You will notice that since the Iraq War, it has been common place to insert the word “illegal” as an adjective to describe any war that is opposed. As it happens, I am waiting for a court ruling to determine that war to have been unlawful (which is probably the better term as “illegal” links to criminality more closely than to breach of covenants and agreements, contracts in domestic law, treaties in international law).
We have been told frequently over the past week that the Iran war is illegal. Now maybe it does put the US in breach of international law. However, it is important to remember that the case has to be established
This means that it isn’t illegal just because you are against all war. You may consider any conflict a moral evil but that doesn’t make it illegal even if there is a legitimate case for saying it should be
Secondly, it isn’t illegal just because the US, Donald Trump, Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu are involved. Again, you may consider them morally reprehensible, have legitimate grievances about their past actions and hate their ideology.
Thirdly, it isn’t illegal just because of the amount of force used. Note that this may be judged disproportionate but it is not necessarily so just because of its extent. Proportionality may be determined on the basis of what is necessary.
To determine if the war has been unlawful, we need to determine three things.
- Were there legitimate grounds for war?
- Are the countries concerned competent and authorised to take action. In other words, if not explicitly authorised by the UN, then they need to have not given up the right to carry out military action for those reasons to the UN.
- They do need to demonstrate that they have used legitimate means. So it does need to be proportionate.
You will realise that these kinds of questions don’t tend to get asked in these kinds of situations and there you have the problem with international law.
Faithroots 