Legitimacy Of War Research Articles

Beyond Borders: Unpacking us Military Involvement in Afghanistan as a Case Study in the Islamic World

Purpose: This study seeks to assess the adherence to international law in the 2001 U.S.-led military intervention in Afghanistan, prompted by the September 11 attacks. Additionally, it aims to investigate the impact of the Greater Middle East Initiative on U.S. policy towards the Islamic World, specifically Afghanistan, providing insights into legal intricacies and broader consequences. Theoretical Framework: This article engages in discussions among Western scholars on the Afghanistan war and U.S. military involvement but distinguishes itself by incorporating insights from Middle Eastern scholars. It aims to enrich the discourse by integrating perspectives from within the Middle Eastern scholarly community, offering a comprehensive view of these complex subjects. Methodology: Employing historical, descriptive, and in-depth analytical research methods, this study examines events around September 11, 2001, providing essential context for the subsequent U.S. military intervention. Descriptive methods offer a detailed account of the post-9/11 shift in U.S. policy, while in-depth analytical methods scrutinize legal dilemmas arising from the intervention, contributing to a comprehensive understanding of historical context, U.S. policy decisions, and legal complexities. Results: The results and discussion section explores the historical evolution of U.S. military engagement in 21st-century Afghanistan, analyzing its strategic shifts and the Taliban's adaptation to guerrilla warfare. It critically evaluates the international legal aspects of the Afghan War, assessing the legitimacy of the U.S.-led military intervention based on UN conventions, historical precedents, and key principles such as the right to legitimate defense, urgency, and proportionality. Conclusions: The aftermath of September 11, 2001, marked a transformative moment in U.S. policy towards Afghanistan and the broader Middle East, leading to the consequential Afghan War. Despite its geopolitical significance, the absence of explicit UN Security Council authorization prompts a critical examination of the war's legitimacy, revealing lapses in meeting criteria for the right to individual or collective legitimate defense and urging a reevaluation of established narratives in international relations and global politics.

Killing and Dying for Public Relations

My starting point is the first major American military action in World War II in Europe, “Operation Torch.” The action was controversial because the American military regarded it as militarily useless, if not counterproductive. But the military was overruled by President Roosevelt on the grounds that, while it was not militarily necessary, it was politically justified. This indifference to military necessity seems to violate standard rules about the legitimacy of military force. The larger question it raises is the relation between military concerns and political ones in warfare. Much of this essay explores the relation between these two dimensions in war: the military dimension and the political dimension. I argue that the second dimension is the most important one, as well as the most problematic one for the legitimacy of war. Yet it is ignored by standard just war theories. I then return at the end to consider again the problems raised by “Operation Torch,” and especially the question of the harms inflicted on a country’s own soldiers – in the name of killing and dying for public relations.

The Problem of the Legitimacy of War in the Context of Ethical Concepts: The Example of the 44-day War

The article analyzes the issues of the legitimacy of war, the relationship between war and morality in the context of different ethical concepts. It is shown that the somewhat ‘fashionable’ notion of the ethics of war is actually problematic and does not clearly express the peculiarities of the relationship between war and morality. Analyzing the main conceptual discourses about war, it is argued that in some of them the acceptance of the legitimacy of war does not make sense with the logic of the watershed between war and morality. Analyzing the 44-day War separately for the first time in the context of the principles of the conception of just wars, it is argued that Azerbaijan’s military aggression against Artsakh was actually accompanied by a gross violation of many of these principles, despite the propaganda efforts of the Azerbaijani side to claim the opposite.

Mencius and Xunzi on the legitimate use of offensive force: A pacifistic critique of recent just war interpretations

AbstractThis essay offers a critical evaluation of competing interpretations of the early Confucian thinkers Xunzi and Mencius regarding their view of the legitimacy of war. First, I briefly describe and critique Daniel Bell's “just war” interpretation of Mencius, which is relatively permissive regarding the legitimation of war. I then consider and critique the position of Sumner Twiss and Jonathan Chan regarding Mencius' and Xunzi's ostensible support for what we call “humanitarian intervention,” which is also made from a just war perspective. Next, I describe Xinzhong Yao's pacifistic interpretation, offering a slightly qualified defense of it. I then consider reframing this view as “just war pacifism,” defending a phrase used in the Confucian context by Julia Ching. Finally, I address the question of whether the pacifistic account is too naïve to attribute to these great Confucian thinkers. I maintain that, on the contrary, it is not naïve. Indeed, it is a position we would do well to give due consideration.

КОНЦЕПТ СПРАВЕДЛИВОЙ ВОЙНЫ В РОССИЙСКОМ ОБЩЕСТВЕННО-ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОМ ДИСКУРСЕ (1914–1916 гг.)

The article analyzes the representations of the Russian socio-political discourse of 1914–1916, dedicated to the justification of the First World War as a just war on the part of Russia and its Allies. It considers the role of the factors that shaped the image of a just war in the minds of the European political and intellectual elite and the younger generation, as well as the emergence of the idea of “spirituality” of war as the basis for its legitimation. The author stresses the influence of the international conventions on the laws and customs of war on the image of a just war in Russia as well as the specifics of the socio-cultural situation at the turn of the 20th century, which made it difficult to conduct ideological and psychological preparation for world clash that could affect the mass consciousness. The image of a just war began to take shape in Russia after the country entered the conflict and was based on the idea of a defensive war against an external aggressor. The fact that Germany was the first to declare war on Russia, the realities of bloody confrontation contributed to the formation and broadcast the ideas about the “Second Patriotic War”. The concept of the “Second Patriotic War”, which appealed to historical memory, became the embodiment of the idea of a just war in the 1914–1915 Russian socio-political discourse. An important component of the image of a just war in Russia was the notions of the spiritual and religious sense of confrontation. They were embodied in ideas about the implementation of the sacred mission of liberating Europe and the world from “Germanism”, the protection of the Slavs, the “struggle for truth”, the affirmation of the renewed ideal of “Holy Russia”. The ideas of a “holy war against Germanism” got embedded in the discourse of the press into the system of ideas about the fairness of the goals and objectives of the Allies. Another basis for the legitimacy of war was the concept embodied in the slogan “the war to end all wars”. The influential concept of Entente propaganda received a wide response in the Russian liberal and democratic press, which interpreted the meaning of the world conflict in a political and legal terms. The war was seen as a way to establish a new system of international relations based on the rule of the “force of law” as opposed to the “law of force” personified by Germany. Illusions about the possibility of establishing “eternal peace” after the war were widely broadcast in the press, becoming an element of ideas about a just struggle for a better future of mankind. The notions about “German atrocities” widely broadcast by propaganda in the Entente countries were important element of the justification of violence against the enemy and legitimization of the war. In Russia, despite the enemy’s violation of international conventions governing conducting the war and the presence of this topic in the press, the image of “German atrocities” did not play the significant role in socio-political discourse in comparison with the Entente countries.

Perfect War: Alberico Gentili on the Use of Force and the Early Modern Law of Nations

Abstract Gentili’s conceptualization of war as a conflict between states attempted to limit the legitimacy of war to external wars only, thus precluding the legitimacy of civil wars. It reflected both the emergence of sovereign states and the vision of international law as a law among polities rather than individuals. The conceptualization of war as a dispute settlement mechanism among polities rather than a punishment for breach of the law of nations and the idea of the bilateral justice of war humanized the conduct of warfare and the content of peace treaties. The idea of perfect war excluded brigandage, piracy, and civil wars from its purview. Some scholars have suggested that perfect war had a dark side, legitimizing imperial expansion. Others have cautioned that Gentili explicitly opposed imperial expansion rather adopting anti-imperialist stances. This article suggests that these ambivalent readings of the Gentilian oeuvre reflect the ambivalence of the early modern law of nations. Under the early modern law of nations, aggression for the sake of empire was clearly unjust; nonetheless, imperial expansion took place. Whereas ‘a law which many transgress[ed] [wa]s nonetheless a law’, there was a wide divide between theory and practice.1

The Discourse of Proportionality and the Use of Force: International Law and the Power of Definition

Abstract Foregrounding standards like ‘proportionality’ and ‘necessity’ have come to assume a central place in the international legal vocabulary for assessing the legitimacy of war. In both ethical and practical terms, the shift towards common standards provides a useful vernacular to assess military operations. But the question remains: how should these terms be interpreted and applied and by whom? Simultaneously, debates over the definitional boundaries of the legal concept of war and its attendant categories (e.g. lawful military objects, protected zones, combatants, civilians) have arisen in many contexts, leaving room for different and conflicting interpretations, often to the detriment of marginalised groups and weaker States. This article examines the ambivalences, complexities and contestations that have arisen in the move towards broader and subjective discourses of law and war, through the lens of proportionality.

Back From Utopia: How Donbas Fighters Reinvent Themselves in a Post-Novorossiya Russia

AbstractHow to cope with the end of utopia? How to move from making history on a day-to-day basis to capitalizing on a legend? That is the dilemma Russian veterans of the Donbas insurgency have faced since the exalting atmosphere of Novorossiya faded away. In this article, I trace the transformations of the Novorossiya utopia from the point at which Russian volunteer fighters began to return to Russia and found themselves compelled to reinvent themselves in a new context. I first look at the difficult reconversion from war to politics of Donbas heroes such as Igor Strelkov and Aleksandr Borodai and how their efforts to launch new structures based on their war legitimacy have succeeded or failed. I then turn to investigate the birth of new heroes, such as the writer Zakhar Prilepin, who wave the metaphorical flag of Donbas at a time when exaltation of the war has declined. After that, I explore how Novorossiya has become a literature genre that occupies the shelves of Russian bookstores, spanning fromNovorossievedenie—the “science of Novorossiya”—to the rich subgenre of war memoirs and veteran diaries.

Bellum Iustum – Eine moraltheologische Auseinandersetzung bei Karl Hörmann

This paper will give an insight into the theological war discourse of the 20 th century. Focusing especially on the time after the Second World War, Karl Hormann!s scientific discourse (1915–2004) will be the pivotal element of this article. One of his main research areas was the bellum-iustum doctrine, which he restricted in a way that questioned the legitimacy of war, even though he also argued strictly against an imperative war ban. Hormann!s writings show a dichotomy, which in a certain way reflects a paradigmatic dilemma of his time. On the one hand, it demonstrates adherence to the traditional doctrines of just war and the right to defense. On the other hand, attempts of a new peace ethics become visible. Hormann!s teachings were marked by the obligation to defend justice and, at the same time, by a desire for peace.

Kekristenan dan Violence: Just War dan Tradisi Kristen

ABSTRACT: After man has sinned, violence cannot be separated from human life. As Christianity comes into contact with violence, it generates a theory of just-war in responding against injustice. The applications of just-war theory are not only limited to Christian circle, but has reached wider groups. Just-war has become a guidance for non-Christian philosophers and politicians to fight oppressors and to uphold justice. This paper discribes the idea of just-war in Christians tradition, firstly by exploring the legitimacy of war in the light of the Word of God, and secondly by comparing it to the holy war in the context of the Old Testament. To better understand the views of the church leaders about just-war this paper will also discuss the criticisms against the theory. The author believes that the presence of just-war theory is crucial in the midst of this sinful world. KEYWORDS: violence, the legitimacy of war, just-war, holy war, peace, justice, Christian love

VISÕES DA CONQUISTA E LEGITIMIDADE DA GUERRA: MAQUIAVEL E FRANCISCO DE VITÓRIA

O artigo apresenta uma reflexão sobre a legitimidade das guerras de conquista a partir de dois clássicos do pensamento jurídico e político do século XVI: Francisco de Vitória, da Escolástica Espanhola, e Nicolau Maquiavel, italiano do Humanismo Renascentista. Valendo-se da metodologia dialética, pergunta-se sobre as diferentes visões das guerras de conquista. Para tanto, em primeiro lugar, apresenta a vida e obra dos autores estudados. Em seguida, aborda as relações internacionais na Idade Média e a formação do Estado Moderno. Posteriormente, trata de relacionar o Humanismo Renascentista e a Escolástica Espanhola. Ao final, retoma o pensamento dos autores e suas escolas para concluir que o pensador do século XVI é o homem que procura legitimar as guerras de conquista, seja com base na ordem natural ou remontando à ordem divina.

The Legitimacy of War under the Perspective of the Speech-act Theory The Cases of the First and Second Gulf Wars (1991/2003) in a Comparative Analysis

The article aims at analyzing some processes of securitization during the Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003, in a comparative perspective, seeking to reveal how the influence of some of the most important political actors of the United States' decision-making structure is materialized, through their speeches, in an attempt to present some of the identified threats as socially constructed cognitive elements. To accomplish the task this research applied the conceptual framework provided by the Theory of Speech-Acts (TSA) and by the Theory of Securitization as well considering the current understanding of the so-called jus ad bellum (or right to wage war).

Rescuing America from Iraq: the gothic remorse of Iraq War documentaries

Taking a rhetorical approach to documentary, this article examines the narrative and aesthetic constructs of policy documentaries about the Iraq War. Focusing on two high-profile films, No End in Sight and Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, the article outlines how these documentaries work to extenuate American transgressions during the occupation by invoking a superficial gothic rhetoric. Within this rhetoric, the neo-conservatives of the Bush administration are cast as shadowy and conspiratorial forces who have corrupted American values. Alternatively, policy-makers and military personnel are cast as virtuous representatives of American democracy and emerge as innocent victims of a seemingly monstrous administration. By relying on this simplistic good and evil construct, which ironically mirrors the rhetoric of Bush administration's War on Terror, and by ignoring outright the question of the war's legitimacy, these films ultimately reaffirm the virtues of the very institutions which oversee American war and occupation. The Iraq War is then memorialised as a catastrophe created by corrupt neo-conservatives and one which does not merit deeper reflection on the use of war as a tool of US foreign policy.

Tough Reading:

Tough Reading:

When media of a small nation argue for war

In this comparative analysis of editorial columns in Danish newspapers, we analyze how news media can act as a political voice during times of war. Whereas most studies of media coverage of war focus on one specific war, this analysis provides empirically and theoretically grounded conclusions across three wars: Afghanistan 2001–, Iraq 2003–2007, and Libya 2011. The analysis focuses on the interpretative frames that are mobilized concerning the cause of conflict, the legitimacy of war, and the rationales for deploying Danish troops. Various models of elite–media relationships are considered and modified from a theoretical perspective in order to take into account the particular problems involved for a small nation going to war. The analysis largely confirms the influence of elite consensus or dissensus on media coverage. Other influential factors include the media system and the semi-autonomous status of newspapers as an elite voice competing with other opinion-making elites.

Materializing US Security: Guantanamo's Object Lessons and Concrete Messages

While a growing body of literature working at the intersection of security and visual studies recognizes the value of studying images, how these visualities are produced is less theorized, especially with respect to materialities and their capacity to compel meanings. Analyzing the tours of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, which have been arranged by the US military for VIP visitors since the site opened, this article argues that the selective organization and presentation of specific matter was image-making and therefore meaning-making. Through efforts to produce a spectacle of detention, Guantanamo was deliberately constructed as “safe, humane, legal, transparent”—in the process shifting the meaning of these very concepts. Guantanamo's tours as visual and material practices were therefore used to produce meaning in the debate over the future of the site and how best to secure the US state post-9/11. They were part of the constitution of the war's legitimacy, leading, ultimately, to certain understandings of security. Guantanamo, with its “object lessons” and “concrete messages,” is therefore a useful case study for understanding security meaning-making as produced by the interaction of linguistic, visual, and material domains and their elements.

Should Rebels Be Amnestied?

This paper was first presented at a conference organized by the Grotius Centre in Hague on the jus post bellum. It seeks to take a new look at a critical question, whether rebels in non-international armed conflicts should benefit from an amnesty at the close of hostilities. Such an amnesty effectively amounts to recognizing a privilege of belligerency retrospectively for rebels, at least insofar as the penal consequences of their acts are concerned. Protocol II takes a cautious position in that direction requiring states to endeavor to grant such amnesties, but the provision clearly created some unease at the 1974-77 conference. The chapter traces this unease to the fact that it is not clear what the rationale for the rule is, nor why it has its place in an international humanitarian law treaty. Amnesties may indeed facilitate peace or reconciliation, but one could also argue that in absolving those guilty of some of the worst offences against the state's order they are the very anti-thesis of seeking to reestablish the rule of law. The argument is often heard that conferring a privilege of belligerency will encourage non-state actors' compliance with international humanitarian law, but that simplistic assumption is criticized as not psychologically or sociologically plausible. Inquiring into the foundation of the privilege of belligerency in international armed conflicts, it is argued that contrary to what is often assumed the privilege has no logical or necessary connection to the jus in bello project, and instead manifests the relative legitimacy of war, even in an age of jus contra bellum, as that form of violence engaged in by states or entities that can be assimilated to it. In this classical view, then, the privilege of belligerency results from an agreement to disagree between equals against the background of an irreducible international order. In a priori non-international situations, the ability to emulate state-like characteristics and produce an objectively international situation by puncturing the legal unity of the state substantially aligns such situations with those of international armed conflicts. The amnesty then manifests a recognition that the criminal had effectively become the enemy. However, that particular concept of the foundation of the privilege of belligerency is only so strong as international society's concept of the jus ad bellum is relatively weak. The privilege effectively protects the situation of the unjust/illegal warrior in ways that may be hard to rationalize, especially in a context where its humanitarian benefits have been shown to be meagre. In non-international armed conflicts, Protocol II's injunction to confer amnesties covers both acts of killing in war and the very fact of taking up arms. The latter is not a humanitarian issue, and it is therefore unclear what business a humanitarian treaty has of telling states how they should deal with a fundamental threat to their internal sovereignty. To the extent that the former is not strictly necessary to the humanitarian project, the encouragement to provide an amnesty is both over inclusive (encouraging amnesties for unjust/illegal rebellions) and under inclusive (failing to render amnesty compulsory in cases where they are manifestly just/legal). The paper finds that whether amnesties should be granted ultimately depends on whether one considers that there is at present a jus ad rebelium in international law. It concludes with a few thoughts on the power of considering these issues ex post in the just post bellum, as a way of evaluating a non-state actor's overall performance in war that safely fuses jus in bello and jus in bellum issues.

Can Human Rights Build a Better War?

“Humanity's law”—the merger of human rights law and the laws of war—is more ambivalent than first appears. The two regimes speak in one voice with respect to genocide and crimes against humanity, due process and detainee rights, and the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. But on the military terrain of “strategy,” and in the conduct of battlefield operations, human rights struggle for recognition. The law of war maintains a near monopoly over the right to life in wartime; even the International Court of Justice refracts the right to life through the prism of international humanitarian law. War law as lingua franca drives the discussion toward military issues related to targeting and restraint and away from broader human rights issues. Human rights rest uneasily with military norms that accept the strategic utility of violence. The comparative advantage of human rights is not necessarily to do a better job of applying the laws of war but to address the broad-based effects of armed conflict and to develop alternatives to war itself. Intermingling human rights and war law may jeopardize the autonomy of the human rights movement, may chip away at the “absoluteness” of humanitarian norms and may enhance the legitimacy of war through its association with rights. As modern militaries appropriate the language of humanitarianism, the challenge for human rights may be to preserve its critical independence in the face of “humane war.”

Grave Misgivings: Allegory, Catharsis, Composition

Days after the December 1890 US Army massacre of Lakota refugees at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, commercial photographer George Trager photographed the Army burial detail as they cleared the site and committed the dead to a mass grave. Widely circulated as post-cards, Trager's photographs merged with a broader colonial narrative, allegorically and cathartically sketching a heroic account of a dire confrontation between `civilization' and `savagery'. Reconfirming dominant ideas about an inherently dangerous foe, the Wounded Knee photos worked through colonial imaginaries in ways that reinforced a Euro-American monopoly on legitimacy in war. More recently, widely circulated photos of abuse of prisoners by US soldiers at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib Prison have effected a disruption of the operant war narrative. Whereas Trager's photographs worked to sustain stable definitions of moral `civilization' and `savage' depravity, those from Abu Ghraib have undermined the legitimacy of US conduct in Iraq. In this article, I consider these differing effects with reference to photographic composition and the popular functions of allegory and catharsis.

Ethics and Intervention: the ‘Humanitarian Exception’ and the Problem of Abuse in the Case of Iraq

This article investigates the ethics of intervention and explores the decision to invade Iraq. It begins by arguing that while positive international law provides an important framework for understanding and debating the legitimacy of war, it does not cover the full spectrum of moral reasoning on issues of war and peace. To that end, after briefly discussing the two primary legal justifications for war (implied UN authorization and pre-emptive self-defence), and finding them wanting, it asks whether there is a moral ‘humanitarian exception’ to this rule grounded in the ‘just war’ tradition. The article argues that two aspects of the broad tradition could be used to make a humanitarian case for war: the ‘holy war’ tradition and classical just war thinking based on natural law. The former it finds problematic, while the latter it argues provides a moral space to justify the use of force to halt gross breaches of natural law. Although such an approach may provide a moral justification for war, it also opens the door to abuse. It was this very problem that legal positivism from Vattel onwards was designed to address. As a result, the article argues that natural law and legal positivist arguments should be understood as complementary sets of ideas whose sometimes competing claims must be balanced in relation to particular cases. Therefore, although natural law may open a space for justifying the invasion of Iraq on humanitarian terms, legal positivism strictly limits that right. Ignoring this latter fact, as happened in the Iraq case, opens the door to abuse.