Casus Belli
As casus belli (of Latin casus belli , the event of war '[from casus , case', here in the sense of incident , incident and bellum , war ']; plural casus belli with long u) is called an action that (in a mostly already tense situation) immediately triggers a war . The Casus Belli does not describe the number of circumstances that lead to a war, but mostly only the last, triggering factor. If the Casus Belli is to be understood as an act of aggression in the sense of international law , this creates the right to wage a war in self-defense . This results in the problem of having to check the existence of an attack situation in each case, which is generally the task of the UN Security Council .
history
Since an attack on an aggressor is still considered justified under international law in certain Casus Belli , it happened again and again that Casus Belli were deliberately provoked by the actual aggressor, for example in the 19th century with the Arrow incident as a pretext for the Second Opium War Great Britain against China or the Maine incident in the port of Havana as a pretext for the USA to annex Cuba and the Philippines in the war against Spain. As the case of the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq shows, the abuse of a casus belli is still quite common in world politics today.
Historically, the distinction between the actual reason for a war (e.g. a state's expansionist drive) and the casus belli publicly cited as a reason for war can be traced back to the Greek historian Thucydides in the Peloponnesian War. Thus, Rome's campaign of destruction against Carthage in the 3rd Punic War was evidently justified by Rome's desire for unrestricted rule in the Mediterranean and not by Carthage’s activities against Roman allies, which were justified as an occasion for war.
Up until the 19th century, however, Augustine and Scholism, with its definition of just war ( bellum iustum ), which goes back to Roman law and sacred law, had a major effect on the occidental doctrine of Casus Belli in Protestant states as well . This meant, for example, that the Spanish colonial power also subsequently obtained legal protection that it had waged a just war against legitimate native rulers in America and thus legally acquired territories. Formal declarations of war and their justification thus became an indispensable part of the right to war in European states up to the 20th century, except in wars with overseas states that are not regarded as equal and against rebellious colonial peoples.
Fictitious Casus Belli therefore usually serve not only to justify warlike aggression (to prevent sanctions and interference by other states), but also to subsequently legitimize the resulting consequences of the war, i.e. the annexation or other domination of previously foreign territory. This is particularly important today under international law, as the UN Charter prohibits wars of aggression .
In times of mass armies and the responsibility of governments towards their people and the sacrifices required by them, the existence of a fictitious casus belli is also of great importance domestically. For example, the Tonkin incident in the Vietnam War with the alleged shelling of American warships by North Vietnam served domestically more to prepare the American public for the mass recruitment and the massively rising war costs than to justify the territorial expansion of the war zone to the international public.
Often, a reason that cannot be clearly verified by an independent party is cited as a casus belli (for example, with reference to secret service results that are not completely available) and attempts are nevertheless made to convince the UN Security Council and the international public of the stated reason for war. It is largely undisputed that the refusal of the Taliban government of Afghanistan to extradite or at least prosecute the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 attacks was a legitimate reason for the US to war against Afghanistan. By contrast, they were fictitious
- claimed Iraq's uranium purchases in Niger as well
- the allegation and evidence that Iraq has portable biological weapons of mass destruction laboratories (US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented alleged incriminating material to the UN Security Council ; shortly afterwards - in March 2003 - the US launched the Iraq war ).
A start of war with fictitious Casus Belli is usually preceded by aggressive propaganda based on domestic and foreign policy. Often it can even be read clearly in the writings of certain interest groups long before the acts of war that a war is inevitable and actually does not depend on the specific behavior of the state defamed as an enemy or rogue state.
Examples of Casus Belli
- The violation of the formal peace treaty with the Roman Empire by an attack by Carthage on Numidia resulted in 149 BC. For the Third Punic War .
- The Thirty Years' War began with the second lintel in Prague in 1618 .
- The shelling of Fort Sumter by the Confederate States of America sparked the Civil War from 1861 to 1865.
- The dispute over the administration of Schleswig and Holstein after the end of the German-Danish War triggered the German war between Prussia and Austria in 1866 .
- France's reaction to the Emser dispatch led to the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 .
- The assassination attempt in Sarajevo , in which the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary , Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were murdered on June 28, 1914 , was the cause of the July crisis and led to the First World War .
- In order to justify the attack on Poland , on August 31, 1939 , the German Reich faked the attack on the Gleiwitz transmitter in addition to some "border incidents " .
- The so-called " Mainila incident " of November 26, 1939, when Finnish artillery, according to Soviet information, had set fire to a border patrol, served the Soviet Union as a casus belli for the winter war .
- The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 is seen as a trigger for the United States' entry into World War II.
- Mao Zedong spoke of a casus belli during the Korean War as soon as US troops crossed the 38th parallel. A so-called People's Volunteer Army was sent to Korea by Mao in 1950 after US troops ignored the warnings.
- The Casus Belli for the United States' open entry into the Vietnam War was the Tonkin incident of August 1964, which gave the Johnson administration the opportunity to persuade the US Congress to decide to openly intervene and thus legitimize it.
- The blocking of the Strait of Tiran by Egypt in 1967 led to the Six Day War with Israel .
Web links
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ JM Stowasser, M. Petschenig, F. Skutsch (eds.): Stowasser. Latin-German school dictionary. Oldenbourg Schulbuchverlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-13405-1 , p. 562.
- ↑ Casus Belli on duden.de