INTRODUCTION: THE JUST WAR TRADITION AND THE CONTINUING CHALLENGES TO WORLD PUBLIC ORDER

Abstract

This introductory article argues that world public order continues to be challenged by the emergence of the doctrines of anticipatory self-defense and humanitarian intervention. These challenges may be better understood, and reconciled, by application of the just war tradition.

Keywords:

• jus ad bellum
• challenges
• humanitarian intervention
• anticipatory self-defense
• just war tradition

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my appreciation to two scholars whose early support, advice, and counsel sustained the Just War Theory Project through its formative phase: Alistair Edgar, who was the Executive Director of ACUNS when this project was formed (and is again at press time); and James Turner Johnson, himself a founding editor and original contributor to this journal. I would also like to thank Vesselin Popovski, one of my first just war theory correspondents, for his unwavering support and guidance throughout the work of this project. Finally, but no less significant in magnitude, I would like to thank Henrik Syse for his equally unwavering support and guidance in bringing this particular body of scholarship to fruition.

Notes

1. U.N. Charter, art. 51. The French version of the Charter reads ‘dans le cas où un Membre des Nations Unies est objet d'une agression armée’, which I translate as ‘in the case in which a Member of the United Nations is the object of an armed aggression’. On its face, the French version appears to more broadly delimit the range of causes for legitimate self-defense than the English version. Unfortunately, the different translations serve to confuse the question rather than clarify it.

2. Some operations were apparently specifically undertaken for that purpose; other operations may not have been expressly motivated by humanitarian concerns but had the same overall outcome.

3. Curiously, this bit of history seems to have been lost on the Belgian delegation to the Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression, which was tasked with drafting a new ‘crime of aggression’ to add to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. In that forum, Belgium continued to press for a definition of aggression that on its face would make no allowances for humanitarian intervention.

4. Contrast the classical realist Hans Morgenthau, who argued that up until his time, the normative constraints of international law did influence the decisions of world leaders to go to war or not (Morgenthau 2006).

5. Out of an abundance of caution, we set aside the question of legitimacy of ideological interventions (both pro-democratic and pro-communist), and also interventions to stop oppression of persons for their political activism that opposes the regime in power.