THE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL MECHANISM FOR LEGITIMIZING THE INTERVENTION OF THE USA AND OTHER NATO COUNTRIES IN LIBYA IN 2011

Introduction. In the context of increasing competitiveness of states in the process of asserting their international legal positions, it seems important to identify the mechanism of international legal legitimation used by the Americans for their armed invasions in the 21st century, in particular on the example of the intervention of the United States and other NATO countries in Libya in 2011. Such research work is necessary to transform Russia’s international legal support for the special military operation in the Ukraine (SMO) into a full-fledged international legal policy of the Russian Federation, aimed at cancelling the UN General Assembly qualification of the SMO as “aggression” and at achieving changes in the currently dominant pro-Western international legal consciousness.
Materials and methods. The theoretical and empirical basis of the study is formed by international legal documents (primarily of the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, the Human Rights Council, regional intergovernmental organizations, practice of the International Court of Justice), normative legal acts and non-normative documents of the USA, documents of various nongovernmental organizations, foreign and domestic international legal literature, mass media materials. On the basis of integrative approach to scientific legal research in this paper were applied, in particular, hermeneutic, formal-legal, formal-logical, structuralfunctional and systematic methods, as well as methods of analysis and synthesis, legal construction, legal and graphic modelling.
Research results. The author identified proposed by the U. S. international legal evaluations of the facts and the international legal arguments used by the U. S. in favor of the legitimacy of the armed invasion of Libya, putting forward her own interpretation of them as elements of the mechanism of international legal legitimation of the U. S. military actions abroad, as well as presenting her own systematization of these elements in the form of structural-functional schemes combined with chronological and target features, visualized on the graphical model.
Discussion and conclusion. A thorough study of the international legal mechanism elaborated by the Americans to legitimize their military actions abroad can help us recognize its elements in a timely manner, predict Washington’s further potential international legal maneuvers and develop effective ways of responding to them. The U. S. experience in devising and applying various techniques of international legal argumentation to legitimize its international legal position should be taken into account when establishing Russia’s international legal policy on the use of force abroad, including when improving the international legal support for Russia’s SMO in the Ukraine.

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