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6 Waging War to Make Peace even with a Security Council resolution specifically authorizing the use of force. The way moral arguments filled in where the law failed was also was evident when secretary of state Colin Powell called the situa- tion in Darfur “genocide.” Using the term overcame bureaucratic inertia within the Bush administration and made the crisis headline news, allowing activists and national leaders to put more pressure on Khartoum. Since Sudan was not a state party to the genocide conven- tion, invocation of the term could not be construed as putting pressure on Khartoum to fulfill its own international legal obligations. Rather, it made it harder for European state parties to leave it off their respec- tive foreign policy agendas. Hence, there was an implicit assertion that the convention was somehow applicable, even though nations maintained that the convention did not legally bind them to intervene. Just as with the need for a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) mandate, the treaty arguably offered more power as a moral tool than a legal device. Does this mean that states are never obligated to relieve suffering of the victims of humanitarian and human rights tragedies outside their borders? No nation has claimed there is a legal duty, but as these cases show, they were very willing to acknowledge a moral obligation. This was most notable in the example of British prime minister Tony Blair. Due to changes in domestic and international context, moral arguments have been holding more sway in the last decade, helping states over- come resistance when authority and justification are disputed, such as when German sentiment for protecting the human rights of Kosovar Albanians overcame their pacifist tradition and allowed them to par- ticipate in the NATO campaign against Serbia. The moral argument in the Kosovo case allowed the allies to overcome the controversial question of unilateralism, defined by some of them as the use of force without a Security Council mandate. Even so, these same countries balked when George Bush and Tony Blair used the moral imperative of liberating the Iraqis from Saddam Hussein as one reason why they could not be bound by the lack of a UN mandate. French leaders coun- tered with moral rhetoric, calling the need for a UN Security Council resolution a moral, and not just a legal, imperative. The dispute, fueled by moral outrage and not just differing political interests, was a his- toric low point in NATO politics. Thus the moral argument can have perverse effects, too, causing more contention when used by giving states a stronger hand to argue that it is not legitimate, even though it may be legal. This hypermor- alization of arguments for and against war has the unfortunate effect of leaving lasting bitterness with a host of negative side effects on the