The responsibilities of victory: Jus post bellum and the Just War

Review of International Studies

Volumn 34, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 601-625

  Bellamy, Alex J ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 51349115514     PISSN: 02602105     EISSN: 14699044     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S026021050800819X     Document Type: Article

References (137)

1. Inter alia Brian Orend, 'Justice after War', Ethics and International Affairs, 16:1 (2002):
2. Michael Walzer, 'Just and Unjust Occupations', Dissent, Winter 2004,
3. Davida E. Kellogg, 'Jus Post Bellum: The Importance of War Crimes Trials', Parameters, 32:3 (2002), pp. 87-99,
4. Louis V. Iasiello, 'Jus Post Bellum: The Moral Responsibilities if Victors in War', Naval War College Review, 57:3/4 (2004),
5. and Gary Bass, 'Jus Post Bellum', Philosophy and Public Affairs 32:4 (2004).
6. Most notably, Roland Paris. At War's End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004),
7. Simon Chesterman, You, the People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration and State-Building (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
8. and Richard Caplan, International Governance of War-Torn Territories: Rule and Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
9. Especially Noah Feldman, What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006) and forthcoming special section of Ethics and International Affairs.
10. For instance. Carsten Stahn. 'Jus ad bellum Jus in bello . . . Jus post bellum: Towards a Tripartite Conception of Armed Conflict', Florence Agora Papers, 2005.
11. Augustine, The City of God, trans. H. Bettenson (London: Penguin, 1972), p. 866;
12. and see Brian Orend, 'Justice after War', Ethics and International Affairs, 16:1 (2002), p. 43.
13. Kenneth Roth, 'Was the War in Iraq a Humanitarian Intervention?'. Journal of Military Ethics, 5:2 (2006).
14. One of the few voices of scepticism about jus post bellum aired to date is Nicholas Rengger, 'The Judgment of War: On the Idea of Legitimate Force in World Politics', Review of International Studies, 31:5 (2005), p.
15. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay (1795) trans. M. Campbell Smith (London: Simon Sonnenschein & Co., 1903), p. 131.
16. This is the most common position. See Orend, 'Justice After War', Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust War: A Mora! Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1977), p. 119 though more recently Walzer advocated a more maximalist position, see Michael Walzer. 'Judging War', 2003, available at: (www.boell.de/downloads/verfassung/michaelwalzer.pdf).
17. The idea of Just War as a tradition which contemporary thinkers draw upon as authority to validate contemporary arguments is set out most clearly by Nicholas Rengger, 'On the Just WatTradition in the Twenty-First Century'. International Affairs. 78:2 (2002), pp. 353 63
18. and developing in, inter alia, Alex J. Bellamy. Just Wars: From Cicero to Iraq (Cambridge: Polity Press. 2006).
19. Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law Applied to the Conduct and the Affairs of Nations and of Sovereigns, trans. Charles G. Fenwick (Washington DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1916). vol. III, p. 344.
20. Orend argues that it may create a 'just cause'. Orend, 'Justice After War', p. 56.
21. This idea was first put forward by Balthazar Ayala in the sixteenth century. See H. Duchhardt. 'War and International Law in Europe: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries' in Philippe Contamine (ed.), War and Competition Between States (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), p. 286.
22. Writing in the early sixteenth century, Vitoria viewed war as a quasi-judicial activity properly resorted to in order to right a prior wrong in cases where there was no authoritative judge to adjudicate disputes. Francisco de Vitoria, 'On the Laws of War' in A. Pagden and J. Lawrence (eds), Vitoria: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 303.
23. G. H. J. Van Der Molen, Alberico Gentili and the Development of International Law: His Life, Work and Times. 2nd revised edn (Leyden: A. W. Sijthofl', 1968). pp. 116-17.
24. See W. S. M. Knight, The Life and Works of Hugo Grotius (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1925), p. 196.
25. Benedict Kingsbury and Adam Roberts, introduction: Grotian Thought in International Relations', in Medley Bull, Benedict Kingsbury and Adam Roberts (eds): Hugo Grotius and International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 16.
26. The distinction between Vattelian and Grotian conceptions of the law is borrowed from Jason Ralph. America and the International Criminal Court: An International Society Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
27. The relationship between law and morality and the nature of the Just War tradition forms one of the most profound debates in contemporary just war thinking. Many ethicists argue that 'Just War' thinking should be divorced from legal concerns (and privileged) on account of its historical authority and concern with justice. See, for instance, Oliver O'Donovan, The Just War Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2003)
28. and James Turner Johnson. The War to Oust Saddam Hussein: Just War and the New Face of Conflict (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. 2005).
29. Some lawyers, however, argue that law, not ethics, is the normative currency in relation to war, on the grounds that it is legal concerns rather than ethical concerns that animate decision-makers. See Michael Byers, War Law: Understanding Internationa! Law and Armed Conflict (London: Atlantic Books, 2005). Following Ian Clark, however, I argue that judgments about the legitimacy of war and peace comprise elements of both a legal and ethical nature - a point that I will elaborate on later.
30. By Anthony Clark Arend and Robert J. Beck, International Law and the Use of Force: Beyond the UN Charter Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1993).
31. Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres, trans. F. W. Kelsev (Washington, DC: Carnegie Council, 1925). p. 172.
32. Grotius, De Jure Belli, p. 173.
33. Vattel, Law of Nations, p. 11.
34. Ibid., p. 3.
35. Ibid., p. 235.
36. Ibid., p. 236.
37. Ibid., p. 236.
38. As Orend puts it, therefore, jus post bellum permits the just victor to (1) roll back the aggression. (2) punish the wrongdoers in the shape of war crimes trials and reparations and (3) require some form of demobilisation and/or political rehabilitation. Orend, 'Justice After War', p. 47.
39. See Conor McCarthy. 'The Paradox of the International Law of Military Occupation: Sovereignty and the Reformation of Iraq'. Journal of Conflict and Security Law 10:1 (2005), pp. 49-51.
40. Jean Pictet, Commentary on Geneva Conventions of 1949, vol. IV (Geneva: ICRC, 1958), p. 273.
41. Article 43 of the Hague Regulations (1907).
42. Otherwise, the occupying allies would have been expected to uphold Nazi racial discrimination laws. See Marco Sassoli, 'Legislation and Maintenance of Public Order and Civil Life by Occupying Powers', European Journal of International Law, 16:4 (2005), pp. 665-7
43. and Adam Roberts. 'What is a Military Occupation?', British Yearbook of Internationa! Law 1984 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
44. Citing Liddell Hart, Walzer argues that '[t]hc object in war is a better peace', continuing 'better within the confines of the argument for justice, means more secure than the status quo ante bellum. less vulnerable to territorial expansion, safer for ordinary men and women and for their domestic self-determination'. Walzer. Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 122-3.
45. Or, as Orend puts it, 'one ought not to want the literal restoration of the status quo ante bellum because that situation was precisely what led to armed conflict in the first place'. Brian Orend, 'Jus Post Bellum', Journal of Social Philosophy, 31:1 (2000). p. 122.
46. Orend, 'Justice After War', p. 45.
47. Vattel, Law of Nations, p. 344.
48. See Michael Byers. War Law: International Law and Armed Conflict (London: Atlantic Books. 2005). pp. 40-50.
49. James Turner Johnson, Morality and Contemporary Warfare (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 57.
50. This type of argument gathered momentum after September 11. Thus, for instance. Oliver O'Donovan argued that the legalism predominant in jus ad bellum be replaced by a 'praxis of judgment' that would permit war to end or prevent grave injustice regardless of its legal status, granting the Just War tradition a 'natural law rather than positive law orientation'. More pointedly. Elshtain called for a revived Augustinian account of the just war. permitting punishment (by war) of wrongdoers and perceiving the question of just cause in more or less objective terms. Oliver O'Donovan. The Just War Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 23,
51. and Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (New Jersey: Basic Books, 2003).
52. As an example of the former see Friedreich V. Kratochwil, Rules, Norms and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 42.
53. On the latter see Byers, War Law, p. 2.
54. Accredited to the Russian delegate F. F. de Martens at the 1899 Hague peace conference, the Martens clause stipulates that: 'Until a more complete code of the laws of war is issued, the High Contracting parties [to the 1899 Hague Convention] declare that in cases not included in the Regulations adopted by them, populations and belligerents remain under the protection of the principles of international law, as they result from the usages established between civilized nations, from the laws of humanity, and the requirements of public conscience'. Cited in Theodore Meron, 'The Martens Clause, Principles of Humanity, and Dictates of Public Conscience', American Journal of International Law, 94:1 (2000). p. 79.
55. Ian Clark. Legitimacy in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005), p. 220.
56. Clark, Legitimacy, pp. 207-8.
57. See Rengger, 'Judgment of War'.
58. It is worth noting that neither Bass, Walzer nor Orend specifically refer to the laws of occupation in their discussion of how occupations be conducted.
59. See Alwyn V. Freeman, 'War Crimes by Enemy Nationals Administering Justice in Occupied Territory', American Journal of International Law, 41:3 (1947). p. 581.
60. Best, Law and War, p. 117. It is worth noting that proposals for a maximalist position, which would have required occupiers to make life pleasant, were levelled by both the victims of occupation in the Second World War and humanitarian agencies but were rejected.
61. See Raymond T. Yingling and Robert W. Ginnance. 'The Geneva Conventions of 1949', American Journal of International Law, 46:3 (1952), p. 395.
62. They span forty pages of the UK Ministry of Defence. The Manual of the Law of Armed Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 215-55.
63. The following discussion draws extensively on MoD, Manual. Unless otherwise stated, the following in-text references refer to paragraphs in the manual.
64. Walzer. 'Just and Unjust Occupations', p. 61.
65. Ibid., p. 61.
66. Ibid., p. 61.
67. Ibid., p. 61.
68. Vattel, Law of Nations, p. 344.
69. A shift that Morgenthau used to explain the deterioration of the power of international law to constrain behaviour. Hans J. Morgenthau, 'The Twilight of International Morality', Ethics. 58:2 (1948).
70. David Welch, Justice and the Genesis of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
71. As John Mueller insisted they were. See John Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: Basic Books, 1990).
72. Human Security Centre (University of British Columbia), Human Security Report 2005: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 23.
73. Colin Mclnnes, 'Spectator Sport Warfare', Contemporary Security Policy, 20:3 (1999), p. 152.
74. Human Security Centre, Human Security Report, p. 23.
75. See Allen Buchanan. Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004). 'The idea that norm breaking behaviourincurs costs (political, military and economic) is a mainstay of constructivism.
76. See Christian Reus-Smit, American Power and World Order (Cambridge: Polity, 2005).
77. See Michael J. Schuck, 'When the Shooting Stops: Missing Elements in Just War Theory', The Christian Century. 26 October 1994. The idea of the 'presumption against war' is described as a 'distortion' of classical just war thinking by James Turner Johnson.
78. See James Turner Johnson, The War to Oust Saddam Hussein.
79. Davida E. Kellogg, 'Jus Post Bellum: The Importance of War Crimes Trials'. Parameters, 32:3 (2002), pp. 87-99.
80. Walzer,'Judging War', p. 15.
81. Though Churchill, of course, famously argued that the Nazis be summarily shot in the aftermath of the Second World War.
82. See Gary J. Bass, Slay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
83. See R. H. Minear, Victor's Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971),
84. and Robert H. Jackson, The Nurnberg Case as Presented by Robert H. Jackson (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1971).
85. On Eichmann see Steven R. Ratner and Jason S. Abrams, Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities in International Law: Beyond the Nuremberg Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 ), p. 30.
86. On Pinochet see Marc Weiler, 'On the Hazards of Foreign Travel for Dictators and other International Criminals'. International Affairs, 75:3 (1999), pp. 599-617.
87. In Bosnia, Rwanda and elsewhere. See, inter alia, on impunity Richard J. Goldstone, For Humanity: Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000),
88. on Bosnia Jan-Willem Honig. Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime (London: Penguin. 1988),
89. and on Rwanda Linda Melvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2000).
90. Most notably Richard Goldstone, For Humanity: Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).
91. See Rachel Kerr, The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: An Exercise in Law, Politics and Diplomacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), esp. pp. 115-46.
92. See William A. Schabas, An Introduction to the International Criminal Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 21-70.
93. Emphasis added, Kellogg, 'Jus Post Bellum', p. 88.
94. Kellogg, 'Jus Post Bellum', p. 88.
95. Brian Orend, War and International Justice: A Kantian Perspective (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilford Laurier University Press, 2000), p. 232.
96. Bass, 'Jus Post Bellum', p. 396.
97. Ibid., p. 396.
98. Louis V. Iasiello, 'Jus Post Bellum: The Moral Responsibilities if Victors in War', Naval War College Review, 57:3/4 (2004), p. 48.
99. See Paul Rogers, Iraq and the War on Terror: Twelve Months of Insurgency (London: I. B. Tauris. 2005).
100. Bass, 'Jus Post Bellum', pp. 400 1.
101. The importance of intentions (as opposed to motives or outcomes) in adducing the morality of humanitarian intervention is outlined in Alex J. Bellamy, 'Motives, Outcomes, Intentions and the Legitimacy of Humanitarian Intervention', Journal of Military Ethics, 3:3 (2004),
102. and Fernando Tesón. 'Eight Principles of Humanitarian Intervention', Journal of Military Ethics, 5:2 (2006).
103. Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2000). Wheeler differs from Bellamy and Tesón in arguing that outcomes are important in and of themselves, whereas Bellamy and Tesón suggest that they are important because the degree of investment and preparation for the peace is indicative of an actor's intentions.
104. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa: ICISS, 2002).
105. Stahn, Jus ad belum...', p. 1.
106. A norm encapsulated in Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As Brad Roth points out, the 'will of the people' is a particularly indeterminate phrase that democracies and non-democracies alike can, and do, point to in order to legitimate sovereign rule. The norm does, however, prohibit two types of government: rule by ethnic minorities (e.g. white Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa) and rule by foreign occupiers. See Brad R. Roth, Government Illegitimacy in International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 37-41.
107. See, inter alia, W. Michael Reisman, 'Stopping Wars and Making Peace: Reflections on the Ideology of Conflict Termination in Contemporary World Polities', Tulane Journal of International and Comparative Law 6:5 (1998).
108. Roland Paris, At War's End:
109. Richard Caplan, International Governance;
110. and Simon Chesterman, You. the Peoples.
111. ICISS, Responsibility to Protect.
112. See Richard Ponzio, 'The Creation and Funding of the UN Peacebuilding Commission', Saferworld, November 2005.
113. Though in practice, that responsibility can be subcontracted to regional organisations and coalitions of the willing, as the Security Council has done in relation to Afghanistan and Iraq.
114. In relation to Iraq, in Resolution 1483. the Security Council felt the need to endorse and authorise the allied transitional authority - and just as significantly, the US felt the need to request such endorsement.
115. The basic propositions come from Eyal Benvenisti, 'The Security Council and the Law on Occupation: Resolution 1483 in Historical Perspective', Israel Defence Forces Law Review, 19:1 (2003), pp. 23-7. Benvenisti actually identifies four problems, but the second ('lack of neutrality') and fourth 'avoidance' amount to much the same thing the idea that despite the Nuremberg court's insistence otherwise the Hague regulations did not become customary law principally because they were never actually practised.
116. Myers McDougal and Florentino P. Feliciano, Law and Minimum World Public Order: Transnational Coercion and World Public Order (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff. 1994), p. 746.
117. See Eyal Benvenisti, The International Law of Occupation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 59-106.
118. As McDougal and Feliciano put it, 'occupants did in fact intervene in and subject to regulation practically every aspect of life in a modern state which legitimate sovereigns themselves are wont to regulate'. McDougal and Feliciano. Law and Minimum World Public Order. p. 747.
119. Benvenisti, 'The Security Council and the Law', p. 25.
120. For this argument to carry the weight that Benvenisti gives it would require a conception of legitimacy that gave overriding weight to legal legitimacy, which for reasons I discussed earlier this essay refuses to do.
121. Benvenisti, 'The Security Council and the Law', p. 26.
122. The connection between the Great Powers' interest in legitimating colonial rule and international law governing occupation and legitimate combatancy in discussed in detail by Karma Nablusi, Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance and the Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
123. Cited in Best, Law and War, p. 118.
124. William Shawcross, for instance, argued that 'Saddam should have been removed in 1991', William Shawcross. 'After Iraq: America and Europe', 2003 Harkness Lecture. King's College London. 27 March 2003.
125. A common starting point for debate on intervention is the view that the prevailing normative order is based on just such a presumption. See, inter alia, Simon Chesterman, Just War or Just Peace? Humanitarian Intervention and International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001),
126. Robert Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of Stales (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000),
127. and Michael J. Smith, 'Humanitarian Intervention: An Overview of the Ethical Issues', Ethics and International Affairs, 12:1 (1998).
128. The Independent International Commission on Kosovo found NATO's intervention to be 'illegal but legitimate' on precisely these grounds. See Independent International Commission on Kosovo, Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2000), p. 4.
129. Other notable examples include Kenneth Roth, 'The Right Exit', New Statesman, 15 March 2004. Gareth Evans' International Crisis Group argued that any withdrawal should be gradual and only take place as the security situation improved. See International Crisis Group, 'Iraq: Insurgency and Sectarianism', 14 February 2006.
130. Unless one shares McMahon's view that a war that is initially unjust can later become just, a position that is inconsistent with the prevailing view of the Just War tradition and international law. In effect, war involves taking measures that are generally proscribed (i.e. killing people in peacetime is murder). Those measures are legitimate in war because warriors obtain a 'licence' to conduct them by virtue of the ¡us ad bellum. See Jeff McMahon, 'Just Causes for War', Ethics and International Affairs, 20:1 (2006).
131. I deliberately mean to refer both to Walzer's 'supreme emergencies' and Wheeler's 'supreme humanitarian emergencies'.
132. Wheeler, Saving Strangers.
133. E. H. Carr. The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919 1939 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1946), pp. 75-85.
134. Parekh, 'Rethinking Humanitarian Intervention'. International Political Science Review, 18:1 (1997). pp. 54-5.
135. As happened in Iraq, where the US-created transitional authority received the blessing of the UN Security Council.
136. A position put forward by the ICISS, Responsibility to Protect.
137. And as noted above, international institutions have a special role to play in such cases.