: Implications of
Israel’s Preemptive Raid on Iraq’s Nuclear Reactor,” Virginia Journal of International Law 24,
no. 2 (1984): 485.
29. ‘‘Charter of the United Nations,” art. 52, para. 1. See Moore, “Grenada,” 154.
30. See letter of David R. Robinson, 10 February 1984, in “Resort to War and Armed
Force: Organization of Eastern Caribbean States: Grenada 1983” (US Digest, chap. 14, sec. 1),
Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law, American Journal of
International Law 78, no.3 (July 1984): 662.
31. Moore, ‘‘Grenada,” 155.