This 1993 take on the continued vitality of parts of the UN Charter has been on my Wish List for many years. Upon my finally ordering it, however, I was swiftly disappointed in it. Occasional sweeping statements are just plain wrong; for example, the second half of the twentieth century was not as violent as the first half (as claimed on page 3) just because there were more individual armed conflicts, given that none of them pulled in all the world's major powers. Similarly, the authors claim on page 19 that "Most statesmen (at the Paris Peace Conference) felt that the war was not caused by the aggressive intent of any one state," which makes the punitive aspects of the Treaty of Versailles toward Germany rather confusing. Despite that, it is difficult to refute the argument that Article 2(4) of the UN Charter is indeed obsolete as states, and particularly great powers, today get away with using force for any number of reasons, even (in the case of Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea) territorial aggrandizement.
The authors anticipate three possible futures of the jus ad bellum: the continuation of what they call the "post-charter self-help paradigm;" the acceptance of what they optimistically termed the "pro-democratic" paradigm; or the rehabilitation of Article 2(4) of the Charter. With the benefit of twenty-four years of hindsight it becomes apparent that the first future came to pass. Given the high sticker price and the various inaccuracies I cannot recommend this book to the person reading this review.
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