CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

the realist must be persuaded that acting within a moral framework is in his (nation’s)
interest. This does not seem an insurmountable task when even Machiavelli and Henry
Kissinger can be seen to recommend it! Realists, noting the danger to a state’s interests
inherent in engaging in conflict, do, or should, wish to minimize both the incidence and
extent of it. Even a powerful hegemon should recognise that the best path to retaining
its pre-eminence is to minimize the challenges to it. This it can do – as even
Machiavelli concedes – through being perceived as legitimate. Both points suggest that
realists might be open to persuasion that just war doctrine has relevance for them;
unrestrained recourse to war both increases the generality of conflict (with all its
inherent risks) and leads to resentment, fear and hatred of a powerful nation, which may
increase the likelihood of assaults on its pre-eminent position. If we add the pragmatic
need to conduct warfare in a manner that leaves open the way for eventual
reconciliation, and consider, too, issues of escalation and reciprocity, then even the most
hardened realist has good reason to seek also a morally based framework of jus in bello.
The intellectual tradition broadly termed ‘liberalism’ has as its unifying themes a far
more optimistic view of mankind and a belief in an underlying moral unity of humanity.
In its reaction to war it ranges from pacifism at one end of the spectrum to a crusading
moralism – often all too ready to use armed force as its instrument – at the other.
Locke’s political philosophy takes a view of mankind as both rational and progressive;
man seeking to advance both his own and the common good through cooperation. Kant
extends this to the international arena: a society of states is as rationally ordained at the
international level as is a society of individuals at the national.
Cooperation rather than conflict is the central thesis of neo-liberalism in its response to
structural realism: whilst the neo-realist argument assumes a zero-sum game in which
relative gain is the principal measure of success, the neo-liberal thesis is that absolute
gain is more important and is achievable through cooperation. This, in turn, is achieved
through international institutions, formal and informal, explicit and conventional. When
it comes to considering the liberal reaction to war, it is reasonable to conclude that an
understanding of when it may legitimately be engaged in, and how it ought to be
conducted, are amongst those institutions. Just war provides such a formulation and
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