CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

also provides a restraint against the tendency, found at one end of the liberal spectrum,
towards moral crusading.
The international society tradition rejects the deterministic, system-oriented approach of
neo-realism and neo-liberalism, seeing international affairs as a human-centred activity
and thus open to normative consideration. Yet elements of both classical and neo-
liberalism are present. In particular the view of the international order as a society:
states’ interaction with one another is such that they must take account of each other,
and the more they interact the more their interactions become institutionalized. Whilst
rejecting positivism, most international society adherents nevertheless accept the realist
tenet that states are the principal unit of international interaction (but in the form of their
leaders, diplomats and so on). Furthermore, although they accept that the international
order is anarchic, in the sense of having no authority higher than the sovereign state,
they do not accept that this implies disorder and chaos. International society offers a
middle way between a deterministic system, on the one hand, and a cosmopolitan world
community, on the other. Although some would see international society as but a
stepping stone on the path to a not-yet-attainable world community, the majority view
within the tradition sees it as a desirable end in its own right.
International society, rejecting the anarchy of realism but accepting the inevitability of
conflict and determining that it must be controlled and restrained, within a normative
framework, is naturally amenable to just war doctrine. Moreover, the school seeks
broad shared principles upon which society may be based. An understanding of the
conditions under which members may take recourse to the use of force, and of how that
force may be applied, must surely feature high in the list of priorities for these, and just
war provides a suitable paradigm.
Drawing on classical tradition, the just war doctrine developed from a pragmatic
response to a religious dilemma, concerning itself with the individual morality of those
who had to engage in war. It was secularized and adapted in a way that helped to
establish the rights of states. Only in the Twentieth Century were serious attempts made
to curtail those rights with respect to waging war, eventually all but abolishing them and
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