Was the UN general secretary Kofi Annan correct when he described the Iraq war as illegal?
Yes, he was correct and brave to say that. As I describe at some length in Lawless World, the war was illegal because it was not authorised by the UN Security Council, and was not justified as self-defence in the sense envisaged by Articles 2:4 and 51 of the UN Charter. There is a third emerging possible justification for the use of force, but it was not invoked by Britain or the US – the argument of humanitarian intervention, using force to protect fundamental human rights from an immediate and massive threat. Since that was not the situation in Iraq in March 2003, it could not be argued, and it wasn’t argued. So, what remains is the argument put forward by Britain, the US and Australia that the Security Council had authorised the use of force by a combination of Resolutions 678, 687, and 1441. The heart of the argument is that Iraq was subject to a ceasefire after the first Gulf War of February 1991, and that that ceasefire obligation was dependent on Iraq’s compliance with an obliga
