CYIL Vol. 5, 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”… 17 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 18 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. 19 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.” 20 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”. 21 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 17 Stone, J., supra note 1, p. 209. 18 Ibid ., pp. 209-217, 37. 19 UNCIO Vol. 8, pp. 341-9, 354, 481, 490; Brownlie, I., supra note 1, p. 354.

20 UNCIO 1945, Vol. 6, p. 334. 21 UNCIO 1945, Vol. 12, p. 505.

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