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

conditions necessary for invitation are disputed. For example, did Governor-General Paul Scoons
possess the constitutional authority to make the request? Scoons was not the prime minister but
the governor-general, an appointee of the queen of England. Was the request made before or
after the decision to intervene? Even if it were not, is it sufficient that the request was made prior
to the actual intervention? What was the nature of Scoon’s request? The Economist quotes
Scoons as saying, “What I did ask for was not an invasion but help from the outside.” 6
The United States relied upon two other arguments in support of the Grenada operation:
collective self-defense and protection of one’s own nationals—more than 1,000 threatened
Americans were on the island, including 800 US students studying medicine there. However,
most foreign governments, including many Western allies, questioned the US action. The UN
General Assembly, by a vote of 108 to 9, adopted a resolution on 2 November 1983 condemning
the intervention as a violation of international law. 7 Although invitation as a legal concept is
accepted by the international community, the international community carefully scrutinizes any
claim of invitation and resolves any doubtful facts against the state using force.
Peacetime Reprisal
Peacetime reprisal is “such injurious and otherwise internationally illegal acts of one
State against another as are exceptionally permitted for the purpose of compelling the latter to
consent to a satisfactory settlement of a difference created by its own international
delinquency.” 8 This definition embodies three important elements of peacetime reprisal. First,
state A has committed a wrong against state B. and state B is taking the reprisal against state A.
Second, the use of armed force by state B would itself be illegal under international law if it were
not for the original wrong of state A. Third, the purpose of the reprisal is to obtain a satisfactory
settlement of the differences between the two states.
Peacetime reprisals have their roots in medieval times. From the fourteenth to the
eighteenth century the system of reprisal operated as a private right. When individuals suffered
injury abroad from a foreign state and were unable to obtain redress, they would then seek
authority from their sovereign to take reprisal against the foreign sovereign. This concept was
recognized in the United States Constitution, which provides in article 1, section 8, that the
Congress shall have the power to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal.” By the early 1800s
special or private reprisals were increasingly subject to restricted use. By the nineteenth century
only states were permitted to take reprisals. In the Treaty of Paris of 1856 states agreed to
abolishing the right of private reprisal. In the words of Gerhard von Glahn, professor of political
science at the University of Minnesota at Duluth, “Since [1856], reprisals by private individuals
have been illegal and only states may have recourse to this method…. Such action must then be
taken either on behalf of the state itself, if it believes itself to have been injured illegally, or by
the state on behalf of its injured citizens.” 9
Although accepted in classical customary international law, reprisals have been subject to
criticism on the following grounds. First, forcible reprisal is a remedy available only to the
strong over the weak. Second, it allows the injured state to both judge the wrong done against it
and to extract the reparation for that wrong. Third, reprisals connote an eye for an eye, revenge,