CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

whole with the interests of the fittest – ‘the bearers of a higher ethic.’ 21 Doubtless Carr
would recognise exactly the same tendency in Tony Blair’s address to the US Congress:
There is a myth. That though we love freedom, others don’t, that our attachment
to freedom is a product of our culture. That freedom, democracy, human rights,
the rule of law are American values or Western values…….
Ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit
and anywhere, anytime, ordinary people are given the choice to choose, the
choice is the same. Freedom not tyranny. Democracy not dictatorship. The rule
of law not the rule of the secret police. 22
The final issue of interest here that Carr addresses, again with echoes of Hobbes, is the
relationship between individual interests and power. In national communities sacrifices
of self-interest are made for the common good but some degree of ‘power’ is required to
ensure this; much ‘self sacrifice’ is made only in the sense of giving voluntarily what
would otherwise be taken by force. ‘Harmony in the national order is achieved by this
blend of morality and power.’ 23 But in the international order there is a different
balance in which power plays a much greater role, hence ‘any international moral order
must rest on some hegemony of power.’ 24 Critics of the UN might point to just this
issue: an absence of power resulting from a lack, or inadequacy, of enforcement
mechanism * . Carr does note, however, that in this hegemony of power, there must be
some give and take – helping maintain the hegemony by minimising challenges to it. In
this, perhaps, there is a stronger argument for just war than for realism: if a hegemon
uses its power as the true realist would urge, without any consideration for jus ad
bellum, the grudging acceptance of others may turn to resentment and lead to
challenges.
So, chief among Carr’s criticism of the flawed understanding of those who had
attempted to establish peace through the mechanism of the League of Nations was their
misguided belief that the world shared a common value set upon which such institutions
could be built. Without such a shared value set attempting to build stability based on
institutions and legislation, aping that of national societies, is bound to fail. And
* This issue is discussed in greater depth in Chapter 2.
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