Peace Treaties in the Shadow of Force
The Validity of Agreements Concluded Under Coercion in Modern International Law
Abstract
The study examines to what extent armistice agreements and peace treaties that terminate armed conflicts can be regarded as valid when they are inevitably concluded in a context of force and coercion. Its starting point is that, in most inter-state armed conflicts, the UN Security Council neither determines the existence of aggression, nor authorizes the use of force, nor takes part in the conclusion of peace – yet in practice the parties have not invoked the invalidity of peace treaties on the ground of force or coercion. The article presents the relevant rules of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (in particular the provisions on treaties concluded by the threat or use of force and on ius cogens), and then, drawing on concrete case studies – including peace settlements in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America – analyses how practice “neutralizes” coercion. It highlights the legitimizing role of mediators, witnesses and guarantor states, the importance of temporal distance (armistice versus later peace treaty), and the doctrinal argument that the conclusion of a peace treaty – the restoration of peace and security – is a primary value in the international legal order, which in practice pushes the logic of invalidity due to coercion into the background.
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