Book Review - Jus Paciarii: Emergent Legal Paradigms for Peace Operations in the 21st Century

• Author: Colonel James P. Terry
• Pages: 06

160 MILITARY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 163

JUS PACIARII:

EMERGENT LEGAL PARADIGMS FOR PEACE OPERATIONS IN THE 21ST CENTURY1

REVIEWED BY COLONEL JAMES P. TERRY2

The recent conflict in the former Yugoslavia provides an important vehicle for Gary Sharp as he explores the emergence of three international law paradigms critical to successful future humanitarian and peacekeeping operations. The author, an international law scholar and retired senior Marine Corps judge advocate whose previous books include the highly regarded United Nations Peace Operations (1995) and CyberSpace and the Use of Force (1999), carefully presents legal arguments and rationale that support paradigms to afford peacekeepers greater legal protection, to impose an obligation on all states to search for and arrest war criminals, and to grant the United Nations (UN), states, and peacekeepers a greater range of legal authority to use armed force for humanitarian intervention.

As his mode of proving these paradigms, Sharp, in Parts I and II, reviews existing international law protections for all military forces, details the evolution of UN peace operations, and examines the decade of state practice that has most changed the international community's attitude toward its peacekeepers. These parts conclude that military forces serving under a UN Charter, Chapter VII mandate (authorizing the use of necessary means) should enjoy absolute immunity from any receiving state authority against which the Security Counsel has directed coercive action. The draft protocol advocated by the author and included within this part, if accepted by the community of nations, would protect all personnel who serve under the authority of the United Nations, and make them unlawful targets under all circumstances.

In Part III of the text, Sharp examines the history of a state's obligation to search for and arrest suspected war criminals, details the obligations of states to search for and arrest persons suspected of war crimes in Bosnia

and Kosovo, and concludes that customary international law imposes an obligation on all states to search for and arrest persons suspected of grave breaches in all territories where they have been authorized by international law to exercise jurisdiction.

Part IV of the text is by far the most important, in the view of this reviewer. For the first time, a scholarly examination is undertaken of the right of nations to intervene for humanitarian reasons where they have neither their...