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

valuable tools of self-help and of enforcement of international rights without
substituting a really workable method for achieving the same ends. It remains to
be seen whether states will stand by the prohibition if and when interests or rights
considered to be vital are affected and peaceful methods of settlement or sanction
fail. 89
Fourth and finally, what limitations does article 2(4) place on the use of force generally?
Some scholars take a narrow view believing, as does British international lawyer Sir Humphrey
Waldock, that
Article 2(4) prohibits entirely any threat or use of armed force between
independent States except in individual or collective self-defense under Article 51
or in execution of collective measures under the Charter for maintaining and
restoring peace. Armed reprisals to obtain satisfaction for an injury or armed
intervention as an instrument of national policy otherwise than for self-defense is
illegal under the Charter. 90
Others cannot agree. Oscar Schachter, taking the broader and generally accepted view,
writes, “It is generally assumed that the prohibition [of article 2(4)] was intended to preclude all
use of force except that allowed as self-defense or authorized by the Security Council under
chapter VII of the Charter. Yet the article was not drafted that way. The last twenty-three words
contain qualifications.” 91 The qualifying language of article 2(4) prohibits the use of force only
in three circumstances: if it is employed against the territorial integrity of a state, against the
political independence of a state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the
Charter.
The qualifying language of article 2(4) is important because, to the extent not forbidden
by the Charter, the projection of force abroad is lawful interposition. What does it mean that
force cannot be applied against the territorial integrity of a state? Territorial integrity is not the
same as territorial inviolability. A state may retain its territorial integrity even if its frontiers are
violated. “Loss of territorial integrity implies the loss of effective control over the area, and
possibly a loss of authoritative jurisdiction as well, if a specified area is formally ceded under the
exigencies of hostile military operations.” 92 Thus, a state may take military action against another
state in response to international terrorism, and, indeed, may enter the latter’s territory, and still
not violate its territorial integrity. For example, it has been suggested that the 7 June 1981 Israeli
raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor was not a use of force against either Iraq’s territorial integrity or
its political independence. No portion of Iraq’s territory was taken from Iraq by the
bombardment. “A use of the territory—namely, to construct a nuclear reactor—was interfered
with, but the territory itself remained integral.” 93
Similarly, force directed against the political independence of a state is not force directed
merely at a state. It is force “directed at controlling the Government and other institutional bodies
of a State, either by setting up a particular form of government with defined ideological
propensities or by forcing existing institutions to act in the interests of a foreign power.” 94 Force
directed at international terrorists or their state sponsors and supporters with a limited purpose
other than altering the institutions or political independence of a state would not be prohibited by