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

emained so once the operations were under way. How long the forces stayed, their size and
composition, and the actions they took while present in the territory of the foreign state raised the
question “whether the interventions, though originally justified by necessity, became tainted with
illegality through subsequent interference in the affairs of the territorial state. ‘‘ 61
The action must be a protective and not a punitive action. This condition flows, in part,
from the preceding condition. The objective is to safeguard one’s nationals and not to punish
those in authority or the citizenry of the territorial state. In part this condition is a recognition that
protecting one’s nationals is a form of self-defense. It is not a punitive form of reprisal.
Another significance of this condition is: If the damage or injury has already occurred,
then this approach is no longer available as an option. It will, of course, be open to judgment as
to whether other nationals are in jeopardy and, therefore, the threat continues to exist. The issue
is whether it can be said that there is an act yet to be prevented. As Prof Tom J. Farer, Rutgers
University Law School at Camden, has concluded, “If the damage has been consummated, time
is no longer of the essence and there must be recourse to modes of redress other than unilateral
coercion.” 62
Humanitarian Intervention
A pre-Charter definition described humanitarian intervention as “reliance upon force for
the justifiable purpose of protecting the inhabitants of another state from treatment that is so
arbitrary and persistently abusive as to exceed the limits of that authority within which the
sovereign is presumed to act with justice and reason.” 63 The post-Charter definition remains
much the same except for an emphasis on human rights. Humanitarian intervention is undertaken
“in order to remedy mass and flagrant violations of the basic human rights of foreign nationals
by their [own] governments.” 64
Jurists such as Grotius, Vattel, Wheaton, Heilberg, Woolsey, Bluntschli, Westlake,
Stowell, Lawrence, and Borchard claim that customary international law recognizes the doctrine
of legal intervention in situations where a state denies its people fundamental human rights in a
way that shocks the conscience of mankind. 65 But pre-1945 state practice does not offer strong
support for this view. Examples of humanitarian intervention during this period include several
interventions in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire by the Concert of Europe in behalf of
Christians; the 1827 efforts of Great Britain, France, and Russia to end Turkish massacres in
Greece resulting in Greek independence in 1830; the 1866-68 demands by Austria, France, Italy,
Prussia, and Russia for better treatment of Christians in Crete; the 1877-78 Russian intervention
in Turkey to end persecutions in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria; and the 1903-08
interventions by Austria, Russia, Great Britain, Italy, and France in Turkey for misrule in
Macedonia. Other historical examples include the 1830 blockade of Antwerp by European
powers in support of the Belgics against the kingdom of the Netherlands; French intervention in
Syria in 1840 and 1861; and US intervention in Cuba in 1898, where, according to President
William McKinley, the action was taken “in the cause of humanity and to put an end to
barbarities, bloodshed, starvation, and horrible miseries.” In other instances the United States has
sent strong notes alluding to the doctrine of humanitarian intervention without initiating an