These Articles of the Charter are at the heart of the post-WW2 international settlement designed to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, in the words of the Preamble to the Charter, under which all members of the UN pledge themselves to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force… in any manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations” (Art.2.4). It seems a logical and necessary inference from all this that the use by a state of force outside its own territory (other than force in self-defence as defined by Article 51 of the Charter) must be authorised by the Security Council under the Charter, not only if it is to be legal under international law, but also, equally importantly, if it is to be morally ‘right’, since the use of force without Council authority undermines the rule of law in international affairs, the sanctity of the Charter as its principal instrument, and the ability of all states and peoples to rely on the UN for their security. Thus I would argue that UN authority in accordance with the Charter has become an essential ingredient in the definition of ‘just war’ — and that the effect of Articles 41 and 42 is also to import into that definition the concept of force only as a ‘last resort’, to be used only when the Council itself, not individual governments, agrees that other measures not involving the use of force either would not be, or have not been, adequate to achieve the required result.
Incidentally, this also seems to me to make a nonsense of the assertion, increasingly made by the neocons and New Labour in defence of the illegal (and morally wrong) attacks on Iraq and Yugoslavia (over Kosovo), that a war may be illegal but morally right. That’s dangerous and unacceptable talk — as I have argued elsewhere. [Not sure if that hyperlink will work: if not, try http://tinyurl.com/awovn!
]]>That said, Walzer does appear to be a contemporary authority on (what’s currently understood by) ‘just war’, and he does put a lot of stress on the ‘last resort'; I think my argument’s worth making on those grounds if no other.
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