What Happens Now? The United Nations After Iraq

Thirty-three years ago I published an article in this Journal entitled Who Killed Article 2 (4)? or: Changing Norms Governing the Use of Force by States, which examined the phenomenon of increasingly frequent resort to unlawful force by Britain, France, India, North Korea, the Soviet Union, and the United States. The essay concluded with this sad observation: The failure of the U.N. Charter's normative system is tantamount to the inability of any rule, such as that set out in Article 2(4), in itself to have much control over the behavior of states. National self-interest, particularly the national self-interest of the super- Powers, has usually won out over treaty obligations. This is particularly characteristic of this age of pragmatic power politics. It is as if international law, always something of a cultural myth, has been demythologized. It seems this is not an age when men act by principles simply because that is what gentlemen ought to do. But living by power alone ... is a nerve-wracking and costly business.