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

educed. In this sense, the law enforcement approach may have an advantage over the law of
armed conflict approach.
Second, the rules of international law differ depending on whether force is employed in a
peacetime crisis or during armed conflict. Use or threatened use of force requires two levels of
decisionmaking: the initial decision to use force and subsequent decisions on the level of force to
be used. Different bodies of international law exist relevant to each decision. The first addresses
the question of whether use per se is legitimate; the second addresses the manner and mode of
use, for example, targets, weapons, and status and treatment of individuals caught up in the
event. To understand what it means in international law to elect a peacetime crisis response
instead of an armed conflict response, a brief look at each is necessary.
Initial Decision to Use or Threaten Use of Force
The international law rules governing the legitimacy of a state’s right to use or threaten
the use of military force abroad are the same whether in a peacetime crisis or in an armed
conflict situation. Those rules, contained chiefly in customary international law and the United
Nations Charter, are discussed in detail in chapters 4-6. However, satisfying the conditions or
requirements of those rules will prove more difficult in a peacetime context. How much easier is
it for a state to assert persuasively, for example, that it is responding in self-defense to an armed
attack if the situation is characterized as an armed conflict rather than a peacetime crisis? The
law recognizes that “a nation, of course, possesses a much broader right to invoke coercive
measures against any opposing belligerent [and that] the right to use force in time of peace is
very limited.” 48
Subsequent Decisions on Conduct of Operations
In international law, the law of armed conflict regulates how force is to be employed
during operations but it does not specify the rules for making the initial decision to use or
threaten the use of force. Many of the rules contained in the law of armed conflict apply in
peacetime—such as the requirements to minimize collateral civilian damage and injury and
target only military objectives, and the obligation to treat all parties humanely. 49 But many of the
rules of the law of armed conflict do not apply when resort to force occurs in a peacetime context
because those rules are triggered only in situations of declaration of war or armed conflict—
situations that the peacetime crisis response is designed to avoid.
The neutrality rules, for example, are inapplicable. These detailed and demanding rules
set the standard of conduct for third-party states not involved in the conflict. They concern
responsibilities toward participants in the conflict including economic relations, such as trade. 50
Also inapplicable are the 1949 Geneva conventions. Common article 2 provides that “the present
Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may
arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not
recognized by one of them” (emphasis added). 51 Since the Geneva conventions do not apply in
peacetime, the provisions of the conventions outlawing terrorist acts and providing for grave