ethics and war in the twenty

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Ethics and War in the Twenty-First Century: International Society at a'Fork in the Road'Cian O'Driscoll

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To cite this Article O'Driscoll, Cian(2010) 'Ethics and War in the Twenty-First Century: International Society at a 'Fork inthe Road'', Intelligence and National Security, 25: 1, 86 97To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/02684521003588161URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02684521003588161

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REVIEW ARTICLE

Ethics and War in the Twenty-FirstCentury: International Society at a

Fork in the Road

CIAN ODRISCOLL

Henrik Syse and Gregory M. Reichberg (eds.), Ethics, Nationalism, and JustWar: Medieval and Contemporary Perspectives (Washington, DC: CatholicUniversity Press of America, 2007). Pp. 405, biblio., index. 26.50. ISBN978-0-8132-1502-0.

David B. MacDonald, Robert G. Patman and Betty Mason-Parker (eds.),The Ethics of Foreign Policy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). Pp.249, biblio.,index. 55.00. ISBN 978-07546-4377-7.

Michael L. Gross, Bioethics and Armed Conflict: Moral Dilemmas ofMedicine and War (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006). Pp.384, biblio.,index. 16.95 Pb. ISBN 0-262-07269-6; 41.95 Hb. ISBN 0-262-57226-5.

The discipline of International Relations has a patchy record when it comesto accounting for change in world politics. It has tended to focus oncontinuity instead. A typical statement in this regard is Martin Wightsdepiction of international affairs as a realm of recurrence and repetition,while Hans Morgenthau has drawn attention to its repetitive character.1

On a more general level, the dominant realist/neorealist orthodoxy haspresented statecraft as a timeless and invariant practice, unchanged since thetime of Thucydides. Against this backdrop, the events of 9/11 delivered a

1Martin Wight, Why is There No International Theory? in James Der Derian (ed.)International Theory: Critical Investigations (London: Macmillan 1995) p.25. Hans J.Morgenthau, The Intellectual and Political Functions of Theory in James Der Derian (ed.)International Theory: Critical Investigations (London: Macmillan 1995) p.39.

Intelligence and National SecurityVol. 25, No. 1, 8697, February 2010

ISSN 0268-4527 Print/ISSN 1743-9019 Online/10/010086-12 2010 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/02684521003588161

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massive shock to the system, signalling change, disruption and even rupture.As such, it called into question many of the articles of faith upon whichcontemporary international relations rests, challenging conventional wis-doms and moralities.2 Tony Blair captured something of this sense of crisiswhen he remarked in October 2001 that 9/11 shattered global order andpresented international society with a moment of instability that the agentsof justice must seize upon in order to reconstruct the world along moreprogressive lines.3 This, he declared, is a moment to seize. The kaleidoscopehas been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Beforethey do, let us re-order this world around us.4

Blairs conviction that 9/11 marked a moment of change in internationalpolitics is widely shared. Jean Bethke Elshtain famously compared the eventsof 9/11 to the sack of Rome in 410 AD, while Fred Halliday declared it a daythat shook the world.5 According to this perspective, 9/11 revealed theemergence of new threats to international peace and security namely, thoselocated at the nexus between terrorism, weapons of mass destruction(WMD) and rogue states. These threats call into question the presentconstitution of international society, and in particular its securityarchitecture. Put simply, it is alleged that the spectre of shadowy networksof individuals organized to bring great chaos and suffering to our shores atany cost and by any means circumvent existing security mechanisms likedeterrence and reactive national self-defence.6 As the Bush administrationsNational Security Strategy (NSS) of 2002 puts it, new threats have emergedthat challenge old rules and require new thinking.7

This had lead to what Kofi Annan has described as a fork in the roadfacing international society.8 Do we abandon the established security regimeand invent it anew, in order to better manage these new threats, or shouldwe try instead to continuing working within the old rules, merely adapting

2Andrew Hurrell, There are no Rules (George Bush): International Order after Septemberthe 11th, International Relations 16/2 (2002) pp.185204. Also, Ian Clark, Legitimacy inInternational Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005) pp.2248.3For more on the idea of crisis, see Stuart Croft, Culture, Crisis and Americas War on Terror(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006).4Prime Minister Tony Blair, Address to the Labour Party Conference, Brighton, 2 October2001, 5http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/oct/03/uk.afghanistan4 (18 February2008).5Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War Against Terror: the Burden of American Power in a ViolentWorld (New York: Basic Books 2004) p.151; Fred Halliday Two Hours that Shook theWorld: September 11, 2001, Causes and Consequences (London: Saqi Books 2002).6George W. Bush, National Security Strategy of the United States, The White House, 17September 2002, 5http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/print/nssall.html4 (18 January 2010).7Ibid.8UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, The Secretary-General Address to the GeneralAssembly, 23 September 2003, 5http://www.un.org/webcast/ga/58/statements/sg2eng030923.htm4 (18 January 2010). Cited in Jef Huysmans, International Politics ofInsecurity: Normativity, Inwardness and the Exception, Security Dialogue 37/1 (2006) p.13.

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and extending them to meet current circumstances? As Annan points out,this is a matter of the utmost importance:

This may be a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself, when the UNwas founded . . . Now we must decide whether it is possible to continueon the basis agreed then, or whether radical changes are needed. Andwe must not shy away from questions about the adequacy, andeffectiveness, of the rules and instruments at our disposal.9

In response to the gauntlet thrown down by Annan, it is tempting to arguethat what is required is a wholesale overhaul of the international securityregime. To return to the slogan offered by the NSS, new threats require newthinking. Yet there are those who argue that this would be a rash and evenfoolhardy move. These thinkers, displaying a strand of Burkean conserva-tism, contend that any programme that actively eschews the wisdom of theages embodied in established norms and practices is to be entered intocautiously. Accordingly, we should be wary of any line of thought thatwould disown the received past, and divorce us from its inheritance. Such amove is likely to undercut the foundations of society, cutting communitiesadrift from their own history and leaving them to flounder unaided in apresent marked by turmoil and instability. From this perspective, then, it isimportant that people remain true to the inheritance we receive in the formof established norms and practices. Such an approach, Burke himself argues,is the key to stability and indeed future progress; without it we could notpossibly hope to surpass or even equal the achievements of the past. People,he writes, will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward totheir ancestors.10 This Burkean tendency to look to established practice asthe best tutor for political life is present to varying degrees in three recentlypublished books on the normative challenges posed by the war on terror.

Force and Justice

The first of these books, and the most Burkean in tone, is the excellentEthics, Nationalism, and Just War: Medieval and Contemporary Perspec-tives, edited by Henrik Syse and Gregory M. Reichberg, both of theInternational Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO). The purpose of thisvolume is to explore the utility of the just war tradition as a resource forengaging the many pressing normative issues thrown up by the war onterror. To this end, the book is divided into two sections, the first of which isdedicated to the examination of medieval formulations of the just war, whilethe second extends these formulations to the war on terror. The underlyingassumption here is that, despite the purportedly novel character of the war

9Ibid.10Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France and on the Proceedings in CertainSocieties in London Relative to that Event, edited by Conor Cruise OBrien (Baltimore, MD:Penguin 1969) pp.1923.

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on terror, the just war tradition still provides a useful intellectual andpractical resource through which to interrogate questions of force and justicein international society.

Indeed, this is the core point advanced by James Turner Johnsonsprefatory essay for section one of this book, Thinking Morally about Warin the Middle Ages and Today. As one would expect of Johnson, hisargument in support of this view draws upon his own canon of work andis suitably nuanced.11 He contends that although the medieval just wartradition does not provide a straight-forward template for the moderntheorist of war, because the world it presupposes is now a thing of thepast, there is still value in returning to it. The objective of such a return is,for Johnson, to partake in reflective encounter with history, where theultimate aim of such an encounter is to shed light on the practices of thepresent (p.4). This, we must be clear, is not an incitement to abstract,ahistorical generalizing. Rather, it is a call to explore the points ofconvergence and divergence evident in historical and contemporaryarticulations of the role and right of war in international society. To thisend, Johnson encourages scholars interested in the relationship betweenforce and justice as it plays out in any age, including the present time, toenter into a stream of reflection, debate, and dialogue with the historicaldevelopment of the just war tradition (p.9). It is, he contends, only byexploring the historical origin and usage of the principles and values of thejust war tradition that one can properly ascertain whether and how theymight be applied to the contemporary world.

Johnsons modus operandi is adopted by most of the scholarscontributing to this volume. It is probably not unfair to say, then, thatthe success of this book is dependent upon the strength of this approach.Happily for all concerned, the venture is very successful indeed. FollowingJohnsons remarks, the first section contains a number of fascinatingentries. Of particular note here is John von Heykings piece on thedistinction between classical and early modern approaches to the limitationand restraint of war. It contains a fascinating account of the relationbetween virtue, glory, salvation, and just war, as these concepts figured inboth Ciceronian and early Christian formulations of the right to war.Perhaps, however, the author is guilty of (imperial) overstretch when heasserts, by way of conclusion, that Ambrosian thought might provide somepointers with respect to how the love of apocalyptic glory, as in the caseof Al Qaeda, can be moderated and, more important, can be moderated onits own terms (p.54). Also of great merit is Reichbergs chapter onThomas Aquinas, and whether or not a presumption against war occupiesthe core of his just war thought. This is an issue not merely of antiquarian

11Some of Johnsons key works include: James Turner Johnson, Ideology, Reason and theLimitation of War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1975); Just War Tradition andthe Restraint of War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1985); Can Modern War beJust? (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1984); Morality and Contemporary Warfare(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1999).


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or exegetical interest; it speaks to the contemporary debate regarding theproblematization of war within the just war tradition by exploring itsorigins in divergent interpretations of Aquinas writings on war. Amongother things, it reveals the manner by which the past may be deployed asauthority in the service of contemporary political argument, and the veryreal implications this can have in terms of framing policy debates.12

In addition to these chapters by von Heyking and Reichberg, there areinteresting pieces by Philip Gray, Henrik Syse, and Kate Forhan. Theseessays range over a wide-ranging and far from orthodox territory,covering aspects of Augustinian theology, virtue ethics and the literarycontribution of Geoffrey Chaucer and Christine de Pizan to the just wartradition.

As mentioned earlier, the second section of this volume shifts direction toexamine whether or not the just war tradition allows us to achieve criticalpurchase on many of the threats and challenges particular to thecontemporary security environment. It includes chapters by Reichberg andSyse, Anne Julie Semb, Dan Smith and Dieter Hansen on (respectively) theprotection of the environment in times of war, the danger of non-UN-authorized humanitarian intervention, the rise of violent nationalisms andthe controversial issues of anticipatory defence and regime change. Theseissues, all very contemporary, are well-handled; an achievement whichattests to the continuing utility of the just war tradition as a site of criticalanalysis. Crucial here, however, is the fact that these various entries do notsimply apply some received just war framework or checklist to their subject-matter. Instead, they adopt a questioning stance with respect to the historicaltradition, seeking to revise, renew, and ultimately extend it to tackle theissues at hand. In this respect, the principles and values of the just wartradition, historically understood, are treated, not as the resolution of moralargument, but as its point of departure or, put differently, as an invitationto further argument.

In approaching the just war tradition in this manner, the authors andeditors of this volume have recovered something of that traditions diversityand vitality. All too often, the tradition is treated as a static and timelesstypology that can be applied in a technical manner to questions of war andpeace. When this occurs, something is lost namely the traditions pluralisticqualities and capacity to evolve and develop over time in response tochanging circumstances. Consequently, the tradition slides into traditional-ism, becoming a dogmatic assertion of historically-sourced but now-frozenrules and categories.13 In contrast, by emphasizing the protean nature and

12For more on the idea of using the past as an authority citation, see: Cian ODriscoll, TheRenegotiation of the Just War Tradition and the Right to War in the 21st Century (NewYork: Palgrave Macmillan 2008). Also see Richard Tuck, Why is Authority Such a Problem?in Peter Laslett, W.G. Runciman and Quentin Skinner (eds.) Philosophy, Politics, and Society(London: Blackwell 1972) pp.194207.13For more on the distinction between traditions and traditionalism, see: Jaroslav Pelikan,The Vindication of Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1984) p.65.


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open-endedness of the tradition, the essays gathered in this volume re-affirmthe Burkean idea that traditions should function, not to reify the past, but asa mode of interrogating any potential link between the past, present andpossible futures. In this respect, this volume is most successful. Indeed, Iwould go so far as to say that this is as good a collection of essays on thecontemporary just war tradition as one is likely to find. It stands alongsideJohnsons work and Reichberg and Syses anthology (The Ethics of War:Classic and Contemporary Readings) as essential reading for those of usinterested in the just war tradition, and particularly in how its historicalarticulations might be related to contemporary issues of force and justice. Itwill be very helpful to researchers in the field, but also offers a usefulteaching resource.

Ethics and Foreign Policy

Questions of force and justice are also broached in The Ethics of ForeignPolicy, a collection of essays edited by David MacDonald, Robert Patmanand Betty Mason-Parker, all of the University of Otago, New Zealand. Thisbook comprises a collection of thoughtful articles on issues of force andjustice, as they stand in relation to foreign policy. Given that there has onlybeen a 29-year period in recorded human history during which warfare hasbeen absent, this emphasis makes eminent sense (p.2).

What of the relationship between force, justice and foreign policy then?According to the editors, it has an established history that can be tracedthrough various historical epochs, but is currently in a period of flux. Thesource of this flux is, of course, 9/11 and the changing security environmentit produced. The purpose of this volume, then, is to reconsider therelationship we draw between force, justice and foreign policy in order toaccount for the events of 9/11, and the transformative effect it has had uponcontemporary statecraft. Once again, the framing device employed by theNSS recurs: new realities have emerged that challenge old norms and requirenew thinking. However, where Kofi Annan identified a temptation to rip upthe rulebook and start all over again, the articles gathered here insteaddisplay an inclination to revise existing resources in order to adapt them tothe new times.

The essays contributed by Barry Cooper and Nicholas Wheeler andRachel Owen both stand out in this respect. Wheeler and Owens essayexamines the tension between liberal interventionism and international law,as it arose in relation to Blairs wars against Kosovo and Iraq. The interest ofthese cases is that they represent moments in international society wherefriction is clearly evident between the demands of ethical foreign policy,international security and the rule of law. Wheeler and Owen expose thesetensions expertly, while treating the reader to a first-rate diplomatic historyof the Blair years. For the purposes of this review, what is especiallyinteresting about this piece is its treatment of the UN Charters provisionsfor the maintenance of international peace and security. Wheeler and Owendisplay a keen awareness that these provisions are not always adequate to


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the task set for them; for instance, they make no allowance for interventionin cases of genocide where there is a veto in the UN Security Council (p.97).Yet Wheeler and Owen seem to come down against any effort to simply setthe Charter aside when it produces results that are distasteful to us: Ifpowerful states disregard Charter rules when these prove inconvenient . . .then the overall effect would be to undermine the authority of the law(p.97). This would be in the interest of no party. Accordingly, instead ofadvocating this approach, Wheeler and Owen suggest that we mightemphasize the flexibility built into the Charter. In this manner, they deny therigidity of international law by stressing its mutability at the hands of thosewho would invoke it in good faith. Parallel to Syse and Reichbergstreatment of the just war tradition, then, Wheeler and Owen depict the UNCharter, and indeed international law, as a protean field that possesses thecapacity to evolve with the times.

Barry Coopers Ethics and National Security in an Age of InternationalTerrorism returns our focus to the just war tradition. The aim of this essayis to assess the ethical basis for responding to terrorism. With this in mind,Cooper trawls through the idea of the just war as it was passed down fromRoman times to Spanish scholasticism in an effort to provide a differentframing for 9/11 than the dominant clash of civilizations narrative. Yet, thenotion of the just war is treated with caution. Cooper contends that thenotional just war has historically functioned to dress national security up intranscendental claims, introducing an imperial element into internationalpolitics as the experience of the US attests. This is an interesting thesis,though it is not without its own flaws. Coopers treatment of scholasticthought, and particularly his exegesis of Francisco de Vitorias writings, isnot entirely convincing, and the sweep of the argument is so broad that itloses all sight of context.14 Richard Allen also takes up the question ofterrorism. However, he discusses it in relation to the threat posed by roguestates. In contrast to Coopers critical stance, Allen is supportive of USleadership in the war on terror. More specifically, he speaks of the necessityof the Bush doctrine at a time when terrorism combines with proliferationand rogue regimes. This essay serves well as a letter of support for the Bushadministration, but it does little more than this. Put bluntly, it is ratherunsatisfying.

More successful is B.K. Greener-Barchams piece on the contemporarytrend towards deploying domestic security agents (i.e. police) in externaljurisdictions. He argues that the deployment of police in peace supportoperations in cases such as Kosovo and East Timor reflects the emergenttendency of outside powers to undertake executive roles within the

14Francisco de Vitoria (c.14801546) was a Jesuit philosopher and theologian of theSalamanca School, who wrote extensively on the Spanish conquest of the Americas in relationto the just war. For an introductory text, see Francisco de Vitoria, Vitoria: Political Writings,edited by Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press1992).


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jurisdiction of other states. This, he claims, has been an ad hoc development,a pragmatic response to the phenomenon of failed states. As such, it hastaken place absent any framework for dealing with the security challengesand moral dilemmas it gives rise to. In other words, there is no pre-constituted rulebook to guide practice. Consequently, those participating insuch deployments have been forced to make it up as they go along. This,then, represents a novel response to a novel problem, one that at first glancehas no ready-made reference point. However, Greener-Barcham concludesby suggesting that we might acquire some handle on the issues raised byexternal police deployments by viewing them as an invitation to reconsiderthe relations of sovereignty in a given political community. This seemsexactly right to me, and opens up what promises to be a very interestingavenue of research.

Elsewhere, a number of other interesting themes are explored. DirkNabers assesses the success of Japanese and German foreign policy againstan ethical foreign policy template, while Jeremy Hall discusses the role ofthe media in framing foreign policy in the context of the war on terror.K.J. Keith and Susan Lamb discuss the prospects for both international lawand the pursuit of international criminal justice in the face of an extendedglobal conflict, while Andrew Stoeckel and Alfredo Rehren respectivelyexamine the ethical challenges of trade policy and political corruption in aglobalized political economy. Keiths essay is especially interesting. Focusingon the International Law of Armed Conflict, it poses the question whethernew challenges, especially since the vile atrocities of 11 September 2001, callfor new laws? (p.210). In order to place some flesh on the bones of thisrather abstract formulation, Keith relates it to the right to force, the jus adbellum, in international law. He concludes by calling for persistence with thegiven legal framework, claiming that it contains ample scope for revisionwithin its own constitution. The struggle against the challenges thrown upby the war on terror is best conducted, he contends, not outside the law,but within it (p.220).

The broad remit of this book is appealing, and suggests a welcomeattempt to broaden the focus beyond the permanent members of the UNSecurity Council. It also commends this book as a teaching tool for thosewho might wish to develop Foreign Policy Studies as a field that extendsbeyond diplomatic history and the great powers. Overall, however, thisbook does not supersede established texts in the field15 due to its rather hitand miss character. While there are some undeniably innovative andinformative contributions, it is let down by one or two ill-judged entries.Despite this, it does a fine job in orienting us to two aspects of foreign policythat are often overlooked: first, the fact that it is a normative domain whereconsiderations of morality and power interact, and, second, that it is anevolving field where change is a constant factor.

15For example, Margot Light and Karen E. Smith (eds.) Ethics and Foreign Policy(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001).


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Medicine and War

Change has certainly been a constant factor in the fields of both bioethicsand military conflict. Michael Gross examines both of these fields, payingattention to their mutual development and points of contact in his superbstudy of bioethics in times of war. Bioethics and Armed Conflict: MoralDilemmas of Medicine and War is a comprehensive and provocative accountof the field of what we might loosely term military medical ethics. It wouldbe worth the price of admission for its sheer range alone, but it delivers somuch more than this. It is thoughtful, tightly argued, and theoretically rich.It includes chapters on medical care for the wounded, patient rights forsoldiers, wartime triage, medical neutrality, chemical and biological warfare,torture and ill-treatment and the pacifistic bent of medicine as a profession.In each case, the issues in question are dealt with in a sophisticated butaccessible manner, leading the reader through complex material with bothassurance and authority. More importantly perhaps, Gross is scrupulous insubjecting the accepted conventions governing each issue to penetrativecritique, such that we acquire a fresh perspective on what were previouslywell-worn dilemmas. In all of this, Gross analysis is informed by his abilityto draw on a raft of different theoretical material, from Foucaults notion ofbiopower, to Aquinas understanding of double effect, to contemporaryanalytical theory.

At times this book reads as if Gross is determined to overturn everycommonplace in military medical ethics. His starting point, for example, isthe World Medical Associations (WMA) doctrine that medical ethics intimes of armed conflict is identical to medical ethics in times of peace (p.1).This doctrine reflects the assumption that the physicians role is defined by atranscendental obligation to his craft such that the doctorpatient relation-ship is shielded from the competing interests that sometimes threaten themedical enterprise in any specific case. This is nonsense according to Gross.It neglects the basic fact that the necessities of war transform the pressuresand dilemmas facing physicians on the battlefield.

As physicians try to save lives in an endeavour dedicated to takingthem, they confront hard dilemmas. It is the nature of these dilemmasto question, if not recast, a physicians moral obligations . . . Wartransforms, contracts, and subordinates the traditional doctor-patientrelationship, but rarely preserves it intact, as in peacetime. (p.12)

The implication here is that medicine is not above the fray; rather, it issometimes also in the trenches, compromised and challenged by the demandsof military necessity.

Developing his case Gross refers to seven controversial issues thatdemonstrate just how, in times of war, military necessity puts severepressure on standard medical ethics. It is worth briefly discussing two ofthese issues. The first is triage. The tragedy of triage, according to Gross, liesin the ranking: how should authorities allocate scarce medical resources


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among three groups those who will die regardless of care, those who willlive with only minimal care, and those who will die without care. Thestandard peacetime norm is that medical need should dictate this ranking. Intimes of war, however, this system must be disrupted by the rule of salvage,the requirement to utilise medical resources in such a way as to return asmany soldiers to battle as possible (p.138). As a result, dilemmas arise as oneis forced to choose between saving the worst off, saving the most lives, andsaving those fit for duty.

The second issue is whether injured soldiers have a right to medical care.In peacetime, the duty of the doctor to care for the patient is generally self-evident, derived from their relation to one another. Further, it is usuallyunaffected by external conditions and actors. Military medicine, however,introduces a number of rights, duties, and interests that challenge theexclusivity of the doctorpatient relationship. Soldiers are, after all, notordinary patients; they have already been deprived of the right to life andmany of the civil liberties that anchor medical care. As Gross puts it, if asoldier is sent to die, why is it necessary to care for him or her whenwounded? (p.66). Putting this difficulty aside, we are still left with thethorny question of who possesses the authority to decide that a woundedsoldier should be offered medical care. On the battlefield, the provision ofmedical care is never the sole preserve of doctors; military commandersintrude upon the process. Physicians may determine their patients medicalneeds, but military commanders decide when and how to serve themconsistent with military necessity and the prosecution of war (p.66).

Without entering into the details of Grosss response to these dilemmas, itsuffices to note that they demonstrate exactly how war tempers the qualityof medical ethics in specific cases. The doctrine of military necessity attachesconditionality to medical practices undertaken on the battlefield, transform-ing the nature of the medical enterprise so that it hardly conforms topeacetime norms. Gross has succeeded, then, for this reader at least, indebunking the WMAs claim that medical ethics remain the same in war asin peace. But does he offer more than a mere deconstruction ofcommonplaces, or is this enough? In the first instance, he does offer morethan just a critical attitude. He actively seeks to formulate innovativeresponses and solutions to the problems he uncovers in his analysis. Someof these solutions are more convincing than others, but in each case theauthors singularity of purpose and his willingness to argue the case oughtto be commended. Moreover, these responses will both invite andprovoke further debate, rather than stunting it and this can only be agood thing.

On a more general level, it seems to me that critical analysis of the kindoffered by Gross is exactly what we need at this point in time, as we confrontthat fork in the road identified by Kofi Annan. Grosss analysis does notmindlessly disregard the old rules and standard frameworks passed downfrom previous generations, but rather questions them on their own termsand assumptions. It is only with sustained reflection of this kind whatJohnson terms reflective encounter that we might begin to gauge whether


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or not it is desirable or even possible to carry on with established rules andnorms, or whether radical changes are indeed needed.

Conclusion

Having surveyed these recent publications, we are in a position to offer some(tentative) views regarding the fork in the road currently facing internationalsociety, and which direction we should take. The first point to note is thatthis divergence of the ways is overdrawn. It is not the case that internationalsociety is restricted to either doggedly adhering to the old rules or startingfrom scratch and inventing them entirely anew. There is of course a middleway, and the books reviewed in this essay confirm both its viability and itsattractions. This middle way comprises reflective encounter with embeddednorms, with a view to adapting and revising them to fit contemporarycircumstances. It involves an interpretative mode of theoretical and politicalengagement that looks to clarify, develop and renegotiate received normsand practices in light of changing historical conditions. This, for instance, isReichberg and Syses objective with respect to the just war tradition, Keithsambition vis-a`-vis international law, and Grosss aim for military medicalethics. The difficulty with such an approach lies in steering a path betweenwhat I earlier referred to as traditionalism and anachronism. If tradition-alism refers to the reification of a tradition, anachronism occurs when atradition is stretched beyond its own limits something that occurs, to put itcrudely, when too much new wine is poured into old bottles. Although thesedifficulties are very real, the books reviewed here suggest that, where duecare is taken, they are avoidable.

This brings me to my second and final set of remarks, which return us tothe theme of change and continuity introduced at the outset. Theinterpretative approach accredited to the literature reviewed here suggeststhat we should not view that element of change introduced by the events of9/11 in isolation from continuity in international affairs. Rather, we shouldunderstand this change as circumscribed by continuity. This is certainly thecase when we consider the general response to 9/11. Although there wereclearly numerous attempts to overhaul the international security regime inthe wake of 9/11, these proposals were typically anchored in that sameregime. They relied, in other words, upon the prevailing discourse.16 Thus,even the Bush administrations determination to promote a broader right toanticipatory war, articulated in the NSS, is premised upon extantinternational law.17 Equally, the new challenges facing international society

16We might think here of Quentin Skinners statement that all revolutionaries are to thisextent obliged to march backwards into battle. Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics: Volume1, Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002) p.150.17For centuries, international law recognized that nations need not suffer an attack beforethey can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present an imminentdanger of attack. Legal scholars and international jurists often conditioned the legitimacy ofpreemption on the existence of an imminent threat most often a visible mobilization of


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identified in the three books reviewed here can only appear novel when setagainst the long sweep of relation to established norms and practices respectively, in relation to the just war tradition, established foreign policynorms and military medical ethics. These books succeed, then, in putting thedisruption signalled by 9/11 into perspective by addressing it from within,and relating it to, established normative frameworks.18 The significance ofthis simple move is not to be understated: by emphasizing continuity, theyhave contributed to disenchanting 9/11 and the newness of the securityenvironment it gave rise to. This, of course, is only the first step towardsproperly engaging and addressing the challenges posed by this securityenvironment, but it is a necessary one.

armies, navies and air forces preparing to attack. We must adapt the concept of imminentthreat to the capabilities and objectives of todays adversaries, Bush, National SecurityStrategy of the United States.18Contrast this to the approach of, for example, Robert Kaplan. Kaplans basic thesis is thatpresent times call for a radical shift from modern political practices towards what he terms apagan ethos that favours warrior politics. In broad terms, it is an argument for turning awayfrom the established liberal framework of international society towards a more robustengagement with the world. Robert D. Kaplan, Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands aPagan Ethos (New York: Random House 2002).


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ethics and war in the twenty

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