ABSTRACT
Perhaps the only service that George W. Bush performed for the international community was raising the profile of international law. The Iraq War of 2003 ensured that international law was forced out of the seminar room and the library and onto the streets. Demonstrators and political activists demanded law not war. The assumption that the war was contrary to international law was shared by some specialists who regarded military action against Iraq without the explicit approval of the United Nations Security Council as an outrageous breach of well-established principles of international law (Sands 2005; Bowring 2008). This chapter will reflect on these assumptions. It will begin by interrogating the principle of the nonuse of force and suggest that its effect on states is more limited than popularly believed. It continues by arguing that the long reach of colonialism has bequeathed doctrinal ambiguities on the use of force, occupation and regime change, the key issues at stake over Iraq. It concludes by recalling the debates over the Indian occupation and annexation of Goa four decades earlier, where the same doctrines were invoked but where war was seen as a means to enforce law.
