International Dispute Settlement During the Cold War
Forthcoming in Matthew Craven, Sundhya Pahuja & Garry Simpson (eds.), The Cambridge History of International Law, Volume 11: Global International Law during the Cold War (CUP 2022)
Amsterdam Law School Research Paper No. 2022-18
Amsterdam Center for International Law No. 2022-10
33 Pages Posted: 13 Jul 2022
Date Written: July 12, 2022
Abstract
The present chapter recounts five decades of dispute settlement and reappreciates that past against an overbearing sense of liberal triumphalism. It shows the great productivity of overlapping East/West and North/South rivalries for the law and practice of international dispute settlement. Three different roles of international law stand out. First, in the decade after the Second World War, international dispute settlement was mostly marked by liberal internationalism under US dominance. That changed, second, when international law facilitated co-existence and co-operation under conditions of mutual mistrust. Third, the law and practice of dispute settlement developed in Southern struggles for emancipation amidst great power scrambles for influence. History does not teach unequivocal lessons. But the present reappreciation of the practice of international dispute settlement during the Cold War not only reveals significant developments that have outlasted the Cold War. It also contains insights for the contemporary international legal order as it crosses ideological divides and for continuous emancipation in a world of great power hegemony.
Keywords: International Dispute Settlement, Cold War, Co-Existence, International Court of Justice (ICJ), United Nations (UN), Peacekeeping, Arms Treaties, Global South, Decolonization
JEL Classification: K33
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation