Abstract
The just war tradition is often derided for its excessive emphasis on the state.2 Critics charge that it addresses the relation between force and justice solely as a question of state rights, without proper regard for the possibility that contemporary conflict often involves actors other than states. If this is the case, it stands to reason that the tradition must be in danger of lapsing into desuetude as non-state actors assume a greater role and visibility in the rough and tumble of international politics. Terrorist organizations, intergovernmental organizations, secessionist and national liberation movements, private military firms, and paramilitaries have all increasingly assumed stakes in the so-called “new wars” of the post — cold war era.3
1. I am very grateful to John Williams and Tony Lang for reading and commenting on drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank the editors of this volume for inviting me to participate, and for instructive editorial advice.
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Notes
For example Cecile Fabre, “Cosmopolitanism, Just War Theory and Legitimate Authority,” International Affairs 84 (5) (2008): 964;
Anthony Burke, “Just War or Ethical Peace? Moral Discourses of Strategic Violence after 9/11,” International Affairs 80 (2) (2004): 331–332.
This is not an exhaustive list of non-state actors, but it reflects the parameters of this essay. For more on the idea of “new wars,” see Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2001).
For a comprehensive account of the historical development of the just war tradition, see James Turner Johnson, Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975); and also his Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981).
Authority is a difficult concept to grasp, or at least pin down in definitional terms. As elaborated by contemporary commentators, authority denotes rightful rule or, put differently, legitimate power. For the purposes of this discussion, “legitimate power” can be taken to mean power that is widely deemed to be properly constituted and binding in character. This discussion draws on Ian Clark, Legitimacy in International Society (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005);
Ramesh Thakur, The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 6;
and also Anthony F. Lang’s discussion of authority in Chapter 3 of this volume. Also of interest is Ian Hurd, After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the United Nations Security Council (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007);
and Corneliu Bjola, “Legitimacy and the Use of Force: Bridging the Analytical — Normative Divide,” Review of International Studies 34 (4) (2008): 627–645. I would like to thank John Williams for drawing the importance of legitimacy, as it relates to this discussion, to my attention.
See John B. Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times (London: Hutchinson University Press, 1971), 61;
and Alex J. Bellamy, Just Wars: From Cicero to Iraq (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2006), 30.
Hostiensis, “Summa Aurea: On Truce and Peace,” in The Ethics of War: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Gregory M. Reichberg, Henrik Syse, and Endre Begby (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 163. Bellamy offers commentary on this juncture: see Just Wars, 36.
My treatment of these debates is grossly simplified. For a more comprehensive treatment of these debates, please see: Frederick Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).
Augustine, Contra Faustum 22:70, cited by Thomas Aquinas, “Summa Theologiae IIaIIae 40: On War,” in Aquinas: Political Writings, ed. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 241.
Morrall, Political Thought, 68; R. W. Dyson, Normative Theories of Society and Government in Five Medieval Thinkers (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2003), 196;
Herbert A. Deane, The Political and Social Ideas of Saint Augustine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 117.
Augustine continues: “They inspire fear and thus put a check on the bad, so that the good may live peacefully among the bad.& [T]here is certainly much value in restraining human foolhardiness by the threat of law, both so that the innocent can live in security among the unscrupulous.” Augustine, “Letter 153: To Macedonius,” in Augustine: Political Writings ed. E. M. Atkins and R. J. Dodaro (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 80.
Richard Tuck, ed., The Rights of War and Peace (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2005), 250. For a more nuanced treatment of Grotius, see Chapter 3 of this volume.
Samuel Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law, ed. James Tully (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 169.
Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations: Or Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, ed. Joseph Chitty (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1853).
This calls to mind the writings of Rousseau. For a brief account, see: Stanley Hoffmann, “Rousseau on War and Peace,” American Political Science Review 57 (2) (1963): 317–333.
Geoffrey Best, Humanity and Warfare (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 159.
Hedley Bull, “The Importance of Hugo Grotius in the Study of International Relations,” in Hugo Grotius and International Relations, ed. Hedley Bull, Benedict Kingsbury, and Adam Roberts (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1990), 89.
Inis L. Claude, Jr., Swords into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization (New York: Random House, 1959), 22.
Hedley Bull, “The Grotian Conception of International Society,” in Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Relations, ed. Martin Wight and Herbert Butterfield (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966), 57.
See also Hans J. Kelsen, Law and Peace in International Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), 34. It is worth noting, however, that not all solidarists insist on an important role for intergovernmental organizations in their vision for international society. Jason Ralph and Nick Wheeler, for instance, allow that states may be the primary enforcers of communal norms in international society.
See Nicholas J. Wheeler, “Pluralist or Solidarist Conceptions of International Society: Bull and Vincent on Humanitarian Intervention,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 2 (3) (1992): 468;
and Jason Ralph, “International Society, the International Criminal Court and American Foreign Policy,” Review of International Studies 31 (1) (2005): 27–45. However, there is a branch of thought within solidarism that places intergovernmental organizations at the center of the picture.
This branch can be traced back to the second definitive article elaborated by Immanuel Kant in 1795, in “To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), 115.
J. P. Dunbabin, “The League of Nations’ Place in the International System,” History 78 (254) (2007): 421–442.
Andrew Hurrell, On Global Order: Power, Values, and the Constitution of International Society (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007), 169.
Thakur, The United Nations, 30. See also Thomas Franck, Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 20–44. Of course, attention to state practice—and, some would argue, customary international law—reveals a different picture, one which assigns greater authority to states at the expense of the Security Council. I will address this issue momentarily. Again, thanks are due to John Williams for bringing this to my attention.
Mary Kaldor explains the distinction between peacekeeping and peace enforcement: “Peacekeeping is based on the assumption that an agreement has been reached between two sides in a war; the task of the peacekeeper is to supervise and monitor implementation of the agreement. The principles of peacekeeping … are consent, impartiality and the non-use of force. Peace-enforcement, on the other hand, which is authorized under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, is basically war-fighting; it means intervening in a war on one side.” Kaldor, New and Old Wars, 124. For more on the “crossing of the Mogadishu line,” alluded to here, see Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000), 172–208;
also William Shawcross, Deliver Us from Evil: Warlords and Peacekeepers in a World of Endless Conflict (London: Bloomsbury, 2000), 102.
James Turner Johnson, Morality and Contemporary Warfare (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 60–61.
Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (London: Penguin, 2000), 242.
On the Israeli action, see Shai Feldman, “The Bombing of Osirak Revisited,” International Security 7 (1982): 14–42.
On the 2003 invasion of Iraq, see Cian O’Driscoll, Renegotiation of the Just War Tradition and the Right to War in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 27–51.
George J. Andreopoulos, “The Age of National Liberation Movements,” in The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World, ed. Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos, and Mark R. Shulman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 191;
William V. O’Brien, “The Jus In Bello in Revolutionary War and Counter-insurgency,” Virginia Journal of International Law 18 (2) (1978): 206.
Bellamy, Just Wars, pp.136–138. Andrew Valls, “Can Terrorism Be Justified?” in Ethics in International Affairs: Theories and Cases, ed. Andrew Valls (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 67.
Robert A. Pape, “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” American Political Science Review 97 (3) (2003): 345.
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 180.
As Walzer writes, “the state is not the only or necessarily the most important arena of our moral (or even our political) life. Churches, movements, sects, and parties can have similar rights and powers similarly derived.” Michael Walzer, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War, and Citizenship (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), xvi. Also “The state is presumptively, though by no means always in practice, the arena within which self-determination is worked out and from which, therefore, foreign armies have to be excluded.”
Michael Walzer, “The Moral Standing of States: A Response to Four Critics,” in International Ethics, ed. Charles Beitz, Marshall Cohen, Thomas Scanlon, and John A. Simmons (Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 1985), 218.
John Stuart Mill, “A Few Words on Non-intervention,” in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXI (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 111–124.
See also Georgios Varouxakis, “John Stuart Mill on Intervention and Non-intervention,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 26:1 (1997): 57–76.
Peter Singer, “Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry and Its Ramifications for International Securiry,” International Organization 26 (3) (2001/02): 188.
See also James Pattison, “Just War Theory and the Privatization of Military Force,” Ethics and International Affairs 22 (2) (2008): 143.
Renae Merle, “Census Counts 100,000 Contractors in Iraq,” Washington Post, 5 December 2006, DO1.
For example: Richard Falk, “A Program for the Left; Thinking about Terrorism,” The Nation (242), 26 June 1986, 283–287.
Michael Walzer, “Terrorism: A Critique of Excuses,” in Arguing about War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 54.
Barak Mendelsohn, “Sovereignty under Attack: The International Society Meets the al Qaeda Network,” Review of International Studies 31 (2005): 54.
Olivier Roy, Globalised Islam (London: Hurst, 2004), 290.
Ibid., 321; see also Benjamin J. Barber, Jihad Vs McWorld: Terrorism’s Challenge to Democracy (London: Corgi, 2003).
John Williams, “Space, Scale and Just War: Meeting the Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention and Transnational Terrorism,” Review of International Studies 34 (2008): 582.
Toni Erskine, Embedded Cosmopolitanism: Duties to Strangers and Enemies in a World of Dislocated Communities (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008), 161–175.
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O’Driscoll, C. (2009). From Versailles to 9/11: Non-state Actors and Just War in the Twentieth Century. In: Heinze, E.A., Steele, B.J. (eds) Ethics, Authority, and War. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101791_2
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