Analyzing the Legitimacy of the U.S. War in Afghanistan

Abstract

The U.S. war in Afghanistan was one of America’s longest wars, spanning twenty years. Globally, the world united in the face of the 9/11 terrorist attack as the United Nations declared that terror should be fought against everywhere. However, this raises concern on the legitimacy of the use of force against non-state actors like al-Qaeda. This paper explores the War in Afghanistan through the lens of just war theory and under international law, specifically the right to self-defence. It is important to discuss this as the war itself is the landmark case for not just self-defence under international law but also the situation where an attack on a state actor was attributed to a non-state actor that resided in a different state. The analysis is achieved through first exploring and defining the principles of both moral and legal theories before then applying them to the case of the War in Afghanistan to determine its moral and legal legitimacy. After defining the principles and applying them to the case, it was concluded that the due to certain principles failing to be satisfied, the war was both morally and legally illegitimate.