ABSTRACT
The legal debate about the circumstances under which use of force against Iraq was permissible intensified over the fall of 1990. Professor Abram Chayes emerged as one of the leading proponents of the view that, having brought the Security Council into play, the United States and its allies could not strike at Iraq without an explicit UN authorization, granted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Given the prominence of various forms of coercion, including the use of military force, in the international system, it is not surprising that international law precepts—bearing upon such issues as when and how force can be used—feature a particularly close nexus between legal and moral norms and the imperatives of stateaaft. Even more fundamentally, the implications of the stance that would impose as many constraints on the use of force as possible are extremely disturbing.
