Introduction

This chapter considers the opportunities and limitations for the use of military force for humanitarian reasons under the UN Charter. In so doing, it employs what has come to be known as the “declaratory tradition” of international law and international ethics, a much underutilized tradition for analyzing hard choices in the global arena. The declaratory approach stands in contrast to the classical tradition of international law, which places states squarely at the center of the international order and decision-making. Although states do play a key role in the declaratory tradition, non-state actors are important as well. In fact, one might characterize the declaratory tradition as “the product of non-state aspirations to improve the substance of international order” (Simpson 2004). Although the roots of this tradition run deep, its contemporary practice emerged primarily after World War II when “in conference after conference and in numerous treaties, conventions, declarations, and the like, the states have, through their official representatives, set down principles to guide their own behavior and to provide standards by which that behavior can be judged” (Nardin and Mapel 1992).

According to Dorothy Jones, a pre-eminent scholar on the declaratory tradition, the endeavor to develop normative ethics to guide state behavior “has created a body of reflections and rules that is closer to moral philosophy than it is to positive law” (Jackson 2000, 183). Therefore, the declaratory tradition concerns itself not only with what international actors “shall” do (acknowledgments of actually existing practices warranting immediate recognition), but also with what they “ought” to do (declarations of intent regarding desired future conduct).