A great part of global justice must concern itself with the use of force, especially the aggressive use of force. In the quest for global justice and international governance, one strategy is to impose legal constraints on the use of force by outlawing acts and wars of aggression. Unfortunately, a workable definition of “aggression” for this purpose in international law has proven problematic.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was no globally accepted norm prohibiting the resort to war. As the century progressed, there began a process of limiting the conditions under which States could legitimately resort to warfare. Thus, the 1907 Hague Convention (II) completely prohibited resort to war to enforce recovery of contract debts, while Hague Convention (III) required that States give explicit warning before commencing armed hostilities. The Versailles Treaty (1919) recognized the obligation of States to refrain from resort to war, and to pursue open, just, and honorable...
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References
Documents
Charter of the United Nations. http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/index.shtml. Accessed Aug 2010
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 17 Sept 2002
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 16 March 2006
UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 (Definition of Aggression). http://www.undemocracy.com/A-RES-3314(XXIX)/. Accessed Aug 2010
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Scheid, D.E. (2011). Aggression. In: Chatterjee, D.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Justice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_733
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