CYIL 2014

JOSEF MRÁZEK

CYIL 5 ȍ2014Ȏ

notions of “aggression” and “aggressive war” were certainly much discussed during

the LN period. About seventy regional or bilateral security, non-aggression treaties

of the twenties and thirties of the last century pursuant to J. Stone rang the expected

verbal changes on the notions of aggression, and its related notions”…

About half

of these treaties did not use the notion of “aggression” and referred merely to “attack”

or invasion” or “use of force”. The rest of the treaties used the term of aggression

concept without any clarifying definition. In six treaties, there was an enumeration

of aggressive acts, mostly based on the Soviet formula as adapted by the 1933

Committee on Security, and in another four cases there was a brief general definition

of aggression. The work of the LN was influenced by the Soviet proposals submitted

to the general Commission of Disarmament Conference of 1932-1933. Definitions

of aggression were contained in several treaties, e.g. in the Treaty between Finland

and the Soviet Union of 21 January 1932, in the Pact of Non-Aggression between

Poland and the Soviet Union of 25 July 1932, or in the Treaty of Non-Aggression

between Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Turkey of 8 July 1937, and other treaties

3. The UN Charter and Attempts to Define Aggression

3.1 San Francisco 1945 Conference and the Following Proposals to Define

Aggression

At the San Francisco conference the participants refused to define aggression and

rejected including in the UN Charter a list of acts of aggression enabling the United

Nations Security Council (UNSC) to act immediately on this basis. This proposal for

inclusion was made by Bolivia and the Philippines.

A US delegate to the 1945 San

Francisco conference proclaimed that the intention of the authors of the original text

was to state in the broadest terms “an absolute all-inclusive prohibition of the use of

force with no loop holes.”

The members of the UN Special Committee maintained

that modern warfare “renders very difficult the definition of all cases of aggression”

and decided ,,to leave to the Security Council the entire decision as to what constitutes

a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or and act of aggression”.

Despite earlier

efforts to outlaw “war of aggression” or “aggression”, the authors of the UN Charter

thus avoided this term in Art. 2 (4) of the UN Charter due to lack of a definition and

disparate opinions on the subject. The UN Charter Art. 1 mentions “the suppression

of acts of aggression” (

réprime tout acté d’agression

) and Art. 39 speaks about “act of

aggression” (

acte d’agression

At the San Francisco conference the US government opposed the elaboration of

a definition of aggression and its inclusion in the UNCharter. The reasons were finally

summarized by President H. Truman in his annual report to Congress in 1950. The

Stone, J.,

supra

note 1, p. 209.

Ibid

., pp. 209-217, 37.

UNCIO Vol. 8, pp. 341-9, 354, 481, 490; Brownlie, I.,

supra

note 1, p. 354.

UNCIO 1945, Vol. 6, p. 334.

UNCIO 1945, Vol. 12, p. 505.