CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

war approach has a part to play in framing the argument. However, first it is necessary
to consider why justification is needed at all and that will be the task of the remainder of
this chapter.
2.3 Why Justification?
The next three sections will seek to make the case for the continued importance of
justification for resort to armed conflict and for just conduct within it. It will do this by
considering the impact – at three levels – when cause or conduct are not universally, or
at least widely, regarded as just. Primary focus will be on the 2003 US-led invasion of
Iraq as the most recent and, since the 1956 Suez expedition, most controversial such
operation conducted by Western states. It is not the purpose of this thesis to argue that
the conflict was or was not just, simply to use it as an example of a conflict that falls
well short of universal recognition as justified. That more than four years from
President George Bush’s declaration of the successful completion of major combat
operations 111 the controversy continued to feature large in the media and in domestic
politics on both sides of the Atlantic, is testament enough to the failure of either the US
Administration or the UK Government, as its principal ally, to make the case
convincingly and conclusively to either an international or a domestic audience. That
most nations, including three of the five Permanent Members of the Security Council,
were opposed to the action, and that the Secretary-General of the UN has described it as
‘illegal’ 112 , lends further weight to its use as an example of a war lacking widespread
acceptance as ‘just’. To offer but one example of its standing in intellectual circles,
David Newsome, former US Ambassador to Libya, Indonesia and the Philippines,
Under Secretary of State, and Professor of International Studies at the University of
Virginia, pointed out in late 2003 – well after the end of ‘major combat operations’ –
that ‘the latest edition of the journal Foreign Affairs contains at least five articles critical
of the justification for war and the treatment of allies.’ 113 The contrast with the
widespread acceptance of the justification of the 1991 Gulf War is stark.
Whilst the focus, then, will be on the 2003 Iraq war, examples from other conflicts
throughout history will be used where they can assist in illustrating a point. Three
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