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The True Meaning of Force—A Reply to Mary Ellen O’Connell

Part of: The True Meaning of Force

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Tom Ruys
Tom Ruys*
Affiliation:
University of Ghent
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In her comment on my piece in the latest issue of the American Journal of International Law (The Meaning of “Force” and the Boundaries of the Jus ad Bellum: Are “Minimal” Uses of Force Excluded from UN Charter Article 2(4)? ), Mary Ellen O’Connell expresses strong objections to the piece’s central thesis, notably that small-scale or “targeted” forcible acts are not as such excluded from the scope of the prohibition on the use of force in UN Charter Article 2(4). What is more, she sees the central thesis and narrative of the piece as a mere veil, behind which hides the true aim of the article, notably to set forth an extensive reading of the right of self-defense—which was allegedly also the point of my book on armed attack of 2010. In other words, an argument pleading for a broad interpretation of the prohibition on the use of force is in reality used as a Trojan horse, to lure the unsuspecting reader into accepting a broader right of states to use force, doing considerable damage to the Charter regime on the use of force.

Type
Symposium: The True Meaning of Force
Information
AJIL Unbound , Volume 108 , 2014 , pp. 148 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 2014

References

1 O’Connell, Mary Ellen, The True Meaning of Force, 108 AJIL Unbound 141 (2014)Google Scholar.

2 Ruys, Tom, The Meaning of “Force” and the Boundaries of the Jus Ad Bellum: Are “Minimal Uses of Force Excluded From UN Charter Article 2(4)? , 108 AJIL 159 (2014)Google Scholar.

3 Tom Ruys, ‘Armed Attack’ and Article 51 of the UN Charter: Evolutions in Customary Law and Practice (2013).

4 Olivier Corten, The Law Against War 51 (2010).

5 SC Res. 573 (Oct. 4, 1985).

6 Nils Melzer, Targeted Killing in International Law 51 (2008).

7 2 Report on the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia (2009).

8 Id. at 251.

9 Id. at 249.

10 Corten, Olivier, Review of Tom Ruys, ‘Armed Attack’ and Article 51 of the UN Charter: Evolutions in Customary Law and Practice (2013)Google Scholar.

11 See Ruys, supra note 3, at 545–50.

12 Id. at 550.