Principles Under Pressure: Just War Doctrine and American Antiterror Strategy After 9/11

Abstract

In the Study of International relations today, the willingness to cross theoretical and methodological boundaries is often a sign of mature scholarship, as is the willingness to engage a diverse nonacademic audience that includes policy makers and practitioners. Few in the discipline have crossed as many of these boundaries, and with such good effect, as Bruce Russett. One frequent crossing has been into the area of international ethics, especially the ethics of war and nuclear deterrence. Russett served as principal consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, participating in the drafting of their highly influential pastoral letter on the ethics of war in the nuclear era, The Challenge of Peace (1983). He has written on nearly every ethical problem encountered by the student of world politics: not only war and weapons, but also poverty, inequality, human rights, representation, female empowerment, and environmental degradation. In our field, social scientific inquiry may often appear dispassionate and detached from the pressing moral issues of our times, but social scientists need not be. Russett’s boundary crossings demonstrate that very clearly (e.g., Russett 1989, 2001).KeywordsBush AdministrationDirty HandImminent ThreatNonstate ActorSupreme EmergencyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.