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Committing one's country to war is a grave decision. Governments often have to make tough calls, but none are quite so painful as those that involve sending soldiers into harm's way, to kill and be killed. The idea of 'just war' informs how we approach and reflect on these decisions. It signifies the belief that while war is always a wretched enterprise it may in certain circumstances, and subject to certain restrictions, be justified. Boasting a long history that is usually traced back to the sunset of the Roman Empire, it has coalesced over time into a series of principles and moral categories - e.g., just cause, last resort, proportionality, etc. - that will be familiar to anyone who has ever entered a discussion about the rights and wrongs of war. Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Just War focuses both on how this particular tradition of thought has evolved over time and how it has informed the practice of states and the legal architecture of international society. This book examines the vexed position that the concept of victory occupies within this framework.

AbstractJust war theory appears ever more alienated from the practice it ostensibly regulates, warfare. An increasingly abstract and esoteric discourse, it can seem very remote from the mud-and-blood actualities of warfare. This is reflective of a broader disconnect between the study of, on the one hand, the ethics of war, and, on the other, the lived experience of war. Seeking to address this problem, this article asks: How can we recentre just war thinking as a 'lived' theory? It proposes that we can reconnect just war theory to the lived experience of warfare by restoring its historical dialogue with existentialism. It develops this position by reading just war theory through the prism of Albert Camus's writings on political violence. It concludes that Camus's political thoughts provides a set of signposts for the development of a mode of just war theorising that places that the lived experience of warfare at the heart of our ethical thinking about war.

AbstractThe year 2020 has been a very trying one for many people, and universities have not been exempted from the challenges it has posed. There are real concerns that the effects of COVID-19 could lead to a lost generation of academic researchers. At the same time, this has been an unusually fecund period for the field of ethics and international affairs. New ideas regarding the relationship between politics and ethics have come to light, with implications for how we think about what ethics actually comprises. This essay seeks to take stock of this moment by considering the contributions to the field made by four recently published books. It concludes that we are observing a trend toward a more expansive way of thinking about ethics, one that has significant implications for how we approach the task of international relations scholarship.

Victory has historically been regarded as the 'telos' or 'very object' of war. As one well-placed commentator has noted, war is all about winning. It is baffling to note, then, that contemporary just war theory, the predominant framework for addressing the moral and legal questions that war raises, makes no allowance for victory. Today's just war theorists shun the language of victory, preferring instead to speak about the 'endings' of warfare. This article investigates why just war theorists have been so reluctant to engage with the idiom of victory. It identifies seven principal objections to accommodating victory in just war theory and subjects them to cross-examination. It concludes that while there are good reasons for regarding the discourse of victory as deeply problematic, these same reasons could (and arguably should) be taken as an argument for embracing rather than ignoring victory within the just war framework. Such a move would not only spare just war theory of the charge of irrelevance by ensuring that it remains connected to the material realities of modern warfare, it would also illuminate the tragic character of just war itself, revealing both its necessity and limitations.

Victory has historically been regarded as the ' telos' or 'very object' of war. As one well-placed commentator has noted, war is all about winning. It is baffling to note, then, that contemporary just war theory, the predominant framework for addressing the moral and legal questions that war raises, makes no allowance for victory. Today's just war theorists shun the language of victory, preferring instead to speak about the 'endings' of warfare. This article investigates why just war theorists have been so reluctant to engage with the idiom of victory. It identifies seven principal objections to accommodating victory in just war theory and subjects them to cross-examination. It concludes that while there are good reasons for regarding the discourse of victory as deeply problematic, these same reasons could (and arguably should) be taken as an argument for embracing rather than ignoring victory within the just war framework. Such a move would not only spare just war theory of the charge of irrelevance by ensuring that it remains connected to the material realities of modern warfare, it would also illuminate the tragic character of just war itself, revealing both its necessity and limitations.

AbstractBy claiming that "just war is just war," critics suggest that just war theory both distracts from and sanitizes the horror of modern warfare by dressing it up in the language of moral principles. However, the phrase can also be taken as a reminder of why we need just war theory in the first place. It is precisely because just war is just war, with all that this implies, that we must think so carefully and so judiciously about it. Of course, one could argue that the rump of just war scholarship over the past decade has been characterized by disinterest regarding the material realities of warfare. But is this still the case? This essay examines a series of benchmark books on the ethics of war published over the past year. All three exemplify an effort to grapple with the hard facts of modern violent conflict, and they all skillfully bring diverse traditions of just war thinking into conversation with one another.