The recent American bombing of the Syrian state raises a series of problems at the international level that determine how this attack is illicit. Indeed, the use of force has been rigidly regulated by the United Nations Charter in art. 2, paragraph 4.
This rule prohibits any act of war between states that may harm the sovereignty of individual countries and requires the international community to resort to peaceful means for the solution of disputes. The rationale of the law was to avoid the emergence of new conflicts given the disastrous effects that the Second World War brought to light. Like any rule, this principle also provides for exceptions such as legitimate defense and repressive measures as authorized by the Security Council.
Some have postulated that Syria has launched a chemical attack, an attack that would be illicit for international law as early as the first conventions of the law of war: example are the St. Petersburg Treaty of 1868 and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and of the 1907 with reference to the prohibition of the use of instruments that entail damages and superfluous consequences. In any case, we can see a custom on the ban on the use of chemical weapons, a use confirmed by the fact that states generally avoid resorting to such means (except for episodes in the Gulf War and the Korean War). The United Nations has expressed itself in rejecting these methods. The State that therefore violates this precept would impose sanctions at the UN level.
The point would therefore be, in the Syrian case, to prove that there was a real chemical attack. But the elements that emerged from the first moments go in the diametrically opposite sense and some have spoken of a disinformation war. What is certain is that experts have shown how a true bacteriological or chemical attack would have activated security protocols that were not followed, as seen in photographs taken last Tuesday. Protocols that, if not activated, would have allowed the spreading of bacteria with a much more significant number of victims.
In the absence of any evidence on the effectiveness of a chemical attack and in the absence of a ruling on the matter by the United Nations, Trump has decided for a massive attack on a Syrian air base within which, according to information sources of the American agencies , there would be chemical weapons.
The points that emerge in the interest of international law are two: the retaliation , proportionality.
The American president said that this military action was carried out because of the bombings ordered by Assad at the beginning of the week, a clear one retaliation therefore. The problem is that humanitarian law involves self-protection only by the state and the US line is a clear interference in Syria's internal politics: we recall that the doctrine of the use of pre-emptive force before a threat of acts of terrorism or use of weapons of destruction of clubs is not shared by the UN General Assembly.
The countermeasure of the retaliation it is therefore a form of self-defense of the State that here appears to be incorrectly invoked by Trump and in any case it should have been adhered to three important limits: proportionality of the countermeasure, L 'impossibility of non-reaction by violating international law and respect for humanitarian principles. These three limits all appear to be violated: first, the use of well-known 59 missiles tomahawk it seems very excessive and go beyond a countermeasure. The other two principles also appear to be questioned because of course they could have followed less damaging ways, firstly, however, after having obtained certainty about the effective use of chemical weapons.
An attack that, therefore, as it appears to us, stands in open contrast with the norms of international law, an action that is perhaps too rash, as if Putin decided to bomb Iraq.
(photo: US Navy)
