When the United Nations Charter was adopted in 1945, states established a legal paradigm' for regulating the recourse to armed force. In the years since then, however, significant developments have challenged the paradigm's validity, causing a pardigmatic shift'. International Law and the Use of Force traces this shift and explores its implications for contemporary international law and practice.

Robert Beck's study focuses principally on two related questions. First, how did the Reagan administration decide to launch the invasion of Grenada? And second, what role did international law play in that decision? The Grenada Invasion draws on extensive interviews and correspondence with key participants—and on the recently published memoirs of those who participated in or witnessed the administration's deliberations—in order to render a new and more complete picture of Operation "Urgent Fury" decisionmaking. Beck concludes that international law did not determine policy, but that it...