The US, Iraq and the use of force in a unipolar world

Abstract

In Operation Desert Fox, and during the aerial bombardment of Iraq that has followed, the United States and the United Kingdom argued that they were acting to enforce the 'will' of the UN Security Council, that they were responding to a 'material breach' of the cease-fire that ended the 1991 Gulf War, and also that they were pre-empting Iraq's future potential use of weapons of mass destruction. Neither of the first two arguments stands up to legal scrutiny, while the third suggests a doctrine of preventive war that carries with it extremely dangerous implications for international relations. Rather than strengthening the existing structures of international order, the armed action against Iraq has undermined them, and has unacceptably tainted the development of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention in general international law.