International Norms and the Resort to War

This book constitutes an extremely valuable contribution to the field. It significantly adds to the body of literature concerning the motivating factors underpinning the decisions by policy makers to resort to or refrain from the use of armed force. - Howard M. Hensel, Professor, Air War College, USA. This book offers a fresh perspective on timeless questions concerning anarchy and order, power and principle, and public and private morality, by taking a novel approach to the study of the onset of war. Rather than looking at the distribution of wealth, military might, or other material capabilities to explain the onset of war, this book focuses instead on how international norms affect the use of military force. Critical of the realist assumption that international legal norms are unable to curb hostilities without a powerful central authority to enforce their injunctions, it contends that the normative context within which national leaders act sets the tone for world politics by communicating commonly accepted understandings about the limits of permissible action. Using quantitative analyses of the relationships between war initiation norms and various types of armed conflict, the author calls into question realist beliefs regarding international norms, demonstrating that restrictive normative orders reduce the likelihood of war. Gregory A. Raymond is Distinguished Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Boise State University, USA

Intro -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- About the Author -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- 1 Introduction: Order Without Leviathan -- The Problem of Cooperating Under Anarchy -- A Conjecture -- Implications for World Politics -- Cooperating to Manage the Use of Force -- Underlying Assumptions -- Conceptualizing International Norms -- References -- 2 International Norms -- The Growing Attentiveness to International Norms -- The Relevance of International Norms -- Defining International Norms -- Behavioral Definitions -- Deontic Definitions -- Measuring International Norms -- Classifying International Norms -- Normative Context and Foreign Policy Choice -- References -- 3 Norms and Normative Orders -- Political Realism and Realpolitik -- The Controversy Over Realpolitik -- Types of International Normative Orders -- Permissive Normative Order -- Restrictive Normative Order -- The Resort to War in Permissive and Restrictive Normative Orders -- References -- 4 Normative Constraints on the Recourse to War -- Justifications for Commencing War -- Defensive Military Action -- Offensive Military Action -- Charting Trends in War-Initiation Norms -- The Evolution of Norms Regulating the Resort to War -- Are There Exceptions to Norms Governing War's Legitimacy? -- References -- 5 Necessity as a Defense for Breaching the Norms of War -- The Exigencies of Necessity -- Necessity and Reason of State -- Applications of the Necessity Defense -- Appraisals of the Argument from Necessity -- Normative Support for Appeals to Necessity -- Index Construction -- The Historical Trend -- The Place of Necessity Within the International Normative Order -- References -- 6 Classifying International Normative Orders -- When Is the International Climate of Opinion Ripe for War? -- Identifying Normatively Permissive and Restrictive Periods -- Cluster Stability.