The Problem of the Prohibition of Wars of Aggression in the History of International Law

The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was marked by the emergence of individual international acts that established certain restrictions on one of the traditional rights of states – the right to war. The need for their comprehensive study is obvious, since it was these acts that created a kind of foundation for the development of interstate cooperation in the direction of developing such legal norms that would serve as a reliable barrier against the outbreak of wars of conquest in the future. In this context, of primary importance is the 1919 Covenant of the League of Nations, whose articles, among other things, set out procedural requirements, the fulfilment of which was a necessary condition preceding the resort to armed force. The subject of the study is also the Paris Pact of 1928, which for the first time at the universal level states recorded a provision prohibiting the unleashing of aggressive wars. At the same time, the legal and grammatical interpretation of the provisions of this treaty source allowed the author to conclude that, in reality, the established prohibition was not absolute in nature, since not all situations related to the resort of states to armed force in their international relations can be classified as war. This state of affairs, where states had a real opportunity to circumvent the treaty-established prohibition, became an important prerequisite for continuing work to agree on an international definition of aggression. Other international acts that played a certain role in establishing a general prohibition of the use of force in international relations also became the subject of analysis in this paper.