International Law and the Use of Force by States

The US and Cuba, 1895–98

“…175 Brownlie regards it as an 'intervention in terms of American interests'. 176 Franck and Rodley dismiss it with the following comment: 'if the suppression of "barbarities, bloodshed, and misery" were the sole yardstick for U.S. intervention in the Latin America of that period, Washington would have been extremely busy ousting regimes, some of which it was rather active in establishing and upholding'. 177 Fonteyne, who refers approvingly to a number of humanitarian interventions in the nineteenth century, does not regard it as humanitarian.…”

Evolving norms of protection: China, Libya and the problem of intervention in armed conflict

“…The use of force to rescue one's nationals abroad was generally accepted prior to the adoption of the UN Charter (Brownlie 1963). Article 2(4) of the Charter, however, prohibits the use of force internationally, with the exceptions of action authorised by the SC to maintain or restore international peace and security (art.…”

Intervention pursuant to article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act of the African Union without United Nations Security Council authorisation

“…59 As Brownlie stated, '[t]he Kellogg-Briand norm prohibiting war making had by 1939 become so well established as "to justify the assertion that a customary rule had developed"'. 60 Therefore, it may be accepted that only article 2(4) is a jus cogens norm and not article 53. No legal document has recognised the question of authorisation by the Security Council as a peremptory norm of general international law.…”