EVOLVING NORMS OF MILITARY INTERVENTION: BETWEEN LEGITIMIZING ACTIONS AND SHAPING STATE BEHAVIOUR

Abstract

This paper analyses the evolution of norms of military intervention in the post-Cold War era from the perspective of international relations theory, wishing to offer a new understanding to the international interactions in which states decide to use military action and the extent to which they use legal, moral or normative arguments to justify and legitimize their intervention. From this perspective, the paper is trying to assess whether norms and principles such as "pre-emptive war","responsibility to protect" and "intervention by invitation" have emerged as a response to the legal inability of the international law system to answer and to solve crisis such as those that have required military intervention in the post-Cold War era, or whether they were shaped by state interests and interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]