Thomas M. Franck – författare

The American public has become increasingly disenchanted with the United Nations. Some responsible sources in this country are already advocating withdrawal from U.N. agencies and perhaps even from the entire system.This book, by the former Director of Research at UNITAR, the U.N.'s "think tank," examines the record of the U.N. during its first 40 years in the clear light of American national interest. Franck offers a balance sheet which confirmsthat the U.N. during its first 40 years in the clear light of American national interest. Franck offers a balance sheet which confirms that the U.N. often operates in a way that undermines respect forindividual human rights and hampers conflict resolution. At the same time, he does not shrink from showing that the fault frequently lies with the United States itself. He shows how the U.S. helped form the U.N. with unrealistic views of what it could do, how for a decade or more the U.S. was able to use the U.N. essentially as a tool and adjunct to its foreign policy, and how Washington failed to predict and plan for the inevitable shift in power at the U.N. led by the newly emergent ThirdWorld nations. Franck warns of the American penchant for treating international relations as a series of unrelated encounters instead of an ongoing, institutionalized system in which the tactics andoutcome of one crisis inevitably affect the way the next context is played out.Taday the U.S. and its allies are often the butt of antagonisms that the U.N. system seems to encourage and exaggerate. Nevertheless Franck shows that even now the U.S. position in the U.N. is far from hopeless, and he provides a blueprint for a strategy of "playing hard ball," which is far more realistic than abandoning the world organization.

QB: LEAVE THIS COPY AS IT ISIn this work, Thomas Franck, an authority on international law, considers why it is that rules within the international system are for the most part obeyed, even though they are not usually enforced. Much of his discussion is theoretical, based on discussions of laws that do not involve coercion, but Franck also makes use of many practical examples to show how international law works successfully even without formal codes or laws.

This book is based on Professor Franck's highly acclaimed Hague Academy General Course. In it he offers a compelling view of the future of international legal reasoning and legal theory. The author offers a critical analysis of the prescriptive norms and institutions of modern international law and argues that international law has the capacity to advance, in practice, the abstract social values shared by the community of states and persons. This book is both thought-provoking and original and as such is essential reading for students of international law and legal theory.

The nations that drafted the UN Charter in 1945 clearly were more concerned about peace than about justice. As a result, the Charter prohibits all use of force by states except in the event of an armed attack or when authorised by the Security Council. This arrangement has only very imperfectly withstood the test of time and changing world conditions. In requiring states not to use force in self-defence until after they had become the object of an actual armed attack, the Charter failed to address a growing phenomenon of clandestine subversion and of instantaneous nuclear threats. Fortunately although the Charter is very hard to amend, the drafters did agree that it should be interpreted flexibly by the United Nations' principal political institutions. In this way the norms governing use of force in international affairs have been adapted to meet changing circumstances and new challenges. The book also relates these changes in law and practice to changing public values pertaining to the balance between maintaining peace and promoting justice.