Publication - 27 May, 2003
The doctrine of ‘preventive war´ announced and practised by the United States, the attack on Iraq by the United States supported by a number of countries described as the ‘coalition of the willing´, and unilateral actions taken with respect to a number of international conventions such as the NPT, the ABM Treaty, the CTBT and the Kyoto Protocol have given rise to concern about the current state of international law and in particular whether the prohibitions against the use of force on which the United Nations Charter is founded are still respected by Member States and whether multilateralism and the rule of law is to be superseded by unilateralism and a return to reliance on the use of military and economic force instead of law and diplomacy. This paper outlines the recent development of the prohibition of the use of force and proscriptions in the UN Charter, the legal position with respect to Iraq and developments following the attack on Iraq. It would be beneficial to ascertain the position of States which are described as being members of the ‘coalition of the willing´ in order to fully describe the current position of States with respect to the doctrine of ‘preventive war´.