CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

European Convention on Human Rights now prohibits its use in all circumstances 91 , yet
38 of the USA’s 50 states, in addition to the US military and the Federal Government,
retain it 92 . So even on a most fundamental issue we can find a divide in the often-
supposed homogeneous Euro-Atlantic culture.
If finding the degree of common ground necessary for a widely inclusive international
society is so beset with difficulties, then how much more so is the programme of those
who see this as no more than a stepping-stone to a world community? Yet there are
those who view the international society approach as just this. We have already seen
that Kant (see p17) viewed his ‘federation of free states’ as a pragmatic compromise
given that a true cosmopolitan world community was unattainable:
There is only one rational way in which states coexisting with other states can
emerge from the lawless condition of pure warfare. Just like individual men,
they must renounce their savage and lawless freedom, adapt themselves to
public coercive laws, and thus form an international state (civitas gentium),
which would necessarily continue to grow until it embraced all the peoples of
the earth. But since this is not the will of the nations… … the positive idea of a
world republic cannot be realised. If all is not to be lost, this can at best find a
negative substitute in the shape of an enduring and gradually expanding
federation likely to prevent war. 93
Brown 94 makes what he accepts is a more tentative case that Wight, too, should be
regarded amongst those for whom international society is an incomplete realisation of
man’s capacity to exist in a community founded on common humanity. More recently
some, such as Mary Kaldor, have argued that there is evidence of such a cosmopolitan
vision becoming reality. Kaldor 95 makes reference to ‘the growing interconnectedness
of states, the emergence of a system of global governance, and the explosion of the
movements, groups, networks and organizations that engage in a global or transnational
public debate (that call) into question the primacy of states.’ She does not contend that
this means the demise of states, although their sovereignty will be far more conditional
than hitherto, but that ‘the global system …. is increasingly composed of layers of
political institutions, individuals, groups and even companies, as well as states and
international institutions’ and that ‘the new understanding of civil society (represents)
both a withdrawal from the state and a move towards global rules and institutions.’ 96
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