In what circumstances is it legitimate to use force? How should force be
used? These are two of the most crucial questions confronting world
politics today. The Just War tradition provides a set of criteria which political
leaders and soldiers use to defend and rationalize war. This book
explores the evolution of thinking about just wars and examines its role
in shaping contemporary judgements about the use of force, from grand
strategic issues of whether states have a right to pre-emptive
self-defence, to the minutiae of targeting.
Bellamy maps the evolution of the Just War tradition, demonstrating how
it arose from a myriad of sub-traditions, including scholasticism, the
holy war tradition, chivalry, natural law, positive law, Erasmus and
Kant's reformism, and realism from Machiavelli to Morgenthau. He then
applies this tradition to a range of contemporary normative dilemmas
related to terrorism, pre-emption, aerial bombardment and
humanitarian intervention.