Authorizing Force: A Review of Turkish, Dutch and French Action
By Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
Thursday, October 16, 2014 at 12:48 PM
As the number of states using military force against ISIS in Syria and Iraq have increased, a series of domestic authorizations have emerged from their national executives and parliaments. The legitimacy of the use of force under domestic and international law retains particular symbolic importance given the perception of legitimacy deficits in controversial cases such as NATO’s 1999 Kosovo campaign and the second Iraq war. Examining the specificity of various domestic authorizations shows a significant (if not unexpected) variety in state practice, and these differences may function to de facto limit the use of force by particular states. The challenge of these differences may be all the more cogent when states operate in a multinational force context where various participants function under different constraints in their operational capacities. The authorizations underscore the necessity of domestic processes to garner the symbolic capital that states need to legitimize the use of force outside their territories.
More:Authorizing Force: A Review of Turkish, Dutch and French Action | Just Security
