This paper examines the July 2005 shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Tube Station. It argues that the action of the police officers who shot and killed Menezes was conditioned by same logic that informs the prosecution of the war on terror. This logic bares comparison to the humanist conviction that states possess a right of response where they perceive themselves to have a `fear' of impending injury or assault. This paper explores the historical lineage of this trope in the writings of Alberico Gentili, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and, humanist thought more generally. The aim is to explore the politics of fear at work in Britain in the political climate defined by the war on terror, with a view to ascertaining how deep it runs and whether a politics of trust might offer a possible remedy to it.
James Turner Johnson is the foremost scholar of the just war tradition working today. His treatment of the historical development of the just war tradition has been hugely important, influencing a generation of theorists. Despite this, Johnson's work has not generated much in the way of critical commentary or analysis. This paper aims to rectify this oversight. Engaging in a close and critical reading of Johnson's work, it claims that his historical reconstruction of the just war tradition is bounded by two key thematic lines — the imperative of vindicative justice and the ideal of Christian love — and occasionally betrays an excessive deference to the authority of past practice. By way of conclusion, this paper sums up the promise and limits of Johnson's approach, and reflects upon its contribution to contemporary just war scholarship.
Plato wrote in theRepublicthat quarrels between fellow countrymen are wont to be more virulent and nasty than those between external enemies. Sigmund Freud (and latterly Michael Ignatieff and Toni Erskine) have similarly cautioned of the malice and excess that can attend conflicts that are fuelled not by antithetical oppositions, but by the “narcissism of minor difference.” Bearing these warnings in mind, scholars of the ethics of war would be well advised to consider the implications of James Turner Johnson's acute observation in his contribution to this special section ofEthics & International Affairsthat their field of study is currently beset not so much by external opposition as by divisions within the ranks. The principal antagonism within the field, at least as I understand it, is the rift that has emerged between what I shall call historical and analytical approaches to the subject. Laying my cards on the table, the work that I have done in the past connects more clearly with the former than the latter. However, it has struck me, as it must have struck others, that the historical approach has in recent years come to assume a rather scuffed and unfashionable, evenoutré, appearance. It has been the subject of numerous curt dismissals, but has also, more interestingly, been tarnished by a few powerful critiques. This article will elucidate four of the most hard-hitting charges levied at the historical approach, and evaluate its continuing utility in light of them. The question then is: Have the critics of this approach landed it a knock-out blow, or can the historical approach withstand the bricks and bats that have been hurled its way?
The just war tradition is the predominant western framework for thinking about the ethics of contemporary war. Political and military leaders frequently invoke its venerable lineage to lend ballast to their arguments for or against particular wars. How we understand the history of just war matters, then, for it subtends how that discourse is deployed today. Conventional accounts of the just war trace its origins to the writings of Saint Augustine in the 4th century CE. This discounts the possibility that just war ideas were in circulation prior to this, in the classical world. This article contests this omission. It contends that ideas homologous to a range of core jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and jus post bellum principles were evident in classical Greek political thought and practice. This finding challenges scholars to re‐consider not only the common view that the just war is, at root, a Christian tradition, but also the relation between victory and just war, the nature of the ties binding just war and Islamic jihad, and an innovative approach to the comparative ethics of war.
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