Beyond Preemption: Force and Legitimacy in a Changing World

Chapter One: Beyond Preemption: An Overview

chapter one Beyond Preemption: An Overview Ivo H. Daalder The issues of force and legitimacy—of when to use military force, for what purpose, and who should decide—became highly contentious internationally as a result of three developments : the Kosovo campaign of 1999, the terrorist attacks of September 2001, and the Iraq war of 2003. Each of these events raised difficult questions about the continued applicability of the international framework governing the use of force. That framework, enshrined in the United Nations Charter signed at the end of the Second World War, was designed with one principal purpose in mind: to avoid another interstate conflict as devastating and destructive as the one that had just ended. Accordingly, the UN Charter proscribed “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” (Article 2[4]). It recognized only two exceptions to this prohibition: “the inherent right of individual and collective right of self-defense if an armed attack occurs” (Article 51), and any use of force authorized by the UN Security Council in order “to maintain or restore international peace and security” (Article 42). The Kosovo campaign, in which nineteen NATO countries launched a seventy-eight-day air war to halt Serbian efforts to oust the Albanian population of Kosovo from the country, met neither exception to the prohibition of the use of force. It was not an instance of self-defense, since the 1 people being defended were citizens of the very state that was being attacked. Furthermore, the NATO action was not directly authorized by the Security Council, since at least one permanent member (Russia) had made clear that it would veto any resolution authorizing the use of force in this instance. The terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon of September 2001 raised to prominence the threat posed by nonstate actors and the issue of how to respond to such an attack. The Iraq war raised the question of whether explicit Security Council authorization was necessary to enforce its resolutions and, importantly, who decides whether this is necessary or not. To address these questions and seek answers that might gain agreement from a wide range of actors around the world, the Brookings Institution in 2003 launched a major project on “Force and Legitimacy in the Evolving International System.” The project consisted of a series of workshops with officials, scholars, and legal and military experts from Europe, Russia , China, Latin America, South Asia, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa. The workshops and a final international conference engaged in wide-ranging discussions of whether and when force might be used and how its use could best be legitimized. This volume builds on these discussions and proposes ways in which a renewed international consensus on these crucial issues might be forged. The workshop and conference discussions during these three years, which are examined in greater detail by Anne Kramer in the final chapter of this volume, proved to be rich and rewarding, sometimes surprising, and always stimulating. In each session participants examined the appropriateness of using force in dealing with weapons of mass destruction, terrorism , and humanitarian crises, as well as ways (institutional and otherwise ) such uses of force could best be legitimized. What follows are some of the project’s key findings. First, there was widespread agreement that force—even when used preemptively —can be an appropriate response to the terrorist threat. Of course, defining what constitutes such a threat is not easy, as discussions of this issue at the United Nations have long underscored. Agreement to deal aggressively with terrorism was particularly strong in Russia, where discussions were held just weeks after the terrorist attack on the elementary school in Beslan that killed more than 300 people. Discussions with South Asians revealed an interesting paradox: while the use of force to IVO H. DAALDER 2 confront a terrorist threat (whether preventive, preemptive, or retaliatory) now enjoys widespread legitimacy, its efficacy is increasingly in doubt. Second, Europeans and Africans, along with Americans, believed that using force to prevent or end widespread humanitarian abuses was appropriate and, when undertaken early enough, likely to be effective. There was strong support for the notion that states have a responsibility to protect their citizens and that their failure to do so puts the onus on the international community to step in and protect these people accordingly. There was no such support for humanitarian...