Treaty-Based Intervention: Who Can Say No? David Wippmant
Treaty-Based Intervention: Who Can Say No? David Wippmant INTRODUCTION Can a state by treaty lawfully authorize forcible external intervention in its internal affairs? Although scholars have debat- ed this question for many years,' it is likely to take on renewed importance in the near future. The end of the Cold War has ac- celerated the post-1945 shift away from interstate aggression and toward intrastate strife as the predominant form of armed con- ffict.2 As a result, the world will likely see an increasing number of fractured states that can survive as states only with the active assistance and-at times-the intervention of outside states and international organizations. We can expect to see more states like Bosnia, whose only hope for survival is the implementation of an intercommunal settlement that is internationally brokered, and perhaps internationally imposed and guaranteed.' Treaties au- thorizing external enforcement of internal settlements have al- t Associate Professor, Cornell Law School. The author wishes to thank Professors Kathryn Abrams, Gregory Alexander, John Barcel6, III, Lea Brilmayer, Lori Damrosch, Cynthia Farina, Sheri Johnson, Paul Kahn, Jonathan Macey, Steven Ratner, Steven Shifflin, John Siliciano, Jane Stromseth, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Fernando Tes6n, Ms. Jill Gaulding, and the participants in Professor Brilmayer's International Jurisprudence Colloquium for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this Article. 1 As Professor Winfield observed in 1924, legal theorists have long "bluntly asserted, and as categorically denied, that intervention is justifiable if based upon treaty-right." P.H. Winfield, The Grounds of Intervention in International Law, 5 Brit YB Intl L 149, 155 (1924).
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