ABSTRACT
The promise of international law to promote and protect human welfare is limited by the means at the disposal of the international community where, normatively speaking, peace is the rule and armed conflict the exception. The consequential but regrettable necessity of a forcible response to real or threatened mass atrocities underscores this fundamental undesirability of violence versus its inevitability. The compromise forged is that force, although inevitable, should be used sparingly and only where necessary: specifically in emergencies and especially to protect civilians from mass atrocities. There are two, on the face of it contradictory, approaches clear in the debate on the role of force or violence in international law. The first relates to the fundamental undesirability of violence generally. The second relates to the inevitability of violence and consequential regrettable necessity of a forcible response in defence. The role of law in this debate is to navigate between these two coasts of undesirability and inevitability on the ship of necessity. This meandering approach is crystallized in the rules relating to the use of force, which try to restrict force only to extreme circumstances. The compromise reached is that force, although inevitable, should only be used sparingly.
