From intent to content

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the noun ‘threat’ is related to ‘throng’ (a crowd) and appears to go back to the sense ‘to press’. This eventually came to mean a ‘declaration of hostile determination or of loss, pain, punishment, or damage to be inflicted in retribution for or conditionally upon some course; a menace. Also fig. an indication of impending evil’. The French Charter uses the word menace, which, according to the dictionary, denotes: ‘A declaration or indication of hostile intention, or of a probable evil or catastrophe; a threat.’ Thus it seems that the ordinary meaning of the expression ‘threat of force’ is not very helpful to identify the real-life implications of article 2(4) of the UN Charter. It merely suggests that a hostile intent must be communicated in some form, and that this communication must contain a reference to the use of force.

The preceding chapter described how the historical origins of article 2(4), too, have left wide margins of interpretation as to the exact parameters of illicit action.