ABSTRACT
The Falklands War confirms two major failures of the contemporary international legal order. First, the crisis illustrates that the method of conflict management envisioned by the founders of the United Nations—a modified form of collective security–does not work; it fails both to deter and to repress aggression. Second, and inextricably linked to the first point, the Falklands War demonstrates that the mechanisms of peaceful change, so vital to the success of even a limited collective security framework, lack legitimacy. It is premised on the assumption that the unilateral use of force by a state is never an appropriate means to alter the status quo. Even in the face of a past “injustice” a state cannot use force to augment its territory, alter a boundary, or coerce some other change from another state. Similarly, the Falklands crisis revealed yet another problem of the international legal order—the illegitimacy of mechanisms of peaceful change.
