Casus belli

Historical examples This section outlines a number of the more famous or controversial cases of casus belli which have occurred in modern times. World War I A political assassination provided the trigger that led to the outbreak of World War I. In June 1914, the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria at Sarajevo in Austria-Hungary by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist from Bosnia, Austrian subject and member of Young Bosnia, was used by Austria-Hungary as a casus belli for declaring war on Serbia. The Russian Empire started to mobilise its troops in defence of its ally Serbia, which resulted in the German Empire declaring war on Russia in support of its ally Austria-Hungary. Very quickly, after the involvement of France, the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire, five of the six great European powers became involved in the first European general war since the Napoleonic Wars. World War II In his autobiography Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler had advocated in the 1920s a policy of lebensraum ("living space") for the German people, which in practical terms meant German territorial expansion into Eastern Europe. In August 1939, in order to implement the first phase of this policy, Germany's Nazi government under Hitler's leadership staged the Gleiwitz incident, which was used as a casus belli for the invasion of Poland the following September. Poland's allies Britain and France honoured their alliance and subsequently declared war on Germany. In 1941, acting once again in accordance with the policy of lebensraum, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, using the casus belli of pre-emptive war to justify the act of aggression. The Soviet Union also employed a manufactured casus belli during World War II. In November 1939, shortly after the outbreak of hostilities between Germany, Britain and France, the Soviet Union staged the shelling of the Russian village of Mainila, which it blamed on the Finns. This manufactured incident was then used as a casus belli for the invasion of Finland. In 1998, Russian President Boris Yeltsin admitted that the invasion had in fact constituted a Soviet war of aggression. Six-Day War A casus belli played a prominent role during the Six-Day War of 1967. The Israeli government had a short list of casus belli, acts that it would consider provocations justifying armed retaliation. The most important was a blockade of the Straits of Tiran leading into Eilat, Israel's only port to the Red Sea, through which Israel received much of its oil. After several border incidents between Israel and Egypt's allies Syria and Jordan, Egypt expelled UNEF peacekeepers from the Sinai Peninsula, established a military presence at Sharm el-Sheikh, and announced a blockade of the straits, prompting Israel to cite its casus belli in opening hostilities against Egypt. Vietnam War Many historians have suggested that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a manufactured pretext for the Vietnam War. North Vietnamese Naval officials have publicly stated that the USS Maddox was never fired on by North Vietnamese naval forces. The movie "The Fog of War" contains an admission from former US Defense Secretary at the time Robert McNamara that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident "never happened". Deniability played favorably into the propaganda efforts of North Vietnam throughout the war, and for some years to follow. However, the PAVN Museum in Hanoi found it irresistible to proudly display "Part of a torpedo boat... which successfully chased away the USS Maddox August, [sic] 2nd 1964". 1982 Israeli Invasion of Lebanon The casus belli cited by Israel for its June 1982 invasion of Lebanon was the attempted assassination of the Israeli Ambassador in London, which the Israeli government blamed on the Palestinian Liberation Organization (although the attempt had actually been made by the PNLM, a Palestinian splinter group implacably opposed to the PLO). In reality however, the invasion had long been planned by the Israelis, who were concerned about the growing power of the PLO in Lebanon. Turkey and Greece Main article: Aegean dispute In 1995, The Turkish Parliament issued a casus belli against Greece in reaction to an enacted extension of Greek territorial waters from 6 nautical miles (11 km) to 12 nautical miles (22 km) from the coast. War on Terror The casus belli for the Bush administration's conceptual War on Terror, which resulted in the 2001 Afghan war and the 2003 Iraq war, was the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia and the apparently intended attack on the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. 2003 Invasion of Iraq When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, it cited non-compliance with the terms of cease-fire for the 1990-1991 Gulf War, as well as planning in 1997 the attempted assassinations of former President George Bush and then-sitting President Bill Clinton as its stated casus belli. Cited by the Bush administration was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program. The administration claimed that Iraq had not conformed with its obligation to disarm under past UN Resolutions, and that Saddam Hussein was actively attempting to acquire a nuclear weapons capability as well as enhance an existing arsenal of chemical and biological weapons. Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed a plenary session of the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003 citing these reasons as justification for military action. Subsequent to the invasion, a US government-sponsored report concluded that although Saddam Hussein had intended to resume WMD production once the Gulf War sanctions were lifted, none of the alleged WMD stockpiles were found during or after the subsequent invasion.