Description
This paper surveys the political, moral, and legal aspects of the concept of aggression and its implications for the Global South. It argues that the European powers employed a natural-law-based universal ideal differently among themselves establishing a pluralist international society for themselves but used that same ideal to impose an unjust extra-European order upon non-Europeans. The paper argues that while the post-WWI criminalization of aggression under the new rules of collective-security enabled the victorious European imperialists to punish the alleged aggressors, these rules also allowed them to keep colonies, thus legitimizing their own colonial aggression against non-Europeans and their readmission into the global order on less favourable terms. It analyses the victorious Western powers’ resistance to a legally-binding definition of aggression and insistence on merely a moral obligation to jointly defend states against aggression, allowing them to continue to play realpolitik rendering ineffective legalist efforts to counter aggression. It especially examines post-WWII US-led Western powers’ employment of universal morality to justify aggressive wars and even more so in the post-Cold War era to continue their imperial practices in new forms. It analyzes why the ICC, despite resolving the definitional problem of aggression and activating its jurisdiction over this crime, may potentially become a UNSC’s tool to counter aggression.
