Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murad Idris
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Work ◽  
Peace Talk

This chapter discusses three unacknowledged discursive functions of peace—namely, that peace functions parasitically, provincially, and polemically. First, idealizers of peace rarely speak of peace on its own but of peace and security, law, friendship, order, and so on. The chapter calls this structure of discursive supplementation parasitical in which each of these added elements is “an insinuate of peace.” Second, idealizations of peace reflect particularistic desires, fears, interests, anxieties, and theories of difference. This logic of universalized idealization is provincial. Third, idealizations of peace are polemical in that they make peace into an ideal in relation to constitutive antagonisms and against specific enemies. This idealization then enables further hostility. The chapter situates these arguments in relation to affiliated arguments, including “politics is a continuation of war,” “peace talk is empty,” “peace has eroded,” and those of just war theory. Finally, it discusses the political work and theoretical elisions of the tropes surrounding “Islam and peace,” the opposition between “Islam and the West,” and “cross-cultural” understandings of peace.

Moral Victories

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
Theory Of War ◽  
Military Relations

What does it mean to win a moral victory? In the history, practice, and theory of war, this question yields few clear answers. Wars often begin with ideals about just and decisive triumphs but descend into quagmires. In the just war and strategic studies traditions, assumptions about victory underpin legitimations for war but become problematic in discussions about its conduct and conclusion. After centuries of conflict, we still lack a clear understanding of victory or reliable resources for discerning its moral status, its implications for conduct in war, or its relationship to changing ways of war. This book brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to tackle such issues. It is organized in two parts. After a synoptic introduction, Part I, ‘Traditions: The Changing Character of Victory’, charts the historically variable notion of victory and the dialogues and fissures this opens in the just war and strategic canons. Individual chapters analyse the importance of victory in the Bible, Clausewitz’s strategy, the political uses of defeat, arguments for unlimited war, revisionist just war theory, and contemporary norms against fights to the finish. Part II, ‘Challenges: The Problem of Victory in Contemporary Warfare’, shows how changing security contexts exacerbate these issues. Individual chapters discuss ethics in unwinnable wars, the political scars of victory, whether we can ‘win’ humanitarian interventions, contemporary civil–military relations, victory in privatized war, and operations short of war. In both parts, contributors work towards a clearer understanding of victory, forwarding several shared themes discussed in a critical conclusion.

The Alternatives to War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Pattison
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
The Political ◽  
Theoretical Significance

This chapter sets the scope for the ensuing analysis. It first introduces the measures, before highlighting the political and theoretical significance of considering the alternatives and delineating the problems caused by the lack of clarity surrounding them. It highlights the need to develop the responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine, to have a fuller understanding of Just War Theory and the requirements of last resort, and to offer appropriate guidance as geopolitical shifts render the alternatives to war increasingly significant. It also makes clear the scope of the analysis and outlines the measures that the book will focus on. These are the central international alternatives to war that are used to address ongoing or imminent mass atrocities and serious external aggression.

Summoning Hostility

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murad Idris
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Work

The writings of al-Fārābī and Aquinas make visible a morality that informs the oppositions between the peaceful and the warlike, and between just war and illegitimate aggression. In their typologies of different groups and cities, each designates some group as warlike, or as waging war for no good reason. Each contrasts this group’s disposition to illegitimate aggression to other kinds of violence and war, including, for Aquinas, “just war.” But each also implies—at times inadvertently—that recourse to violence can radically transform those who use it, which puts into question the political work of such classifications and elisions. Indeed, each describes a peace-loving group that wages war. Unlike diagnoses of the warlike disposition, the commitment to peace privileges “intentions” in a way that elides and ultimately sanctions the desire to correct others—one’s brothers, neighbors, friends, and enemies—in the name of peace.

Enduring Competition

2020 ◽  
pp. 226-288
Author(s):  
Robert Kelz
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
The Political ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
Transformative Impact

This chapter tracks the trajectory of Argentina's German theaters against a changing political landscape and new waves of European emigration. In the postwar period, director Paul Walter Jacob endeavored to attract all German speakers to the Free German Stage; however, his failed efforts at reconciliation underscored the polarized environment in the Argentine capital. Without ever renouncing fascism, Ludwig Ney adopted a strategy of interculturalism to succeed professionally in Peronist Argentina. German-speaking artists from across the political spectrum embarked on cross-cultural projects, and their transformative impact on theater in Argentina is still evident today. Meanwhile, in its crusade against communism, the West German embassy intervened at both stages. Carefully staged depictions of German heritage and reconciliation reflected a specious contrivance, contingent on edited memories of the recent past. The intractable animosity ultimately led to a move away from German dramatists in favor of canonical European playwrights, such as William Shakespeare.

Just War Theory in Times of Individual Rights

2018 ◽  
pp. 220-232
Author(s):  
Janina Dill
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Radical Revision

Just war theory (JWT) has undergone a radical revision over the last two decades. This chapter discusses the implications of this reformulation for the role of JWT in International Political Theory (IPT) and for JWT’s strategic usefulness. Revisionists’ consistent prioritization of individual rights means JWT now follows the strictures of justified violence according to contemporary IPT. At the same time, the collective nature of war makes it impossible for anyone but the omniscient attacker to properly protect individual rights and thus to directly implement revisionist prescriptions. I argue that revisionism is strategically relevant not in spite of, but because of this lack of practicability on the battlefield. It highlights the impossibility of waging war in accordance with widespread expectations of moral appropriateness, which largely follow the strictures of justified violence according to contemporary IPT. This is a crucial limitation to the political utility of force in twenty-first-century international relations.

God is Not Dead or Violent: The Catholic Church, Just War, and the “Resurgence” of Religion

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 419-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lan T. Chu
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Hard Power ◽  
Politics And Religion

AbstractWhile scholars have recognized a resurgence of religion, their focus mainly has been on religion's more violent aspects, overlooking its peaceful capacities and effects. This oversight is due in part to the lack of theoretical rigor when it comes to the study of politics and religion. Using the Catholic Church's opposition to the United States’ 2003 war in Iraq, this article highlights the political significance of religion's moral, symbolic voice, which is as important as the hard power that has traditionally dominated international relations. The post-Vatican II Catholic Church's modern articulation of human dignity and interpretation of just war theory challenges both scholars and policymakers to utilize the peaceful, diplomatic methods that international relations theory and practitioners have made available. Religion's role in politics, therefore, can be one that is supportive of modern political societies and it need not be violent.

War By Agreement

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yitzhak Benbaji ◽  
Daniel Statman
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Jus Ad Bellum ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
Present Book ◽  
The Military

In the last two decades, traditional just war theory has been under attack. Critics, known as ‘revisionists’, have argued that its most fundamental principles are morally suspect. However, so far they have failed to propose a convincing alternative. These developments have resulted in a stalemate. While almost everybody would like to maintain the legal order set by the UN Charter and by the Geneva Conventions, there is currently no moral outlook that convincingly substantiates it. The purpose of the present book is to forge a way through this stalemate and show that wars can be morally justified at both the jus ad bellum level (the political decision to go to war) and the jus in bello level (its actual conduct by the military). It does so by developing a contractarian account of the rules governing war, according to which they are best interpreted as a mutually beneficial and fair agreement between the relevant players. The book relies on the long social contract tradition and illustrates its fruitfulness in understanding the morality and the law of war.

Kantian Project of Perpetual Peace in the Context of Modern Ethical and Political Concepts of War

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-100
Author(s):  
Arseniy D. Kumankov
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Democratic Peace Theory ◽  
Perpetual Peace

The article considers the modern meaning of Kant’s doctrine of war. The author examines the context and content of the key provisions of Kant’s concept of perpetual peace. The author also reviews the ideological affinity between Kant and previous authors who proposed to build alliances of states as a means of preventing wars. It is noted that the French revolution and the wars caused by it, the peace treaty between France and Prussia served as the historical background for the conceptualization of Kant’s project. In the second half of the 20th century, there is a growing attention to Kant’s ethical and political philosophy. Theorists of a wide variety of political and ethical schools, (cosmopolitanism, internationalism, and liberalism) pay attention to Kant’s legacy and relate their own concepts to it. Kant’s idea of war is reconsidered by Michael Doyle, Jürgen Habermas, Ulrich Beck, Mary Kaldor, Brian Orend. Thus, Doyle tracks democratic peace theory back to Kant’s idea of the spread of republicanism. According to democratic peace theory, liberal democracies do not solve conflict among themselves by non-military methods. Habermas, Beck, Kaldor appreciate Kant as a key proponent of cosmopolitanism. For them, Kant’s project is important due to notion of supranational forms of cooperation. They share an understanding that peace will be promoted by an allied authority, which will be “governing without government” and will take responsibility for the functioning of the principles of pacification of international relations. Orend’s proves that Kant should be considered as a proponent of the just war theory. In addition, Orend develops a new area in just war theory – the concept of ius post bellum – and justifies regime change as the goal of just war.

The Possibility To Intervene In Syria Relying On Just War Theory Assumptions

2019 ◽  
pp. 338
Author(s):  
عامر سلامة القرالة ◽  
أيمن صالح البراسنة
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory
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