Recourse to Force
State Action against Threats and Armed Attacks

The book relates changes in law and practice regarding the UN Charter of 1945 to changing public values.

Thomas M. Franck (Author)

9780521820134, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 October 2002

220 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.504 kg

"This is a book that will inform, captivate, and challenge generations of international lawyers, on several levels and in a variety of ways."
--The American Journal of International Law

The nations that drafted the UN Charter in 1945 clearly were more concerned about peace than about justice. As a result, the Charter prohibits all use of force by states except in the event of an armed attack or when authorised by the Security Council. This arrangement has only very imperfectly withstood the test of time and changing world conditions. In requiring states not to use force in self-defence until after they had become the object of an actual armed attack, the Charter failed to address a growing phenomenon of clandestine subversion and of instantaneous nuclear threats. Fortunately although the Charter is very hard to amend, the drafters did agree that it should be interpreted flexibly by the United Nations' principal political institutions. In this way the norms governing use of force in international affairs have been adapted to meet changing circumstances and new challenges. The book also relates these changes in law and practice to changing public values pertaining to the balance between maintaining peace and promoting justice.

Part I. The United Nations' capacity for adapting to radical changes of circumstance
Part II. Use of force by the United Nations
Part III. The original parameters of self-defence
Part IV. Self-defence against state-sponsored terrorists and infiltrators
Part V. Self-defence against ideological subversion
Part VI. Self-defence against attacks on citizens abroad
Part VII. Anticipatory self-defence
Part VIII. Countermeasures and self-help
Part IX. The 'purely humanitarian' intervention
Part X. What, eat the cabin boy? Uses of force that are illegal but justifiable
Index.

Subject Areas: International law [LB], International relations [JPS], Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3], General & world history [HBG]