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16 - Interventions Seeking Regime Change, Protection of People or Punishment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2023

Hans Blix
Affiliation:
International Atomic Energy Agency
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Summary

Many interventions have been undertaken since WWII for familiar reasons such as regime change. They have almost invariably been judged as breaches of the UN Charter prohibition of the interstate use of force and the claimed justifications of self-defence and protection of nationals have been rejected. Examples are the cases of the US interventions in the Dominican Republic (1965), Grenada and Panama (1989) and the Russian interventions in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014 and 2022-). Even Viet Nam’s intervention in Kampuchea (1978) removing the blood-stained Pol Pot regime was judged critically by the UN General Assembly. In 1999, Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a speech that even though the principle of non-interference should not be jettisoned too readily, he queried whether it should not be qualified through ‘a new framework’ to permit action to remove ‘evil’ dictators like Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic. However, the massive bombings of Kosovo in 1999 undertaken without Security Council approval and claimed to have been for humanitarian reasons have remained controversial and have not been seen as a legal precedent.

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Chapter
Information
A Farewell to Wars
The Growing Restraints on the Interstate Use of Force
, pp. 240 - 255
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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