Legitimation Of War Research Articles

Between Pacifism and Just War: Oikonomia and Eastern Orthodox Political Theology

Scholars have often focused on the doctrinal and canonical reasons for the lack of a just war tradition in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The consensus seems to be that the Eastern Orthodox Church, for historical as well as theological reasons, has never developed a doctrine for the justification or the containment of war but was rather orientated to the question of peace (albeit without being pacifist) and the theological imperative of deification. There is, however, another reason why just war concerns never found fertile ground in Eastern Orthodoxy. Byzantine political theology carried an anarchistic theocratic dynamic that remained in tension with any effort to sanctify the Empire or its martyrs. Such a perspective has more in common (without being identical) with conceptualisations of just peace or just war as a tradition of ethical restraint on war rather than as a doctrine for the moral justification or legitimation of war.

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.

Война как наказание: исторические основания и современное состояние

The article considers punishment as a source of legitimization of war. The author traces the history of punitive paradigm of war, notes the moment when it was replaced by the legalist paradigm and considers the reactualization of the idea of punishment as a just basis of war. In order to deal with these issues, the author considers the formation of the punitive doctrine of war in the writings of Christian authors of the III–IV centuries. He analyzes the logic of justifying the war that appeared in the thoughts of Ambrose of Milan and Augustine Aurelius. Both theologians indicated the necessity to punish sin as a key cause of war. Next, the process of secularization of the doctrine of just war in Modern times is considered. During this period, the legalist paradigm of war had been developed. The right of states to protect their sovereignty and territorial integrity became most relevant just cause of war. Then, the author notes appeal to the idea of protection of human rights as a basis for justifying war, typical for the modern just war theory. Also, the revival of interest to the idea of punishment is considered and the possible reasons for the reactualization of the punitive paradigm in the turn of the XX–XXI centuries are examined.

Militarism and security: Dialogue, possibilities and limits

While attention to security has grown exponentially over the last few decades, militarism – the preparation for and normalization and legitimation of war – has not received the widespread and sustained focus it warrants in mainstream or critical circles. Rather than stake a claim for one concept over the other, however, this article – and the special issue to which it serves as an introduction – asks how we are to understand the relationship between security and militarism, both as analytical tools and as objects of analysis. We examine, first, what analytical and political work militarism and security do as concepts, and how they can be mobilized methodologically; second, what the possibilities are of fruitful exchange between knowledges produced about these concepts or practices; and, third, what the limits are of militarism and security. In the process, we address the shifts in the world that international relations and its related subfields study; shifts in the institutional framing and materiality of fields and subfields of research; and shifts in how international relations studies the world. Read together, the contributions to the special issue make the case for a reinvigorated focus on the mutual co-constitution of militarism and security.

The Palgrave Handbook of Society, Culture, and Outer Space

The Palgrave Handbook of Society, Culture, and Outer Space

Armadillo and the Viking spirit: military names and national myths in transnational military interventions

ABSTRACTRecent studies have shown that names of military bases, equipment, operations, sites, units, and weaponry have played a key role in the demonstration of power, the legitimization of war, and the formation of cohesion in the ranks. This paper argues that such naming practices form part of a broader process of the construction of meaning, or what Hans Blumenberg has termed the ‘work on myth’, since names function as principal devices for creating, reproducing, and transforming cultural narratives. Based on a case study of the Danish experience as part of Task Force Helmand in Afghanistan, the paper elucidates how the army’s names have brought stories of national origin, heroic greatness, and warrior ancestry into the banal space of life abroad, where a mythscape has grown and changed in response to the situation on the ground and changes in the wider figuration of the Afghan War. On this basis, the paper stresses the importance of nationally orientated and highly emotional myths in transnational military interventions, and calls for other researchers to look into the elusive and largely ignored cultural factor of warfare.

'Discourses of war and peace' Adam Hodges (ed.) (2013) New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 304. ISBN 978-0-19-993727-1 (hbk)

Discourses of war and peace Adam Hodges (ed.) (2013) New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 304. ISBN 978-0-19-993727-1 (hbk)Discourses of war and peace is a book predicated on the fundamental observation that 'Humans never engage in war without the mediating force of discourse' (p. 3). To this end, frames and narratives function to generate meaning and relationships and are widely used in this book to study the language of war and peace. In the context of this book, narratives are not seen as merely representing reality, but constructing the social reality by skipping the process of interpreting facts and directly seeking to depict the world as is (p. 50; Bruner, 1991). Hodges brings together a number of empirical studies from scholars working with ethnographic, sociolinguistic, communicative, and critical methods studying the legitimisation of war, peace, and their associated discursive practices. The legitimation and language of war have been popular and well-studied topics within discourse scholarship. Articles and books are published on these subjects on a regular basis (e.g. van Leeuwen, 2007; Hodges and Nilep, 2007; Reyes, 2011; Lukin, 2013) covering a breadth of literature too wide to account for in a single review. Drawing on the work of R. Brian Ferguson (2008) on the culture of war, among others, the author develops the premise of this book to view war as a cultural practice expressed in language as well as action: 'War is not wired into human brains, but rather exists as a culturally contingent phenomenon' (p. 4). The discourses of war explored in this book are mostly based on the Anglo- American discourse of the post-Cold War era, particularly language used to articulate the War on Terror.The book is divided into 4 parts, each section focusing on a different aspect of war and peace. Part 1 is occupied with legitimising military action by discursive means and contains the Critical Discourse Analysis-oriented studies. The chapters in this section study the language of American and English political leaders and policy makers in creating narratives and possible realities where war is seen as a necessary and justified action to ensure peace and safety, promoting the notion of perpetual peace (Kant, 1991). The explicit Western bias in this section is arguably the result of the events of 9/11 and the War on Terror, as observed by Dunmire (2009). In Chapter 5 of this section, Aditi Bhatia discusses the notion of possible worlds from Fairclough's (2003) perspective in her analysis of the British Weapons of Mass Destruction Dossier. Based on the work of scholars like Stalnaker (1999), possible worlds as a concept would have been useful to apply indepth in making apparent the nature of war in social reality, particularly in parts 1 and 2 of this volume.Part 2 deals with the question of how the use and presence of military force is framed in practice. In this part, Frame Analysis (Goffman, 1974) and elements of Speech Act Theory (Searle, 1969) are employed in investigating how the deployment and presence of military forces, foreign and domestic, are experienced and interpreted by different audiences and discourse communities. The studies presented in Chapters 6 and 7 of part 2 deal with Canadian peacekeeping operations in Somalia and American military bases in Okinawa, respectively. Frame analysis takes on a prominent role in parts 1 and 2 but many chapters could have benefited from a more strongly conceptualized framework as employed by Janis L. Goldie in Chapter 6. For example, the contributions of Kuypers (2009) on rhetorical criticism within frame analysis are particularly useful in studying this type of language.Part 3 consists of chapters by Chandler Hallman and Becky Schulthies investigating how people respond to armed conflicts. The chapter by Hallman compares the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Palestine and the ways in which the situation of Irish and Palestinian civilians is commensurated. …

The aestheticization of suffering on television

This article analyses an example of war footage in order to trace the ways in which the tension between presenting airwar as an `objective' piece of news and as an instance of intense human suffering is resolved in television's strategies of mediation. The bombardment of Baghdad in 2003 during the Iraq war was filmed in long-shot and presented in a quasi-literary narrative that capitalized on an aesthetics of horror, on sublime spectacle (Boltanski). The aestheticization of suffering on television is thus produced by a visual and linguistic complex that eliminates the human pain aspect of suffering, whilst retaining the phantasmagoric effects of a tableau vivant. The argument of this article is that such aestheticization of suffering manages simultaneously to preserve an aura of objectivity and impartiality, and to take a pro-war side in the war footage. The conclusion is that television's participation in the legitimation of war is more open to political and ethical criticism when seen in the light of the semiotic aestheticization of suffering than when it is confined to the general denunciation of `news bias' and the search for abstract objectivity.

The veil as a means of legitimization

The article raises the question of how the news narrative of the liberation of Afghan women from the Taliban regime is linked to the legitimization of military involvement in general and of German foreign policy in particular. We extend the concept of media logic put forth by Altheide and Snow (1979) by those of gender logic (the symbolic construction of male-female dichotomy) and the logic of war (the legitimization of war through the construction of self and other). The interconnectedness of these three logics leads to a specific presentation of women, which in turn serves as proof for the allegedly altered circumstances after the defeat of the Taliban. The discourse analysis of Germany’s leading news magazines Der Spiegel and Focus shows that the veiling and unveiling of women is the most prominent feature in their reports on Afghanistan. ‘The veiled woman’ becomes a highly symbolic representation that marks the other culture as both foreign and irrational.

Introduction

Introduction Michael J. Shapiro, Editor In addition to the election symposium organized and introduced by Jodi Dean and Tom Dumm, we have essays dealing with diverse topics: Kathleen Arnold examines the ways in which prerogative power invests the policies toward the poor and locates her investigation within a critical reading of the conceptual terrain of biopower, as it has been constructed in he writings of Foucault and Agamben. Her essay provides an exemplary inter-articulation of political theory and policy analysis. Jodi Dean begins with an examination of the uses of the ascription of evil to one’s political foes in President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” invocation and proceeds to a critical treatment of the many prior uses of the conception of evil by U.S. presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt. She concludes with a critical analysis of the ideological matrix within which “evil” has habitually taken up residence and become an “ontological fact” that animates antagonisms. Peter Paik treats Slavoj Zizek’s valorizing of Saint Paul and Soren Kierkagaard, whose conceptions of faith, according to Zizek, can serve to frame a revolutionary politics. Paik provides a nuanced reading of both the objects of Zizek’s theoretical/political zeal and his conceptual armature. Paolo Palladino does a critical reading of Ridley Scott’s film Black Hawk Down, analyzing the role of zoological figuration of foes in the legitimation of war. His main focus is on the trope of swarming, showing both thematically and cinematically how the film constructs the “Somali foe” as animal. With his emphasis on the metaphorics of global life (as opposed to the traditional “ethics of international affairs”), Palladino challenges those who extol the pax Americana that has (violently) shaped the “new world order.” Pasi Valiaho employs a broad concept of cinema to examine our contemporary auto visual era and treats the epistemological frame within which a cinema-oriented modern aesthetic has emerged. He goes on to examine the body politics implicated in a cinematic modernity, with special attention to the cinematographic work of George Melies. Finally, we have reviews by: Renee Heberle, Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborne, Davide Panagia, Keith Robinson, and Nicholas Tampio. Copyright © 2005 The Johns Hopkins University Press

ЧТО ТАКОЕ ВОЙНА?: ЭВОЛЮЦИЯ ФЕНОМЕНА ВОЙНЫ И ЕЕ ЛЕГИТИМАЦИЯ В НОВОЕ ВРЕМЯ

SUMMARY: The events of September 11, 2001 have for the first time demonstrated to a wider public what studies of war had brought to light already some time ago. Since the end of World War II, war between states has become rare. The vast majority of wars today represent acts of violence between a state and a non-state actor/group. As this kind of modern war takes place mainly in Africa and Asia, it has hardly been taken note of by the European and North American public. Yet this dominant form of war since the middle of the twentieth century repeals the state’s monopoly on war that European states have largely been able to assert since the sixteenth century. What does this repeal of a development, in the course of which the state became the bearer of the monopoly on legitimate violence (Max Weber), mean for historical research on war? The essay discusses this question taking two approaches: one asks for the significance of anthropological constants as regards the readiness of humans to wage war. Throughout the history of humankind, dehumanizing the enemy, for example, appears to have been an important presupposition to make humans ready to accept the killing of the other as legitimate. Rules of conduct that also applied and were observed during war are being invalidated against someone culturally different. In a second approach, the essay asks for the change in conceptions and legitimization of war from the Middle Ages to the present. Particular attention is given to the question how the idea of the modern nation has changed the perceptions of war. The caesura in the legitimization of war that occurred around 1800, hitherto unsurpassed, has been put for the first time into a theoretical framework by Carl von Clausewitz. His theory, however, only applies to the kind of war that has become dominant in Europe and North America since the sixteenth century, i.e. the war between states. The wars of earlier times as well as the wars of the present do not conform to this type of war. To analyze them, interdisciplinary cooperation, in particular between historical and ethnological research, is necessary.

The New International Law: Toward the Legitimation of War

THE methodology of social studies is a notoriously dangerous and controverted subject. Rather than discuss the variegated theories existing on this matter, it would be more productive to rely on the simple dichotomy of the and approaches to the study of social science. Stanley Hoffmann has observed that all American theories of international relations start either from general concepts illadapted to the meaning of foreign policy behavior or else from deductive models that are not only abstracted but also dissociated from political reality.' From the perspective of such theories, the usefulness of international law in international studies is far from evident. Our concern, however, lies with an alternative approach to the study of social science which has been primarily advocated in England. It has been said that all behavior which is meaningful (therefore, all specifically human behavior) is ipso facto rule-governed. In this comment, Peter Winch, in his excellent book, The Idea of a Social Science, differs from practically all U.S. theories of international relations.2 It has long been urged that in the study of social science we ought to follow the methods of natural science rather than those of philosophy. This, it was said, is the key to significant progress. It is not fruitful to dispute the concept of social studies as science. Such a method of investigation is undeniably both apt and productive in a proper context. What must be emphasized, however, is the so-called internal approach to social studies generally. That is, to stress that what the student of international relations is studying as well as his study involves a human activity and is therefore largely carried on with the guidance of rules, purposes, and policies. In this respect, we are building upon a philosophical base erected by Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations,3 elaborated by J. L. Austin and also by Ryle in The Concept of Mind,4 developed by Winch for social science theory, and finally by Hart for legal philosophy.5 Hart thus indicates that when a social group has certain rules of conduct this fact permits us to make all sorts of different assertions. It is possible to be concerned with these rules either merely as an observer who has not himself accepted them from an point of view or as a member of the group which accepts and uses them as guides for conduct from an point of view. Statements made from the point of view may, however, take cognizance of the fact that some other people are concerned with rules from an point of view. In the alternative, an observer could be content to record the external regularities of observable behavior in which deviation from conformity with rules can be observed in terms of hostile reactions or sanctions. This point of view, however, does not give a proper account of the manner in which the members of the group who accept the rules of conduct view their own regular behavior: A parrot may be observed to shout, Police! whenever it sees a man in uniform; it certainly does not mean that the parrot has learned the use of the word police. On the other hand, if a child utters the word police in the same