The first point to be noticed is that under Article 2 of the Protocol there is a very general and a very sweeping obligation on the part of the Signatories not to resort to war. This is a point of the utmost importance. The obligation goes very much farther than anything in the Covenant; the language of this obligation will be examined in detail hereafter.
Before coming to that, however, it is well to look at the provisions of the Protocol regarding the settlement of international disputes. War is one method for the settlement of such disputes, and, in order to make effective the obligation of the Signatories not to resort to war, substitute methods of settlement are provided.
It is very natural and proper that this should be done. A mere obligation not to resort to war, without more, would almost imply that disputes between the parties to the obligation should find some other method of settlement. For if some other method could not be found, feelings due to the continuance of the dispute might well arouse such passions in one country or another as to sweep away the obligation for peace. The two questions of the ending of war and the settlement of disputes between States are not only logically but realistically very closely related.
Disputes between States are often regarded as comprising those that relate to international questions and those that relate to domestic questions, the former being divided into justiciable and non-justiciable disputes.
I prefer, however, for this discussion, to classify possible international disputes in three kinds, namely:
1. Disputes as to international questions.
2. Disputes as to domestic questions.
3. Disputes as to status quo.
I am aware of the fact that such classification as the foregoing is overlapping. Disputes as to the status quo will to some extent fall within the two classes first mentioned; they may relate therefore to questions which are international or which are domestic in their nature. However, I think the classification is justified, at least for reasons of convenience, and also, in my opinion, for reasons which go very much deeper.
Let me illustrate this by reference to questions arising from frontiers. The existence and the location of a frontier are essentially questions of international import. The location of a frontier may, in a given case, not only be an international question in the sense that it should be settled internationally, but also in the sense that it is justiciable, according to the usual idea of justiciable questions. This would be so in a case where the location of the frontier depended wholly upon the interpretation of a treaty between the two neighboring States.