Incomplete World Order: United Nations Security Council Resolution 2249 (2015) and The Use of Force in International Law

This article poses the question of whether the UNSC Resolution 2249 (2015) expands the scope of exceptions to the general prohibition of the use of force in the context of the global war on terror. Despite the language of the Resolution pointing to the ‘unprecedented’ threat of global terrorism, the essential rules of self-defence remain consistent with the UN Charter framework. Rather than demonstrating an emergence of a new global order, the current language on the use of force in international law has stepped away from the humanitarian arguments for military intervention and responsibility to protect (R2P). The impetus towards individual and collective self-defence demonstrates a different strategy in the context of the global war on terror. Hence, it is not only the rhetoric of war as such that has shifted, but fragments thereof, depending on the strategic alignment of a variety of interests and priorities of the moment (for example, against whom the war is waged, who are the actors supported/protected, etc.). This article argues that arguments in the fields of international relations or international law that conceive of international uses of force as 'exceptional' in a Schmittian sense, are misplaced in so far as they cover over the more chronic power-politics of states and strategic utilization of international law.