Illegal military aid fuelling Syria crisis, shows West’s hypocrisy

On June 26, 1945, in San Francisco, US, the independent nations of the world adopted the United Nations (UN) Charter, motivated by the desire stated in its preamble, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war that twice in our own lifetime has brought untold sorrow upon mankind.” To this end, Article 1 of the UN Charter sets out its core function as maintenance of international peace and security.

Adopted in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the UN Charter had a clear objective: to eliminate war. Each Member State solemnly bound itself to refrain from the threat or use of force against any other State, or in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the UN (Article 2(4)). Indeed, the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials declared aggressive war, “essentially an evil thing..., the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”