CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

It recognises both that war and a struggle for power are an inherent part of states’
behaviour, but also that there are elements of ‘transnational solidarity and conflict
cutting across the divisions among states’ and of ‘cooperation and regulated intercourse
between states.’ 83
The enduring debate within the International Society tradition is whether as a ‘middle
way’ the approach offers an end in itself or simply a pragmatic second-best on the road
to a cosmopolitan world society, rather as Kant offered his federation of free states (see
p18) as a compromise that was as much as the market would bear. Contrasting
international society with international system, on the one hand, and world community,
on the other, Chris Brown 84 defines it as ‘a norm-governed form of association, but the
norms in question emerge out of the requirements for social co-operation and do not
necessarily require commitment to any common projects, common interests or common
identity beyond what is required for social coexistence.’ Whilst it is common to see
international society as the middle term in a triptych of system, society, community –
as, indeed, it has been described above (p26), this should not lead us, necessarily, argues
Brown, to see the three as stages on a progressive path. Whilst there might be broad
agreement that a mere system is undesirable, and similarly that world community is
unattainable, there is less agreement about whether this latter is to be regretted:
One approach – probably the dominant one within the international society
tradition – suggests that world community is not simply unattainable but would
also be undesirable: on this count international society is to be valued in its own
terms. But a second, minority, approach disagrees and holds that international
society is a ‘second-best’ form of international order, an incomplete realization
of our common humanity which is defensible solely on pragmatic grounds, as
the only available alternative to the moral wasteland of a purely systemic
approach. 85
Noting the general resistance to the case for a world state throughout the history of
international theory, Martin Wight notes that:
Vitoria unconsciously took over Dante’s conception of universalis civilise
humani generis, and strengthened it into an affirmation that mankind constitutes
a legal community, but he repudiated the Dantean corollary of a Universal
empire. Grotius and Pufendorf did the same, with the argument that a world
empire would be too large to be efficient. 86
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