ABSTRACT
While the way in which the concept of aggression was incorporated con troversially into the Rome Statute means it continues today as a live issue in an international criminal law context, the record of UN organs in the post Charter period demonstrates how far short it has fallen of playing a central role in maintaining international peace and security. Despite the Soviet Union insisting during Charter negotiations that express powers be conferred on the Security Council in relation to aggression, it has never acted as a trigger for peace enforcement in the UN system. At most, the notion of aggression has been used by the Security Council and General Assembly as a form of moral censure against certain states, in particular those resorting to interna tional armed force. However, not all states falling into this category were branded aggressors; in the Cold War period only those not protected by one of the superpowers, or those whose acts were especially outrageous, attracted this label. Yet even condemnation by the Security Council as an aggressor was not sufficient to overcome Cold War divisions and thereby provoke peace enforcement action. Even more interestingly, the General Assembly – formally free of the veto stranglehold the P5 powers exercise in the Secu rity Council, as well as being a more representative body – also refrained from describing major international crises as aggression, though other international uses of armed force did attract this criticism from the General Assembly. Since the end of the Cold War, with collective peace enforcement action under UN auspices more likely than ever before, references to aggression in the resolutions of both the Security Council and General Assembly have fallen out of favour. Just how unpopular the concept of aggression now is in an inter national peace and security context is confirmed by recent jurisprudence from the International Court of Justice. When specifically asked to rule on the ques tion of aggression in a particular case, the world’s court – and arguably the least political body of the three discussed in this chapter – sidestepped the matter, a dodge criticised publicly and vehemently by two of the judges presiding over the case. From this, the ongoing potency of political factors – especially the influence of the great powers – even in UN organs ostensibly less tied to realpolitik is apparent.
