Les interventions militaires récentes en territoire étranger : vers une remise en cause du jus contra bellum ?

Since the turn of the millennium, a narrative on the obsolescence of the UN Charter regime on the prohibition of the use of force and the concomitant necessity to reform the system in order to better apprehend the modern challenges has taken root in scholarship. Lately, the existential threat posed by events in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Mali, Gaza or in Ukraine on the contemporary system of collective security has been emphasized. This article aims to analyse the discourses advanced by States in these different precedents in an effort to nuance these doctrinal criticisms and fears. From a legal point of view we will in fact demonstrate that the argumentation deployed by the intervening States remained fairly classical as it was generally based on self-defence, the authorization of the Security Council or the consent of the State where the operations took place. While extensive interpretations of these legal grounds have sometimes been defended, these do not seem to have mustered the support of the international community of States as a whole. More fundamentally, the pertinence of the articles of the Charter has never frontally been questioned. In this perspective, it may be considered that the recent practice of intervention has confirmed rather than weakened the jus contra bellum.