Re. "legal" invasions -- curious about your feelings re. Normandy, Anzio, Inchon or Sinai in 67.
My response was too limited -- thanks for calling me on it. I should have said that invasions outside of a declared war or a response to an attack on one's soverign territory are illegal.
Normandy and Anzio, we were in a declared war, and invasion is perfectly legal and appropriate and indeed necessary if you're to win a war. Inchon, I don't know the situation. Sinai, if I recall corectly Egypt had attacked Israel, and the invasion was a retaliation. Again, in war invasion is perfectly legal.
Still leaves plenty of times that we have invaded countries illegally.
Kosovo, for example, is one. That was purely a civil war and there was no attack on the U.S. or on any Nato country. I have made clear elsewhere my belief that the NATO actions openly violated both the UN Charter and NATO treaty, and from my reading most objective (i.e. not paid by the U.S. government) international law scholars agree with that interpretation.
If we invade East Timor to impose a "peacekeeping" force, it will also be in violation of international law. E. Timor is still part of Indonesia, despite the vote -- it has not established a government or been recognized as an independent country by any major nation or by the U.N. as far as I know. |
