Vandita Khanna in this paper traces the evolution of laws relating to terrorism to
examine the contribution of the United States of America in moulding and effectively transforming international law through its extra-legal hegemonic interventions.
Abstract
The onset of terrorism has drastically impacted the evolution of the doctrine on the prohibition on the use of force in international law. This essay aims at providing a comprehensive survey of these modifications and plausible justifications invoked by States to claim legality of their actions in foreign territories against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The underlying aim of tracing the evolution is to examine the contribution of the United States of America in moulding and effectively transforming international law through its extra-legal hegemonic interventions. Part 1 of this essay reflects on various constructions of the ambiguously worded Security Council Resolution 2249 (2015) to indicate that the UN machinery’s failure to effectively address terror threats has given way to unilateral assessments of risk at the behest of individual States wedged in power politics. Part 2 of the essay addresses shifting interpretations of the use of force and its immediate applicability to the ISIS crisis: Section 1 of this Part explores the possibility of the use of defensive force against non-State actors without requiring attribution of their conduct to territorial States; Section 2 establishes the legality of American-led intervention in Iraq grounded in the principle of ‘intervention by invitation’; and Section 3 examines the viability of the grounds of collective self-defense and anticipatory self-defense that have been invoked by USA for its intervention in Syria. Part 3 of the essay appraises the detrimental implications of according ostensible legality to hegemonic interventions on the fundamentality of Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations and the perpetuation of a xenophobic narrative all-pervading international law.