Abstract
As the twentieth century gave way to the twenty-first, Blair and his fellow political leaders were not alone in wrestling with the issue of military, or humanitarian, intervention and the circumstances in which it could or would be justified. Scholars were revisiting — and for many, discovering for the first time — just war as a means of disputing the legitimacy or otherwise of military intervention. Having looked at both Blair’s moral framework for intervention and his case for taking military action against Iraq, this chapter will set out some of the ideas that permeated academic debate around that time. These ideas can then be used, in turn, to assess the relevance and effectiveness of the different aspects of Blair’s moral justification of the Iraq War that are examined in the chapters to come.
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Notes
Walzer, M., Arguing About War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004) p. 6ff.
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Walzer, M., Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (United States of America: Basic Books, 1983) p. 313.
Jeff McMahon is critical of Walzer’s view of the moral equality of soldiers. A good example of his critique can be found in McMahan, J., ‘Collectivist Defenses of the Moral Equality of Combatants’, Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 6, No. 1 (2007) pp. 50–9.
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Elshtain, J.B., Sovereignty: God, State, and Self (New York: Basic Books, 2008) p. 159
Elshtain, J.B., Augustine and the Limits of Politics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995) p. 114.
Elshtain, J.B., ‘The Third Annual Grotius Lecture: Just War and Humanitarian Intervention’, American University International Law Review, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2001a) p. 2.
Walzer, M. ‘On Fighting Terrorism Justly’, International Relations, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2007) p. 480.
Elshtain, J.B., ‘A Response’, International Relations, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2007) p. 502.
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© 2012 Peter Lee
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Lee, P. (2012). Views from the academy. In: Blair’s Just War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230356443_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230356443_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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