Is NATO's Onslaught a "Just War"?

Abstract

Countless commentators have insisted that NATO's war against Yugoslavia has revived the medieval notion of the "just war." The notion of the "just war" has been adapted many times throughout history to differing sets of values and ideas. Since the eighteenth century, it has been used to justify independence wars as well as revolutionary wars, by currents ranging from liberalism to communism, through nationalism, or any mixture of those and other ideologies, including typically medieval ideologies. For instance, the famous "jihad" so much heard of in the last decades, is nothing but the Islamic version of "just war." Perhaps some commentators simply wanted to hint at the fact that there is now a renewed version of the Western Christian version of "jihad."This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.