Legal Bases for the Use of Force Against International Terrorism: The U.S. Paradigm of Humanitarian Self-Defense

摘要

This thesis examines the international legal bases to combat international terrorism. Traditional concepts of international law are unsuited to the modern terrorist threat. The application of traditional international law concepts to the 1998 U.S. missile strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan leads to a conclusion that the strikes were an illegitimate extension of customary principles. In addition, multilateral terrorism agreements have been largely ineffective to combat terrorist acts. The United Nations Security Council is ill equipped to deal with the modem terrorist threat as well. This thesis concludes that customary international law has evolved from a sovereignty approach, or peace-based application of the U.N. Charter, to a justice-based approach. This justice-based approach has as its foundation the protection of fundamental human rights, originating in the Charter and developing through the practice of nations and evolution of international law. This evolution of customary international law, toward the protection of human rights as a fundamental principle of legal construction, validates the U.S. paradigm of humanitarian self-defense first articulated after the raid on Entebbe in 1976. The legal analysis thereby shifts from immediacy and concerns of sovereignty, to justness and the lack of manipulation of motive for intervention.