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Abuse of Terms: “Recognition”: “War”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2017

Thomas Baty*
Affiliation:
Institut de Droit International

Extract

It is a sophistry to which human nature commonly resorts, when one wants to perform an act and at the same time to avoid its necessary consequences, to give it a fresh name. Thus, if people wish to live in concubinage and yet to be received in decent society, they call it “companionate marriage,” and if statesmen wish to rule and exploit a country without conferring on its inhabitants the grand privileges of citizenship, they call the annexation “protection”; whilst if they desire to impose tariffs on trade, and at the same time to avoid the connotation of scarcity and dearness, they avoid the awkward word “protection,” and style the process “safeguarding.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1936

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References

1 In Revue Générale de Droit International Public, 1935, p. 1.

2 Revue Générale de Droit International Public, 1935, p. 1. “La Reconnaissance de I’Etat et le Mandchoukouo.”

3 25 March 1818 (5 Brit. State Papers, 802).

4 It may be noted that there is no legal obstacle to the recognition of the Manchurian Empire by States members of the League of Nations. The resolution of the Assembly of March 11, 1932 (this JOurnal, Supplement, Vol. 27, 1933, p. 132), though couched in the form of a statement of intention, cannot be more than a recommendation, which is all that the Assembly was empowered to frame. For the settlement of disputes, the Council, wanting the support of one of the disputants, must be otherwise unanimous (and an Assembly nearly so), and can then only make recommendations. It may call them resolutions, and raise a popular impression that they are obligatory: but it cannot make them so. Their only force is that the League members agree not to go to war with a party which complies with them. Statements to the effect that Japan has “flouted” the League or broken its Covenant are therefore entirely unwarranted. , Japan simply declined to act upon its recommendations, which, according to its constitution, a member is perfectly entitled to do.

5 Acts of so-called “self-preservation” do not come within this animadversion. For they are not performed against the will of the invaded State, but (as in the case of the Caroline) to execute its presumed will in cases where the sudden occurrence of a vital danger makes it impossible to ascertain its actual will.

6 The Right to Protect Citizens in Foreign Countries by Landing Forces. Memo, of Solicitor for Dept, of State, Oct. 5,1912. (2d rev. ed.), U. S. Govt. Printing Office, 1929.

7 There was another case, in 1864–65: see British State Papers, Vol. 66, pp. 1204, 1208, 1240, 1246, 1228, 1232, 1247.

8 Even in these cases of unorganized communities, Queen Victoria wrote in 1867: “The Queen is glad to see that the barbarous (she cannot qualify it otherwise) suggestion ... to burn the village of Malacca and to destroy its cocoa-nut trees, in revenge for the massacre of a ship’s company, has been disapproved... . H.M. feels very strongly on this subject.” Letters of Queen Victoria (10 Aug. 1867).

9 Nominally Chinese; but the local governor disclaimed all power and responsibility: see “Is East Formosa Chinese?”

10 It is said that the President (Fillmore) had strictly forbidden Perry to resort to violence.

11 In this case Truxillo was already in the hands of foreign invaders (Nicaraguans).

12 In 1812 the attack was on a hostile British force; a subsequent attack (1816?) is said to have been made with the consent of the territorial Power.

13 The events of 1811 were disavowed by the United States.

14 And Mr. Fish, Secretary of State, politely wrote that in the circumstances “it is hoped the Mexican Government will not disapprove the act.”

15 To be distinguished from those above referred to (1812 and 1816).

16 As when the last United Republican Government fell in China.

17 As a matter of fact it began in a revolution (For. Rel. U. S., 1904, p. 261, Alfau to Powell, 2 Dec., 1903) and it was not recognized by the Minister of the United States until 20 January, 1904, possibly as a consequence of the fall of Puerto Plata. (Ibid., p. 266, Powell to Hay, 25 Jan., 1904). But it may be that the events alluded to in the text were subsequent to this “Recognition.” Quaere, Can an envoy “recognize”?

18 Compare the writer’s “Can an Anarchy be a State?”, this JOurnal, Vol. 29 (1934), p. 444.

19 Counting as two incidents, the British interfering at Greytown and the Americans at Bluefields.

20 The grammar of the proclamation put out by the gallant Admiral who had the misfortune to be employed, is quaint: “Whereas the Nicaraguan Government having unlawfully seized .. . and has either confined or expelled them . . . ”! The Admiral also “constituted” one of his captains “Governor of the port.” The whole affair was sheer impudence, from Rosebery’s share downwards.

21 Harcourt to Kimberley (17 and 18 April, 1893); see Gardiner, Life of Sir W. V. Har-court, II, 331.

22 In cases where it is objected to (as on the occasion of the landing of American forces at Kingston in Jamaica on the occasion of a violent earthquake), even such small forces have been at once withdrawn.

23 See infra, as to the probability that there was no single supreme government in San Domingo.

24 But, as has been seen, the “government” was a “provisional government” only. There is no evidence that it ever had exercised control over all of San Domingo, i.e., that it was any more than a faction. If that is what it was, then San Domingo was in a state of anarchy, and foreigners were entitled to protect their own interests by their own force.

25 The Right to Protect Citizens in Foreign Countries by Landing Forces. Memorandum of the Solicitor for the Department of State, Oct. 5, 1912. (2nd rev. ed.), U. S. Govt. Printing Office, 1929.

26 “Danger-Signals in International Law,” Yale Law Journal, Vol. XXXIV, p. 458 Google Scholar seg.

27 See Seignobos, Hist. Politique de VEurope Contemporaine, p. 611. “Le sultan avait renoncé (en 1829) à y entretenir des fortresses et des giarnisons.” The reference is apparently to the Treaty of Adrianople.

28 [British] Parliamentary Papers, 1860: Nouveau Recueil Général, XVI, 2 p., 638, 640. Protocols of 3 Aug. 1860, apud Holland, European Concert in the Eastern Question, 207.

29 Indeed, it is to a repercussion of the old idea that Turkish territory is an abnormal region, that we probably owe the Allied attacks in the recent war on what had by that time become part of Greece.

30 It was a notable feature of the debates of the Institut de Droit International at Paris in 1934 on “Armed Reprisals” that the word “Corfu” was never pronounced.

31 Corinto has already been dealt with among the American cases.

32 It is said to have been justified by treaty.

33 In a Report as Secretary-General, circulated by order of the Council of the League of Nations.

34 Op. cit., p. 527 (translated)

35 This Journal, Vol. 27 (1933), p. 115.

36 Wildman, International Law, II, 5. Cf., Lord Stowell in The Nayade, 4 C. Robins, p. 51.

37 International Law, 6th ed., § 118, p. 189.

38 Droit International de l’Europe, § 110.

39 Das Modeme Völkerrecht, § 500.

40 This was resorted to by Sweden in the late war, when the Allies, in contravention of law, examined postal correspondence for contraband. Sweden then stopped the transit of the parcel post across her territory,—an effective measure.

41 See his elaborate article in Rev. Gén. de Droit Int. Public (1910).

42 Le Droit International, § 1811.

43 Rev. Gén. de Droit Int. Public (1924), “Les représailles entre Etats Membres de la Société des Nations.”

44 “The Canons of International Law,” pp. 95 seq., 102, et passim.

45 Letters of Queen Victoria (1862 to 1898), I, 146 (8 Jan. 1864).

46 Force exerted in concert with, or in support of, the rebels or enemies, will of course be a wrong, and may amount to war.

47 Some cases of this kind would be justified by the principle of self-preservation; but in the face of an actual prohibition by the territorial sovereign, and also in cases of any but the gravest damage, that principle could not come into play, for it turns on vital necessities.

48 Even in countries where a revolution is the equivalent of a “general election” as a mode of changing governments, it is incorrect to assume that rebels are clothed in any measure with the national character.