International Norms and the Resort to War
International Norms and the Resort to War

Author: Gregory A. Raymond

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-08-27

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 303054012X

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This book offers a fresh perspective on timeless questions concerning anarchy and order, power and principle, and public and private morality, by taking a novel approach to the study of the onset of war. Rather than looking at the distribution of wealth, military might, or other material capabilities to explain the onset of war, this book focuses instead on how international norms affect the use of military force. Critical of the realist assumption that international legal norms are unable to curb hostilities without a powerful central authority to enforce their injunctions, it contends that the normative context within which national leaders act sets the tone for world politics by communicating commonly accepted understandings about the limits of permissible action. Using quantitative analyses of the relationships between war-initiation norms and various types of armed conflict, the author calls into question realist beliefs regarding international norms, demonstrating that restrictive normative orders reduce the likelihood of war.

The Justification of War and International Order
The Justification of War and International Order

Author: Lothar Brock

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-02-11

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 0192634631

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The history of war is also a history of its justification. The contributions to this book argue that the justification of war rarely happens as empty propaganda. While it is directed at mobilizing support and reducing resistance, it is not purely instrumental. Rather, the justification of force is part of an incessant struggle over what is to count as justifiable behaviour in a given historical constellation of power, interests, and norms. This way, the justification of specific wars interacts with international order as a normative frame of reference for dealing with conflict. The justification of war shapes this order, and is being shaped by it. As the justification of specific wars entails a critique of war in general, the use of force in international relations has always been accompanied by political and scholarly discourses on its appropriateness. In much of the pertinent literature the dominating focus is on theoretical or conceptual debates as a mirror of how international normative orders evolve. In contrast, the focus of the present volume is on theory and political practice as sources for the re- and de-construction of the way in which the justification of war and international order interact. With contributions from international law, history, and international relations, and from Western and non-Western perspectives, this book offers a unique collection of papers exploring the continuities and changes in war discourses as they respond to and shape normative orders from early modern times to the present.

The Laws of War in International Thought
The Laws of War in International Thought

Author: Pablo Kalmanovitz

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-09-15

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0192507419

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The Law of Armed Conflict is usually understood to be a regime of exception that applies only during armed conflict and regulates hostilities among enemies. It assigns privileges to states far beyond what they are allowed to do in peacetime, and it mandates certain protections for non-combatants, which can often be defeated by appeals to military necessity or advantage. The Laws of War in International Thought examines the intellectual history of the laws of war before their codification. It reconstructs the processes by which political and legal theorists built the laws' distinctive vocabularies and legitimized some of their broadest permissions, and it situates these processes within the broader intellectual project that from early modernity spelled out the nature, function, and powers of state sovereignty. The book focuses on four historical moments in the intellectual history of the laws of war: the doctrine of just war in Spanish scholasticism; Hugo Grotius's theory of solemn war; the Enlightenment theory of regular war; and late nineteenth-century humanitarianism. By looking at these moments, Pablo Kalmanovitz shows how challenging and polemical it has been for international theorists to justify the exceptional and permissive character of the laws of war. In this way, he contributes to recover a sense of the historical foundations and many still problematic aspects of the Law of Armed Conflict.

Ethics and the Laws of War
Ethics and the Laws of War

Author: Antony Lamb

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-29

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 1136255427

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This book is an examination of the permissions, prohibitions and obligations found in just war theory, and the moral grounds for laws concerning war. Pronouncing an action or course of actions to be prohibited, permitted or obligatory by just war theory does not thereby establish the moral grounds of that prohibition, permission or obligation; nor does such a pronouncement have sufficient persuasive force to govern actions in the public arena. So what are the moral grounds of laws concerning war, and what ought these laws to be? Adopting the distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, the author argues that rules governing conduct in war can be morally grounded in a form of rule-consequentialism of negative duties. Looking towards the public rules, the book argues for a new interpretation of existing laws, and in some cases the implementation of completely new laws. These include recognising rights of encompassing groups to necessary self-defence; recognising a duty to rescue; and considering all persons neither in uniform nor bearing arms as civilians and therefore fully immune from attack, thus ruling out ‘targeted’ or ‘named’ killings. This book will be of much interest to students of just war theory, ethics of war, international law, peace and conflict studies, and Security Studies/IR in general.

The Universal Grammar of the Laws of War
The Universal Grammar of the Laws of War

Author: David Jeffords Traven

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13:

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Abstract: In contemporary political science, many international relations scholars presume that normative restrictions on military violence in world politics are an outgrowth of Western liberal modernity. Indeed, humanitarian norms such as the Geneva Conventions are comparatively recent in world politics, and many political scientists claim that they are a manifestation of new norms of appropriateness in international society. Drawing on historical evidence which suggests that political actors in Ancient China, the early Islamic empire, early medieval Europe, and modern international society all endorsed similar normative ideas for protecting the victims of war, I claim that humanitarian protection norms are fairly common in the history of advanced civilizations, more common than most political scientists have recognized. For political science, these findings raise an important puzzle: how do we explain why similar moral ideas emerge in very different cultural and material contexts? Extant theories of international norms are not well suited to answer this question because they assume that the initial development of norms is a random process that depends upon human agency, historical contingencies, and the existing material and ideational structure of international society. But if similar norms of war tend to emerge in different social contexts, then the initial factors that prompt the development of international norms may not be all that random after all. To explain how similar norms emerge in dissimilar material and cultural contexts, I argue that the laws of war are rooted in a universal moral psychology, or what some theorists call a "universal grammar" of moral discourse. Importantly, this argument implies that the development of modern humanitarian laws and human rights norms was in some sense inevitable: although history could have turned out differently, people tend to have strong psychological reactions to the pain and suffering of war, and these reactions lead them to create more humane international institutions when the opportunities for social change arise.

Democracy and War
Democracy and War

Author: David L. Rousseau

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2005-03-24

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 0804767513

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Conventional wisdom in international relations maintains that democracies are only peaceful when encountering other democracies. Using a variety of social scientific methods of investigation ranging from statistical studies and laboratory experiments to case studies and computer simulations, Rousseau challenges this conventional wisdom by demonstrating that democracies are less likely to initiate violence at early stages of a dispute. Using multiple methods allows Rousseau to demonstrate that institutional constraints, rather than peaceful norms of conflict resolution, are responsible for inhibiting the quick resort to violence in democratic polities. Rousseau finds that conflicts evolve through successive stages and that the constraining power of participatory institutions can vary across these stages. Finally, he demonstrates how constraint within states encourages the rise of clusters of democratic states that resemble "zones of peace" within the anarchic international structure.

War, States, and International Order
War, States, and International Order

Author: Claire Vergerio

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-08-04

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 100911686X

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Who has the right to wage war? The answer to this question constitutes one of the most fundamental organizing principles of any international order. Under contemporary international humanitarian law, this right is essentially restricted to sovereign states. It has been conventionally assumed that this arrangement derives from the ideas of the late-sixteenth century jurist Alberico Gentili. Claire Vergerio argues that this story is a myth, invented in the late 1800s by a group of prominent international lawyers who crafted what would become the contemporary laws of war. These lawyers reinterpreted Gentili's writings on war after centuries of marginal interest, and this revival was deeply intertwined with a project of making the modern sovereign state the sole subject of international law. By uncovering the genesis and diffusion of this narrative, Vergerio calls for a profound reassessment of when and with what consequences war became the exclusive prerogative of sovereign states.

The Laws of War
The Laws of War

Author: W. Michael Reisman

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 1994-06-28

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 067973712X

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From the Nuremberg trials to the grisly campaign of "ethnic cleansing" in today's Bosnia, the world recognizes that certain actions are morally and legally unacceptable even in the midst of war. This book features extensive excerpts from treaties and charters that define the proper treatment of civilians, detainees, and POWs during wartime.

Documents on the Laws of War
Documents on the Laws of War

Author: Adam Roberts

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 794

ISBN-13:

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This is a completely revised and updated edition of a book which has become widely accepted internationally as a standard work on international humanitarian law. The book contains authoritative texts of the main treaties and other key documents covering a wide variety of issues: the rights and duties of both belligerents and neutrals; prohibitions or restrictions on the use of particular weapons; the protection of victims of war, including the wounded and sick, prisoners of war, andcivilians; the application of the law to forces operating under UN auspices; the attempts to apply the laws of war in civil wars; the prosecution of war crimes and genocide; the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons; and many other matters. This third edition, greatly expanded from the second, contains thirteen new documents, including agreements on anti-personnel mines and laser weapons; key extracts from the statutes of the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the International Criminal Court; two documents on UN forces and international humanitarian law; and an extract from the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on nuclear weapons. There is a new appendix listing internet websites. All the editorial text is revised and updated. The Introduction sets the subject in its historical context, outlines the various sources of the law, provides basic information about its application to states and individuals,and discusses its relevance in contemporary conflicts. In addition, each of the documents is preceded by a prefatory note by the editors, explaining matters relating to its adoption, interpretation and implementation, including how it relates to other agreements concluded subsequently. Each treaty is followed by a complete list of all states parties, along with the dates of adherence and details of any reservations or declarations which states have made. Prepared with extensive assistance from the official Depositaries of the various agreements, this is an essential reference book for statesmen and diplomats, members of armed forces and humanitarian organizations, lawyers, journalists, and students of international law and international relations.