Historia de la Justificación de la Guerra
Historia de la Justificación de la Guerra
Keywords: war, justification, international order, use of force, jus ad bellum, theory, political practice, normativity, communication community, multi-normativity, critical theory
1. A Genealogical Approach: The Justification of War and the Historical Evolution of International Order This book departs from a simple but momentous observation: the history of war is also a history of its justification. The use of force in international relations has always been accompanied by political, scholarly, and public discourses on its appropriateness. This is to say that the justification of the use of force is tied inextricably to its contestation because there would be no need for justifying the use of force if the latter were not regarded as basically problematic. Accordingly, the justification of certain wars entails a critique of war in general. We understand the unity of the justification and the critique of the use of force both in political practice and academic theory-building as constitutive for the emergence of international order.1
Since the justification and the critique of the use of force involve normative judgement, international order rests on a paradoxical, perhaps even dialectical2 relationship between war and normativity: war challenges and drives the formation of international order as an ‘order of justification’.3 Therefore, the history of the modern international order first and foremost can be told as a genealogy of endeavours to facilitate the use of force and to hedge it. This way the book addresses the interaction between the justification of specific wars and the formation of international order as offering a frame of reference for the justification and critique of war as such.
As we pursue this issue, we proceed on the assumption that contrary to realist claims in International Law (IL), International Relations (IR), or International History, the justification of war rarely happens simply as empty ‘propaganda’.4 Throughout history even powerful actors tend to refer to the language of normativity to justify their forceful acts. By doing so, they (voluntarily or involuntarily) contribute to the emergence of (p.4) ‘communication communities’ (Kommunikationsgemeinschaften).5 These communication communities are based on and shape a common understanding of what war in general is about and when it is justified. Since the early modern period such communities constitute an increasingly informed audience towards which justifications of the use of force are directed.6 The resulting public sphere has been and continues to be a major focus of dealing with the use of force. While the structure of the public sphere was transformed (from dynastic to inter-national discourse) and the technique of its representation changed (from written to printed war manifestos to mass media), the general discursive principles of justifying war remained the same. Thus, discourses on the use of force construct ‘international order’ as a normative frame of reference for politics and theory alike.7 As such a frame of reference, international order is to be understood as a ‘normative order’, in which norms function as an instrument of politics (including the politics of theory-building) and at the same time structure the practice of justifying and practising the use of force.8
Our fundamental thesis is that in their justifications of war, states and other political actors refer to (existing or presumed) norms of the international order to depict their own violence as legitimate, that is ‘appropriate behaviour’.9 According to this practice, a state’s effort to justify violence is to be interpreted as an expression of this state’s awareness of the fact that the use of force may damage not only its war opponent, but also his own standing in the normative order constituting the existing communication community.10 With this, the discourse of justifying war interacts with the international order. As norms of the international order shape the justification practices of states, the practice of justification in specific cases shapes the general normative order. Accordingly, we claim that the communicative practices of justifying war and international order- building are to be understood as co-constitutive.
This discursive co-constitutionalization of the justification of war and international order is of course not to be understood as static. We can only understand it (p.5) scientifically in its historical context. Due to the ambiguity of norms as political instruments and determining factors structuring political discourse, international order is always contested and thus changes over time. The conceptualization of this change depends on the basic theoretical or ideological preferences of the observer. From a realist point of view, the change of international orders understood as orders of the justification of the use of force can be expected to be confined to the form of international politics while its substance as politics under anarchy persists.11 From a rationalist-institutionalist viewpoint, normative change responds to the necessities of reducing transaction costs in a world of ever-increasing complexity.12
Critical scholars rather emphasize the ideological bias accompanying both these approaches. While the materialists within their ranks may address normative change as an issue of re-arranging the political economy of international relations, those building on basic ideas of the European Enlightenment on the one hand,14 its postmodern and postcolonial critics on the other,15 would rather look for the emergence of an international rule of law as an international order reducing but also reproducing the arbitrary use of force. (Hobbes developed the idea that the domestic state of nature could be overcome through the legalization of the relationship between the ruler and the ruled. Kant took up this idea but realized that the Hobbesian approach could not simply be projected onto the system of states. His contribution to establishing a critical tradition in international law consists in taking up the need for legalization of international relations but linking it to domestic reform and the universal rights of people. Legalization in this understanding does not result in offending all war but in approaching peace as a piecemeal process.)
Under this third perspective, international law functions as a ‘gentle civilizer of nations’,17 and at (p.6) the same time as an instrument of power and domination.18 The question of how the enabling and the restraining functions of international law interact in changing historical contexts and how this impacts on international order is the central issue of the present issue.
As to this issue, today everything seems to be in flux. The cosmopolitan version of international order which relies on the idea of progressive (peace-enhancing) legalization has come under increasing pressure with war and violence nourishing the appetite of politicians and ordinary people (including academics) alike for reinforcing existing borders or reconstructing them in order to protect themselves against the vicissitudes of a world seemingly falling apart. But the world has always been falling apart for someone, even in ‘good times’. Whether the rule of law is in rise or decline cannot be decided at this point of time. Perhaps it does not have to be decided either.19 In any case we should be careful not to declare its premature or long-awaited death (see also the contribution by Thilo Marauhn).20 If ‘words are politics’ as Martti Koskenniemi reminds us,21 it would be all the more important to understand theorizing on adequate normative standards as practice of shaping them in specific historical contexts.
There is no better time for analysing the importance of law as a normative force than these troubled years. In terms of longue durée, reference to positive international law as a normative frame of reference for addressing the use of force has spread out particularly since the mid-nineteenth century when international humanitarian law became canonized.22 It acquired a concrete form when the age-old critique of the arbitrary use of force finally23 resulted in its formal prohibition first through the Kellogg-Briand Pact and later through the UN Charter and respective regional arrangements.24 The fact that this happened between and after two world wars and certainly did not result in the abolishment of war, makes it difficult to determine what really has changed.25
(p.7) All heroic endeavours to reach a breakthrough towards the establishment of an international rule of law have produced fragile results. Argumentative reference to positive law is being challenged (increasingly, it seems) not only by power-politically inspired practitioners and academics, but also by narratives of other extra-legal normative spheres (like ethics, morality, honour in connection with religion, social custom, military necessity, technological standards etc.). Thus, war discourses may not only be seen as the sum of disputes over ‘justifying reasons’,26 but also as the sum of disputes between different narratives and traditions of justification.27 The simultaneity of different normative frameworks of reference may be summarized as ‘multi-normativity’—a descriptive concept which helps to underline the complexity of the justification of war.28 The crucial question is how these different normative spheres relate to each other. They may partly match, partly co-exist, and partly collide.
Ideally, the existence of multiple normativities would provide more flexibility in dealing with war and conflict. But this is not necessarily the case in practice as the debate on ‘humanitarian intervention’ has shown (see also the contribution by Chimni in Part VII). For instance, instead of bridging the gap between the commitments of the international community to protect people from mass atrocities (R2P) on the one hand, the limited ability of the UN Security Council to act on the other, reference to the just-war tradition may provide a shortcut to action but opens up new arenas of conflict as it pits morality against procedural rules of the UN Charter. Likewise, efforts to redefine sovereignty in order to provide a new legal basis for the international protection of people from mass atrocities may result in a deepening rift between considerations of legality and legitimacy of the use of force thus impeding any progress towards hedging the arbitrary use of force.29
So would it be helpful, as Chris Brown suggests in his contribution, to return to the just-war tradition all together and be done with the analytical focus on an international rule of law? Or should we stick to the latter in order to be able to navigate the tension between the legality and the morality of the use of force?30 We leave this question open at this point but will return to it in the conclusions on this topic.
(p.8) 2. ‘Mind the Gap!’—Navigating between Theoretical and Practical Discourses on the Legitimacy of War and International Order The preceding observations call attention to the fact that we have an insufficient understanding of the role of international norms in past and present discourses on war justifications. From our point of view, this has something to do with the fact that, in comparison to dogmatic history, there is a lack of historical studies which examine the political practice of the justification of war and which address the linkages between justifying war and modelling international order. For instance, there are countless monographs, anthologies, and articles on the just-war tradition.31 But most of the writing concentrates on theoretical discourse.32
We posit that there is a need to confront theoretical considerations with the actual practice of justifying war. Trying to do this is not to degrade theory-driven observations to second place but rather to achieve a better understanding of how scholarly discourse and political decision-making interact and relate to each other. From early modern (European) discourses on international law,33 over the professionalization of international legal scholarship in the late nineteenth century34 to the present,35 there has been a special discursive connection between political practice and legal scholarship in the highly political field of justifying and hedging war.36 In retrospect, this relationship manifested itself in the emergence of a body of customary law.37 As the opinio iuris of a state might be hard to identify without full insights into its motives to (p.9) go to war,38 ‘state practice’ is always in need of interpretation. Legal scholars provide such interpretation by (re-)constructing ‘practice’39 and thereby formulate norms on the legitimacy of war in conjunction with state practice. With this, lawyers (inside and outside of courts) contribute to the shaping of what is accepted by the respective political publics as international law. Historical and critical reconstruction of the respective scholarly discourses (Wissenschaftsgeschichte)40 rightly represents a core issue of the History and Theory of International Law.
However, it is analytically problematic to confine oneself to the observation of scholarly discourse.41 A rather obvious objection here is that those contemporary legal scholars, who for good reasons kept a distance to political practitioners, might have misinterpreted a state’s opinio iuris due to the lack of political insider knowledge.42 Another objection which goes into the opposite direction is that legal scholars, who made themselves available to the service of states—only think of Grotius and his commissioned works for the Dutch East India Company43—might have been partial, or they may even have played ‘an instrumental role in developing and cementing new justifications for the use of force’.44 These lawyers would not correspond to Kelsen’s ideal type of an ‘objective lawyer’,45 but rather to his real type of a mouthpiece for the powerful by presenting political interests ‘as what is objectively right’.46
What is striking on a methodological basis, is that international scholarship, while providing a set of questions and issues to be engaged with when states use force, has been for long dominated by a-historical theoretical writings.47 By analysing the work of Hugo Grotius, Michael Walzer, and Cécile Fabre from a historical perspective, part of the literature concludes, that the just-war tradition, in order to be a truly political instead of a moral theory, must take into account the historical narratives that structure it. Much in this spirit, German historian Konrad Repgen (1923–2017) has noted already in his seminal article on Kriegslegitimationen in Alteuropa published in 1985, that historical exempla and dicta in works of early modern scholars offered largely ‘ornamentations’ but not historical foundations for their argument.48 But, as Stephen C. Neff has put it convincingly, (p.10) ‘history is no subject for purists’.49 Theoretical arguments need historical and political contextualization as much as historical and political discourses require theory-driven interpretations.50 Thus, both legal and political discourses have to be addressed. In this respect, the historical approaches to normative war discourses and international order have so far been mainly shaped by studies in legal theory.
This argument is not new: the lack of studies on the politics of justifying war51 and on the linkages between theory and practice was criticized at an early stage, particularly in research on the history of international law and international relations.52 But efforts to fill this gap are still rare.53 In his article of 1985, Repgen referred to the phenomenon that since the thirteenth century political actors were under pressure to justify war which resulted in numerous war manifestos.54 But to his surprise, Repgen found that nobody, neither at home nor abroad, had engaged with this material.55 As Repgen himself speculated, the lack of interest in official pronouncements may have been due to the ruling scientific discourses at the time of his writing: Realism was dominant not only in the History of International Relations and IR, but also in the History of International Law. Wilhelm Grewe’s standard book on the history of international law as a history of shifting hegemonies,56 in which Grewe, as already quoted, spoke of the justification of war as empty ‘propaganda’, was first published in 1984 and thus almost simultaneously with Repgen’s article of 1985 (originally a lecture held in 1984). The realist ‘empty propaganda’ approach trumped Repgen’s plea for taking political declarations of war more seriously for a long time.
(p.11) A dialogue between Repgen and a US-American colleague highlights what, in Repgen’s view, was (and still is in our view) at stake: as he was searching the files of the National Library in Munich week after week in the winter of 1984, Repgen told the colleague how excited he was about war declarations as objects of historical studies. His colleague responded, ‘with the sympathetic, sad look of a neurologist’: ‘What on earth do you want to do with these texts?’ Repgen replied: ‘Read them.’ His colleague: ‘But these texts contain nothing but lies.’ Repgen: ‘For exactly that reason I want to study them.’ He then went on:
These texts amount to pleas which supposedly use a number of recurrent arguments for the justification of the use of force. If this proves to be correct then we should be able to generate a fairly complete compilation of these arguments. This way we could advance our understanding of the onset of wars in Europe from the fall of Constantinople to the French Revolution. Nobody can force us to continue to look at international relations as an issue of the balance of power, … which has been the dominant approach for the past 250 years. Presumably we would learn more by looking into the specific reasons given by the war-parties for the legitimacy of their use of force. We would thus be able to construct a pattern which would enable us to discover and describe the particular as it relates to the general without taking refuge to whatever is fashionable at a certain time.57
In this response, Repgen was able to refute a central objection against reading government proclamations voiced by his colleague. Nevertheless, this objection still appears in current methodological debates. Proponents of the heuristic emptiness of government proclamations tend to ignore that turning to normative discourses in political practice does not necessarily also mean to recognize these observed justifications as ‘true’/‘false’ or ‘good’/‘bad’ and thus succumb to an (alleged58) Rankean seduction—instead of trying ‘to show what really happened’ (‘wie es eigentlich gewesen’).59 Although it is truly helpful to know the ‘motives’ behind war justifications in order to reconstruct a state’s opinio iuris—as Clive Parry highlighted it60—Repgen’s and our approach is not about motives. Neither is it our intention to ‘reduce normative orders to practices’.61 Rather, our aim is to emphasize the discursive construction of normative orders through the communicative reference to norms in political practice on the one hand and legal theory on the other (see below). While war discourses in legal theory (p.12) are firmly established in the History and Theory of International Law, normative discourses in political practice (from past to present) still have to be reconstructed.
Repgen’s early critique of dogmatic reservations about the role of norms in international politics and his plea for an analytical turn in dealing with this topic more recently have been followed up by an impressive study on belligerent princes’ public declarations of war by Anuschka Tischer.62 By analysing how belligerent princes in early modern Europe actually justified war, which norms were accepted, and to what extent the emergence of modern international law resulted from a process involving elaborate communication in the context of power politics, Tischer reveals the heuristic productivity of an empirical approach to the study of the politics of justification. She also shows to what extent the politics of justification in early modernity contributed to the shaping of modern international law. This way she helps to narrow the gap in our knowledge about the interplay between theoretical discourses on international law and political practice.
Along this line, the present anthology should help to emphasize the importance of minding and bridging the gap between political and theoretical war discourses. For instance, Isabel V. Hull shows in her studies on German justifications of war and international law in the historical context of the First World War, that there was considerable controversy inside the German government about the content of official declarations, and even about whether they were necessary at all. The international reception of Germany’s arguments by other powers underline the argument of other authors: within different historical communication communities or communities of practice, the justification of the use of force became a political discourse about normativity. This at least in part conditioned political leaders to believe themselves to be restrained in their decisions for or against war by a common understanding of when the use of force was permissible.
Again, this re-orientation of research towards the inclusion of the practice of justification does not at all devalue the analysis of doctrinal discourses on the justification of war and international order as historical sources and philosophical reflections. Thus, some of the literature may have a more ‘classical’, theory-driven focus than those chapters that aim at writing a history of international order on the basis of political practice. The interesting question is to what extent these different approaches speak to each other. As already pointed out, we assume that there is a close interplay between political practice and theoretical reflection. This interplay of theory and practice comes to the fore in the role of the international lawyer who observes legal practices and by doing so intervenes in the formation of law.63 For instance, part of the literature shows that in discourses addressing the normative side of war lawyers themselves operate as visionaries64 or critics of political practice65 and (p.13) this way get involved in the shaping of international order. Bridging the gap between practice and theory might then be ‘the most difficult problem of the scientific treatment of international law in its history’.66 Nevertheless, we deem it both necessary and worthwhile to work on this issue, preferably from different disciplinary perspectives and methodological angles.
3. The Politics of Justification: War Discourses as a Struggle for Order/Authority As mentioned above, this book’s core thesis is that the history of war justifications also refers to the history of international order(s). Thus, the subject of war discourses touches on the quest for ordering the international, which has always been at the core of scholarly debates in (the History of) International Law and International Relations. The very fact of the existence of multiple and often widely diverse ‘communities’ coupled with the fact of their interactions and interrelations makes the problem of order at the international level inescapable. Accounts of ‘international’ or ‘world’ order are the inevitable result as is the fact that accounts of international relations cannot but try and deal with the problem of order.68
The way in which order is thought about is thus the subject of historically changeable worldviews. This is of central importance for a genealogical treatment of the role of international norms in war discourses. However, there are no commonly shared definitions of ‘international order’, especially with regard to one of its most important fields, the order of war and violence. It depends on one’s theoretical point of view whether international order is understood as ‘a pluralist and limited society of sovereign states’,69 or as the rule of the powerful70 and rich,71 or—in Kantian terms—as a legal order that will eventually overcome war.
WhileRealists have no problem with defining war as an aspect of international order, normative theory tends to juxtapose the two. Richard Falk defines international order as ‘the distribution [both] of power and authority among the political actors on the global stage’.72 With this he points to the double feature of order as based on (p.14) ‘power’ and ‘authority’ (which encompasses political, moral, or legal authority).73 On the one hand, international order—like any order—is based on political, social, and economic power (asymmetries). On the other hand, however, international orders are also ‘normative orders’ since any political order needs justification.74 Order not only offers stability (first and foremost of expectations), but also involves the issue of legitimacy and authority. Society and order are not possible without the formation of generally shared convictions75 and accepted norms: ubi societas, ibi ius.76 Furthermore, ‘no political society, national or international, can exist unless people submit to certain rules of conduct’.77 Where no norms, rules, or standards are considered binding, anarchy prevails.
This is to say that international order is constituted by power and norms.78 (The Histories of) International Law and International Relations have usually treated power and normativity as a dichotomy. However, both spheres are historically closely interwoven: norms rely on political acceptance, and even the crudest power politics refer to justification. With this the analytical focus shifts from dealing exclusively with the distribution of power to the inclusion of the processes through which legitimacy79 and authority in an international order are established.
Thus, the formation of order at the international level is not only a political but also a social process of criticism and conflict, as critical theorists like Walter Benjamin or Michel Foucault emphasize.80 Furthermore, the emergence of normative orders, especially at the international level and particularly in the highly politicized field of justifying war, is shaped by power struggles and struggles over the authority of fundamental normative standards concerning the use of force. Rudolf von Jhering (1818–1892) put this aptly with reference to legal norms, ‘Law is a struggle’ of mankind (in the shape of ‘nations, of the state, of classes, of individuals’) to tame and, thus, to civilize itself.81
(p.15) This notion of law (and other spheres of normativity) as a social struggle refers to the procedural character of the emergence of normativity: as outlined above, discourses on norms socialize political actors with regard to domestic82 as well as international politics.83 Within these discourses, norms continuously are the subject of social and political debates. This points to a fundamental dialectic of the historical discourse of the justification of war and international order: by referring to order in their justification of war, political actors or theorists not only attempt to identify their own use of force as ‘appropriate behaviour’ in accord with the norms of the international order,84 they also claim to restore an order recognized as legitimate. However, in the asserted restoration of old normativity, political actors mix old and new forms, concepts and ideas of ordering the international. In other words: In their war justifications, political actors claim to restore an old order; but they actually create something new precisely with this claim.85
Processes of building international order always have involved the justification of the use of force as a means to provide for peace or at least as a way of restoring civil order.86 To quote Jhering again: ‘The end of the law is peace. The means to that end is war.’87 This entanglement of international ordering and the use of force Walter Benjamin would have described as schicksalhafte Gewalt (‘fateful violence’). In his famous essay Kritik der Gewalt (‘Critique of Violence’), Benjamin defined violence as the origin of law, which appeared either in the form of law-making or law-preserving violence: ‘Lawmaking is power making, and, to that extent, an immediate manifestation of violence.’88 This violence cannot be completely overcome even in a purely legal system. Or, in the words of Hans Kelsen: a normative order always is a ‘coercive order’.
Of course, it makes a big difference whether the use of force is embedded in the rule of law or in some authoritarian set-up in which submission prevails. However, even under the rule of law, law remains a double-edged sword because it operates under the condition of an uneven distribution of power and vulnerability. The rule of law therefore tends to nudge the citizen into an uneasy acceptance of rules typical for a hegemonic constellation.90 The point is that the dialectic relationship between war and order is perpetuated not only by the exertion of power as such but in a continuous discourse on the legitimacy of the use of force and the authority to exercise it. This calls into question realist narratives of anarchy, and also liberal narratives of progress in the discourse on violence in international relations.91 Instead, the relationship between war and order underlines the need for a systematic historical contextualization of war discourses as complex struggles for normativity in the face of power politics. As mentioned above, neither power nor normativity prevail in these discourses. They rather interact continuously.
Discourses on the use of force are therefore understood here as discourses in which the emerging or existing normative frame of reference for the use of force at the same time is claimed to be valid, contested, modified, and rejected.92 To define norms only on the basis of their written codification as a fixed ‘set of rules’ is therefore a clear analytical mistake. International law is about the social practice of negotiating acceptance of norms in historical communication communities,93 or, in a modified version of a formulation by Randall Lesaffer, it is about ‘multiple normativities in action’.94 This also underlines, once again, the importance of turning not only to theory but also to the political practice of justifying war.
In the late nineteenth century, in the midst of the European imperial world order, the struggle for order involved strategic efforts by Japan and some of the existing political entities in the South to study European international law in order to be able to meet the requirements for being accepted as subjects of international law.95 For many states, belonging to the normative order of European international law became the yardstick of ‘civilization’ in the nineteenth century. For other socio-political entities, this combination of international law and ‘civilization’ meant that European standards were imposed on them by unequal treaties, interventions, colonialism, and ‘civilizing missions’. The discourse on the use of force was clearly Western-dominated as it distinguished between legitimate reasons and means for war among major powers or ‘civilized’ states on the one hand, enforcement between European states and the non-European ‘(semi-)periphery’ on the other.97 This order worked on the basis of simultaneous submission, uneasy acceptance, traces of mutual recognition, and an international rule of law. What we experience today is a cacophony of the basic working principles of international order which reveals that there is a lot of tension between them.
(p.17) Furthermore, as Arnulf Becker has shown in his book on Mestizo International Law, during the first three decades of the twentieth century and in particular during the interwar period, non-Western lawyers, politicians, and activists referred to international law to support the demand for self-government. In this process, the semi-periphery of international order appropriated and transformed the international law discourse and with this pushed for a non-Western imprint on the legal order of the world. This shows that the universalization of international law was marked by contributions from quite distinct sources. Rather than being purely European, the discourse on the use of force is increasingly mestizo.
A genealogical perspective on these discourses inevitably raises questions relating to change and continuity, for instance in the form of the fall of an ‘old’ and the emergence of a ‘new’ international order.99 It is tempting to construct a narrative of progress in dealing with conflict on the basis of such a dichotomy. But does it do justice to the complex histories of the justification of war and international order? To which extent and how does reference to norms in war discourses change (on the part of observers and actors) from early modernity to the present? Is there a changing balance between power-political, legal, and moral references in favour of legal references designed to cope with norm collisions (rule of law)? Has the dialectic relation between peace (as a goal) and war (as a means of achieving it) changed since it was invoked for the first time in antiquity? Or are we riding a merry-go-round in our efforts to think peace in a world of war?100
Narrativity, as Jürgen Osterhammel expressed it with reference to Reinhart Koselleck’s concept of ‘repetition structures’ (Wiederholungsstrukturen), is not limited to linear narratives that can be distinguished easily from one another.101 Following this observation, the aim of part of the literature on this topic is to provide material for a genealogy of different histories of striving for international order and resulting setbacks. As some of the contributions in this anthology show, change in terms of an increasing weight of legal arguments (in comparison to moral or political ones) is always precarious and repeatedly marked by a relapse into mere power politics combined with moral reasoning.102 Thus, the aim of the book is to highlight the fragility and the persistence of shared normative orientations in the struggle for international order.
Continuity and contingency also have to be addressed with a view to the categorization of the use of force both in political practice103 and in normative theory. We speak of ‘war’ as this might be the most common socio-political term of collective violence. However, some works on this topic are by no means limited to interstate wars in the ‘classic’ Clausewitzian sense. Rather, they engage with and reflect upon different forms and justifications of force, such as ‘wars of aggression’, ‘preventive’ and ‘pre-emptive war’, ‘colonial war’, ‘humanitarian intervention’, ‘self-defence’, ‘measures short of war’, or ‘coercion’. Though all of these terms are not really new, the way they relate to each other is getting ever more complex: under a largely legalized order for the justification of the use of force, ‘war’ turns into ‘collective security’, ‘intervention’ turns into ‘the Responsibility to Protect’, the meddling with domestic wars into ‘just policing’, etc. Even ‘just war’ may give way to ‘justified war’.
Is this a mere play of words? We think not. The change in the language points to changing requirements for the justification of the use of force. As such it reflects the basic predicament of an order based on the use of force and the limits of solving the problem once and for all.