scholarly journals Terrorism, The use of Force and International Law After 11 September

2002 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 401-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Byers

The United States response to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 was encouraging for those who worry about a tendency towards unilateralism on the part of the single super-power. The US deliberately engaged a number of international organisations and built an extensive coalition of supporting States before engaging in military action.

Author(s):  
Muhammad Imran ◽  
Rohaida Nordin ◽  
Mohd Munzil Muhamad

This paper contributes significantly through suggestions to overcome the problem created by the disastrous US drone strikes in Pakistan. This paper evaluates incidences of the United States’ combat drone strikes in Pakistan and the damage caused to innocent people. It seeks to determine possible violations of international laws and the extent to which these strikes diminish the sovereignty of Pakistan. After the incident of 9/11, the use of combat drones in armed conflicts among states, non-state actors, disruptive groups and organisations has increased and expanded. Combat drones are controlled by operators who depend for their primary sources of information on cameras and sensors to determine their targets. Drone strikes lack identification processes causing many innocent people to be killed or injured. Drone strikes launched in non-conflict areas also increase the concerns about illegitimate interference in a state’s territorial sovereignty and violations of international laws. It covers the following questions. What are the basic principles about the use of force? What kinds of damages are caused by US drone strikes in Pakistan that violate basic human rights principles? What are the concerns of international organisations about drone strikes in Pakistan? Summarily, it covers the United States unlawful drone strikes in Pakistan and damages caused to humanity. The paper uses doctrinal qualitative analysis to situate the research within the ethical, legal and social parameters of the related statutes of international law. The research methodology adopted is evaluative, interpretive and analytical. The paper consists of 8 segments: (1) drones and the United States armed forces, (2) some basic international law principles about the use of force, (3) possible human rights violations, (4) US drone strikes diminish the sovereignty of Pakistan, (5) demands for transparency, (6) the damages caused to humanity by the drone strikes, (7) concerns of international organisations about illegitimate drone strikes causing extra judicial killings and (8) some recommendations to regulate the use of combat drones. It demonstrates that international law does not regulate the use of combat drones in armed conflict and no considerable effort has been made to bring the use of combat drones under the rule of law. Furthermore, US drone strikes in Pakistan’s territory have been done without consensus, resulting in the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and the killing of innocent people.


Author(s):  
Hajjami Nabil

This chapter examines the legality of the 1983 American-led intervention in Grenada. It recalls the positions of the main protagonists of the crisis, including international organisations such as the United Nations, the Caribbean Community and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. It then analyses the justifications of the American administration, which are mainly based on three different grounds: the protection of citizens abroad; the activation of regional mechanisms and the intervention by invitation. The conclusion assesses the precedential value of the Operation Urgent Fury. Regarding its wide condemnation, the chapter argues that reactions to the American-led intervention in Grenada can finally be deemed as a strong reaffirmation of the prohibition of the use of force in international law.


Author(s):  
Anna Igorevna Filimonova

After the collapse of the USSR, fundamentally new phenomena appeared on the world arena, which became a watershed separating the bipolar order from the monopolar order associated with the establishment of the US global hegemony. Such phenomena were the events that are most often called «revolutions» in connection with the scale of the changes being made — «velvet revolutions» in the former Eastern Bloc, as well as revolutions of a different type, which ended in a change in the current regimes with such serious consequences that we are also talking about revolutionary transformations. These are technologies of «color revolutions» that allow organizing artificial and seemingly spontaneous mass protests leading to the removal of the legitimate government operating in the country and, in fact, to the seizure of power by a pro-American forces that ensure the Westernization of the country and the implementation of "neoliberal modernization", which essentially means the opening of national markets and the provision of natural resources for the undivided use of the Western factor (TNC and TNB). «Color revolutions» are inseparable from the strategic documents of the United States, in which, from the end of the 20th century, even before the collapse of the USSR, two main tendencies were clearly traced: the expansion of the right to unilateral use of force up to a preemptive strike, which is inextricably linked with the ideological justification of «missionary» American foreign policy, and the right to «assess» the internal state of affairs in countries and change it to a «democratic format», that is, «democratization». «Color revolutions», although they are not directly mentioned in strategic documents, but, being a «technical package of actions», straightforwardly follow from the right, assigned to itself by Washington, to unilateral use of force, which is gradually expanding from exclusively military actions to a comprehensive impact on an opponent country, i.e. essentially a hybrid war. Thus, the «color revolutions» clearly fit into the strategic concept of Washington on the use of force across the entire spectrum (conventional and unconventional war) under the pretext of «democratization». The article examines the period of registration and expansion of the US right to use force (which, according to the current international law, is a crime without a statute of limitations) in the time interval from the end of the twentieth century until 2014, filling semantic content about the need for «democratic transformations» of other states, with which the United States approached the key point of the events of the «Arab spring» and «color revolutions» in the post-Soviet space, the last and most ambitious of which was the «Euromaidan» in Ukraine in 2014. The article presents the material for the preparation of lectures and seminars in the framework of the training fields «International Relations» and «Political Science».


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Baker Benjamin

At the heart of contemporary international law lies a paradox: the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001 have justified 16 years of international war, yet the official international community, embodied principally in the United Nations, has failed to question or even scrutinise the US government's account of those attacks. Despite the emergence of an impressive and serious body of literature that impugns the official account and even suggests that 9/11 may have been a classic (if unprecedentedly monstrous) false-flag attack, international statesmen, following the lead of scholars, have been reluctant to wade into what appears to be a very real controversy. African nations are no strangers to the concept of the false flag tactic, and to its use historically in the pursuit of illegitimate geopolitical aims and interests. This article draws on recent African history in this regard, as well as on deeper twentieth-century European and American history, to lay a foundation for entertaining the possibility of 9/11-as-false-flag. This article then argues that the United Nations should seek to fulfil its core and incontrovertible ‘jury’ function of determining the existence of inter-state aggression in order to exercise a long-overdue oversight of the official 9/11 narrative.


Tempting Fate ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 40-62
Author(s):  
Paul C. Avey

This chapter provides a background for Iraqi behavior during the period of American nuclear monopoly beginning in 1979 when Saddam Hussein was officially Iraqi president, focusing most heavily on events in 1989–1991. In an intense political dispute, Iraqi leadership took actions they believed would fall below the threshold of nuclear use. Most of the limitations that Iraq exhibited were due to its own weakness; it could do little more. For Iraq as a weak actor, war with the United States was possible precisely because it would pose such a low danger to the United States. Even then, Iraqi leadership incorporated the US nuclear arsenal into their decision making in 1990–1991. That confrontation is the most important to examine because it involved Iraqi military action that Iraqi leaders believed would invite some form of US response, and US compellent demands did not center on Iraqi regime change. In 1990, Saddam and his lieutenants held their own unconventional weapons in reserve and discounted an American nuclear strike because of the high strategic costs that such a strike would impose on the United States. They also undertook various civil defense measures to minimize losses from nuclear strikes. Fortunately, the Americans had little intention of using nuclear weapons and did not face a need to resort to nuclear use.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 108 ◽  
pp. 141-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ellen O’Connell

Tom Ruys’s article in the latest issue of the American Journal of International Law is an erudite study of the prohibition on the use of force in UN Charter Article 2(4). Ruys makes many points with which I wholeheartedly agree. In note 241, he says that the case for cross-border drone attacks by the United States “verges on stretching criteria for necessity, proportionality, and armed attack to the point of absurdity . . . .” He is also right to reject emerging claims that the defense of necessity provides a basis for the lawful resort to force. Indeed, there is much that is truly excellent about the article—just not, unfortunately, its central thesis.


Significance These have caused the United States to begin the process of shuttering its Baghdad embassy -- while signalling that it could reverse the process if the government moves more aggressively against pro-Iran groups within the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) that are blamed for the strikes. Impacts Groups will step up attacks designed to lever the US-led coalition out of Iraq, while seeking to mask their identity. The United States will have greater latitude for military action to weaken Tehran in November or December, if it closes the embassy. Japanese, Saudi, Emirati and some European embassies relying on US evacuation and warning services might also be forced out. Washington might opt instead to downsize the embassy, which cannot operate normally due to COVID-19 and security threats. Even if the US embassy closed, some coalition military sites and the US consulate in the Kurdistan region would remain open.


2007 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 318-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Sinclair ◽  
Michael Byers

The term ‘sovereignty’ figures prominently in international affairs and academic analysis. But does ‘sovereignty’ mean the same thing in different countries and political cultures? In this article, we examine conceptions of sovereignty as they appear in the writings of US scholars of international law and those international relations scholars who deal with international law, in order to obtain a clearer picture of what ‘sovereignty’ means in American academic discourse. At first glance, the US literature is dominated by two distinct conceptions of sovereignty: (1) a statist conception that privileges the territorial integrity and political independence of governments regardless of their democratic or undemocratic character; (2) a popular conception that privileges the rights of peoples rather than governments, especially when widespread human rights violations are committed by a totalitarian regime. On closer examination, what seem to be two conceptions are in fact different manifestations of a single, uniquely American conception of sovereignty which elevates the United States above other countries and protects it against outside influences while concurrently maximising its ability to intervene overseas.


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