ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with reflection on what has befallen the law, and at resolution of the question of whether law and power can once again be brought into a relationship in which there is a perspective for justice. It comprises a tragedy in three acts – Iraq (starting in 1991), Serbia (starting in 1999) and Afghanistan (starting in 2001) – author's starting point is 1986, when an act of vengeance and a chilling prophecy could encourage the delusion that history is simply a vicious circle. The chapter adopts a resolutely positivist, black-letter approach. It argues that the law of self-defence is very much more tightly circumscribed. Since 1945 it has been an unambiguous principle of international law that the United Nations has, with one strictly limited exception, a monopoly of the use of force in international relations. International law has certainly been dragged through the mire. Consummation followed by seduction and then rejection is a squalid and pitiful sequence.
