The Impact On The Law Of Inter-State Force Posed By Drones Attacks

Drones attacks have continuously challenged the core concepts of the law of inter-state force and also led to the fierce controversy of these norms in the international community. The key question that is triggered under the international law is that a country can use force against non-state actors within the territory of other countries. This article suggests that the core of the debate is how to explain the right to self-defense in terms of consent, the right to self-defense and the Security Council authorization which are three methods for the legitimate use of force. But from the interpretation methods of the treaty text, the relationship between the Charter of the United Nations and the international customary law, the relationship between self-defense rights and the collective security system, still cannot make appropriate and sufficient judgement on how to explain the right of self-defense, cannot understand and solve the real challenge against international norms posed by the drones operations, cannot predict evolution direction and degree to which international law will change.The dispute in the interpretation of self defense right is the embodiment of the change of international norms in constructivism, therefore the paper employing the existing theories of constructivism relating to the international norms put forward a new explanation analysis framework of international norms change which contains environmental stimulation, agents, norms under the guidance of the analytical eclecticism approach. Due to the particularity of the United States and the United States UAV operations as a case Under this framework, the article concludes that the traditional concept of self-defense which was embedded in the collective security system, as a whole, is not ineffective, new self-defense specification advocated by the United States has not been accepted yet by the international community, but the original idea of self-defense established in United Nation Charter was impeded and lost its original stability because of the fierce argumentation. And some idea of self-defence named after preventive self-defense which stands in the middle ground becomes more "stronger" in the controversy. This is mainly because if the UN security council as the core of the collective security system does not play an effective role in the face of new threats like international terrorism, the possibility and necessity of resorting to force by countries around the world, including the United States, can never be eliminated, power of breaking through the traditional self-defense is forever, which is decided by the United Nations system.In the face of such a predicament, on the one hand, international community need to continue to adhere to the general principles of prohibition on all use of force and reform the Security Council, the inclusion of international terrorism in the collective security system, improve the effectiveness of the collective security system on responding to threats; On the other hand when the collective security system cannot function effectively and countries are in very exceptional circumstances (including the face of the imminence of transnational terrorism threat), international community should allow the state to exercise the preventive self-defense, at the same time, in order to avoid force abuse in the name of the preventive self-defense, international community as soon as possible needs to formulate preventive self-defense procedural and substantive content.