Jus ad Bellum and International Terrorism

The central domain in international law is legal regulation of use of force. This chapter commences with an overview of how the attitude of international law towards the use of military force has reached the current stage. There is no consensus on how to deal with new global threats such as civil wars, humanitarian emergencies, international terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including into the hands of terrorists. The chapter concentrates on one of the two jus ad bellum paradigms of military responses to terrorist acts - the self-defence paradigm - leaving more or less aside the collective security paradigm. Terrorist attacks have some characteristics which traditional armed attacks, as a rule, do not have. The chapter discusses three such characteristics. Another specific feature of military responses to terrorist attacks arises from the link between terrorist organisations and States in the territory, or from the territory, they operate. Keywords:international law; international terrorism; jus ad bellum ; self-defence paradigm; terrorist organisations; use of force