The Use of Force and Collective Security

In one line

Force is prohibited by article 2(4) with two exceptions in the Charter, self-defence against an armed attack under article 51 and action authorised by the Security Council under Chapter VII, and the Council's machinery of standing forces under article 43 was never created.

The prohibition: article 2(4)

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

Four elements, each doing work.

Refrain from the threat or use. A threat of force is prohibited on the same terms as its use.

In their international relations. The article does not reach a State's use of force within its own territory against its own population; that is governed by human rights and humanitarian law.

Force. Read as armed force, on the strength of the Preamble's reference to armed force, of Chapter VII, and of the rejection at San Francisco of a proposal to extend the article to economic coercion. Economic and political pressure is dealt with by the principle of non-intervention rather than by article 2(4).

Against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes. Attempts have been made to read the qualifying words as narrowing the prohibition, so that force which leaves territory and independence intact escapes it. The closing words defeat that reading: force inconsistent with the Purposes is prohibited whatever its aim, and the Purposes in article 1 include the settlement of disputes by peaceful means.

Article 2(4) is generally accepted as customary law and as a peremptory norm, so it binds non-Members and cannot be contracted out of, as [Validity of Treaties, and Jus Cogens] explains.

Non-intervention. Distinct from article 2(4) and wider. In the Corfu Channel Case the British minesweeping operation in Albanian waters after the explosions was defended as an application of the theory of intervention, the intervening State acting to facilitate the task of an international tribunal, and alternatively as self-protection or self-help. The Court could not accept those lines of defence. It could only regard the alleged right of intervention as the manifestation of a policy of force which cannot find a place in international law, and it rejected self-help too, since between independent States respect for territorial sovereignty is an essential foundation for international relations. Intervention was refused there even though the intervening State claimed only to be securing evidence for a tribunal.

The exceptions

Only two are in the Charter. Self-defence under article 51, and action by or authorised by the Security Council under Chapter VII. Everything else offered as an exception, humanitarian intervention, protection of nationals abroad, forcible reprisal, is contested and none has been accepted as a general rule.