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Just War scholarship has adapted to contemporary crises and situations. But its adaptation has spurned debate and conversation—a method and means of pushing its thinking forward. Now the Just War tradition risks becoming marginalized. This concern may seem out of place as Just War literature is proliferating, yet this literature remains welded to traditional conceptualizations of Just War. Caron E. Gentry and Amy E. Eckert argue that the tradition needs to be updated to deal with substate actors within the realm of legitimate authority, private military companies, and the questionable moral difference between the use of conventional and nuclear weapons. Additionally, as recent policy makers and scholars have tried to make the Just War criteria legalistic, they have weakened the tradition's ability to draw from and adjust to its contemporaneous setting. The essays in The Future of Just War seek to reorient the tradition around its core concerns of preventing the unjust use of force by states and limiting the harm inflicted on vulnerable populations such as civilian noncombatants. The pursuit of these challenges involves both a reclaiming of traditional Just War principles from those who would push it toward greater permissiveness with respect to war, as well as the application of Just War principles to emerging issues, such as the growing use of robotics in war or the privatization of force. These essays share a commitment to the idea that the tradition is more about a rigorous application of Just War principles than the satisfaction of a checklist of criteria to be met before waging “just” war in the service of national interest.
"Waging Just Wars: The Ethical and Legal Principles of Modern Warfare" provides a comprehensive examination of the moral and legal dimensions of contemporary conflict. Authored by an expert in military ethics and international law, this book delves into the foundational principles of Just War Theory, including jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and jus post bellum. The book explores historical precedents and modern applications, offering a detailed analysis of self-defense, humanitarian interventions, and the prevention of atrocities. It critically examines the impact of technological advancements, such as AI and autonomous weapons, on the conduct of war. Through rigorous ethical analysis and case studies, the author addresses the complexities of applying Just War principles in today's geopolitical landscape. "Waging Just Wars" also highlights the importance of legitimate authority, right intention, and proportionality in the decision to go to war. The book discusses the ethical challenges of ensuring that military actions align with these principles and the necessity of exhausting all non-violent options before resorting to force. Additionally, the book provides insights into the treatment of prisoners of war, the use of prohibited weapons, and the ethical considerations of modern warfare tactics. The analysis extends to post-war responsibilities, emphasizing the need for fair treatment of former enemies, reconstruction efforts, and accountability for war crimes. This scholarly work is essential reading for national security researchers, scholars, policymakers, and ethicists. It offers a nuanced understanding of how ethical and legal standards can guide the conduct of warfare, ensuring that the use of force is both morally justified and legally compliant. With its thorough examination of Just War Theory and its application to contemporary conflicts, "Waging Just Wars" is a vital resource for anyone seeking to navigate the moral complexities of modern warfare.
During the Civil War, Americans confronted profound moral problems about how to fight in the conflict. In this innovative book, D. H. Dilbeck reveals how the Union sought to wage a just war against the Confederacy. He shows that northerners fought according to a distinct "moral vision of war," an array of ideas about the nature of a truly just and humane military effort. Dilbeck tells how Union commanders crafted rules of conduct to ensure their soldiers defeated the Confederacy as swiftly as possible while also limiting the total destruction unleashed by the fighting. Dilbeck explores how Union soldiers abided by official just-war policies as they battled guerrillas, occupied cities, retaliated against enemy soldiers, and came into contact with Confederate civilians. In contrast to recent scholarship focused solely on the Civil War's carnage, Dilbeck details how the Union sought both to deal sternly with Confederates and to adhere to certain constraints. The Union's earnest effort to wage a just war ultimately helped give the Civil War its distinct character, a blend of immense destruction and remarkable restraint.
The just war tradition is central to the practice of international relations, in questions of war, peace, and the conduct of war in the contemporary world, but surprisingly few scholars have questioned the authority of the tradition as a source of moral guidance for modern statecraft. Just War: Authority, Tradition, and Practice brings together many of the most important contemporary writers on just war to consider questions of authority surrounding the just war tradition. Authority is critical in two key senses. First, it is central to framing the ethical debate about the justice or injustice of war, raising questions about the universality of just war and the tradition’s relationship to religion, law, and democracy. Second, who has the legitimate authority to make just-war claims and declare and prosecute war? Such authority has traditionally been located in the sovereign state, but non-state and supra-state claims to legitimate authority have become increasingly important over the last twenty years as the just war tradition has been used to think about multilateral military operations, terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and sub-state violence. The chapters in this collection, organized around these two dimensions, offer a compelling reassessment of the authority issue’s centrality in how we can, do, and ought to think about war in contemporary global politics.
When it comes to questions of religion, legal scholars face a predicament. They often expect to resolve dilemmas according to general principles of equality, neutrality, or the separation of church and state. But such abstractions fail to do justice to the untidy welter of values at stake. Offering new views of how to understand and protect religious freedom in a democracy, The Tragedy of Religious Freedom challenges the idea that matters of law and religion should be referred to far-flung theories about the First Amendment. Examining a broad array of contemporary and more established Supreme Court rulings, Marc DeGirolami explains why conflicts implicating religious liberty are so emotionally fraught and deeply contested. Twenty-first-century realities of pluralism have outrun how scholars think about religious freedom, DeGirolami asserts. Scholars have not been candid enough about the tragic nature of the conflicts over religious liberty—the clash of opposing interests and aspirations they entail, and the limits of human reason to resolve intractable differences. The Tragedy of Religious Freedom seeks to turn our attention from abstracted, absolute values to concrete, historical realities. Social history, characterized by the struggles of lawyers engaged in the details of irreducible conflicts, represents the most promising avenue to negotiate legal conflicts over religion. In this volume, DeGirolami offers an approach to understanding religious liberty that is neither rigidly systematic nor ad hoc, but a middle path grounded in a pluralistic and historically informed perspective.
Military alliances provide constraints and opportunities for states seeking to advance their interests around the globe. War, from the Western perspective, is not a solitary endeavor. Partnerships of all types serve as a foundation for the projection of power and the employment of force. These relationships among states provide the foundation upon which hegemony is built. Waging War argues that these institutions of interstate violence—not just the technology, capability, and level of professionalism and training of armed forces—serve as ready mechanisms to employ force. However, these institutions are not always well designed, and do not always augment fighting effectiveness as they could. They sometimes serve as drags on state capacity. At the same time, the net benefit of having this web of partnerships, agreements, and alliances is remarkable. It makes rapid response to crisis possible, and facilitates countering threats wherever they emerge. This book lays out which institutional arrangements lubricate states' abilities to advance their agendas and prevail in wartime, and which components of institutional arrangements undermine effectiveness and cohesion, and increase costs to states. Patricia Weitsman outlines what she calls a realist institutionalist agenda: one that understands institutions as conduits of capability. She demonstrates and tests the argument in five empirical chapters, examining the cases of the first Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Each case has distinct lessons as well as important generalizations for contemporary multilateral warfighting.
“Vivid…Barron has given us a rich and detailed history.” —The New York Times Book Review “Ambitious...a deep history and a thoughtful inquiry into how the constitutional system of checks and balances has functioned when it comes to waging war and making peace.” —The Washington Post A timely account of a raging debate: The history of the ongoing struggle between the presidents and Congress over who has the power to declare and wage war. The Constitution states that it is Congress that declares war, but it is the presidents who have more often taken us to war and decided how to wage it. In Waging War, David J. Barron opens with an account of George Washington and the Continental Congress over Washington’s plan to burn New York City before the British invasion. Congress ordered him not to, and he obeyed. Barron takes us through all the wars that followed: 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American war, World Wars One and Two, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and now, most spectacularly, the War on Terror. Congress has criticized George W. Bush for being too aggressive and Barack Obama for not being aggressive enough, but it avoids a vote on the matter. By recounting how our presidents have declared and waged wars, Barron shows that these executives have had to get their way without openly defying Congress. Waging War shows us our country’s revered and colorful presidents at their most trying times—Washington, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Johnson, both Bushes, and Obama. Their wars have made heroes of some and victims of others, but most have proved adept at getting their way over reluctant or hostile Congresses. The next president will face this challenge immediately—and the Constitution and its fragile system of checks and balances will once again be at the forefront of the national debate.
This provocative and timely primer on the just war tradition connects just war to the concrete practices and challenges of the Christian life. Daniel Bell explains that the point is not simply to know the just war tradition but to live it even in the face of the tremendous difficulties associated with war. He shows how just war practice, if it is to be understood as a faithful form of Christian discipleship, must be rooted in and shaped by the fundamental convictions and confessions of the faith. The book includes a foreword by an Army chaplain who has served in Iraq and study questions for group use.