ABSTRACT
The US-led war in Iraq in spring 2003 was a clear reminder that the use of force is still very much a part of life in international relations. What made it disturbing for many was not so much the use of force, nor in particular its use against a 'rogue' regime, but the use of force without authorisation by the United Nations (UN) or another international institution. However, this relapse to 'unilateralist' practices should not divert our attention from the fact that the use of force under the auspices of international institutions has dramatically increased since the end of the Cold War, both in terms of frequency and in scope. Moreover, given 'post-Iraq' developments in other parts of the world, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, one may speculate that this trend will continue in spite of the counterfactual argument, which the war in Iraq appears to posit. This trend is first of all reflected by the substantial increase in the use of military forces authorised by the UN since the late 1980s. Two-thirds of these instances, ranging from monitoring missions to peace enforcement operations, took place in the period after 1990. The trend of using force under the auspices of international institutions has been further accentuated by the fact that regional organisations, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union (EU), have begun to authorize the use of force outside their own territory. NATO's 1999 Kosovo intervention, its 2001 Operation Essential Harvest in Macedonia and the 2003 EU operations in Macedonia and the Congo are good cases in point. The causes of these developments are certainly manifold but, in a general way, they may be viewed as resulting from the internationalisation of security affairs in the broader context of globalisation and regionalisation. 1
