Just and Unjust Military Intervention

European Thinkers from Vitoria to Mill

Stefano Recchia, Jennifer M. Welsh

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781107042025
• eBook ISBN: 9781107454811
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Classical arguments about the legitimate use of force have profoundly shaped the norms and institutions of contemporary international society. But what specific lessons can we learn from the classical European philosophers and jurists when thinking about humanitarian intervention, preventive self-defense or international trusteeship today? The contributors to this volume take seriously the admonition of contextualist scholars not to uproot classical thinkers' arguments from their social, political and intellectual environment. Nevertheless, this collection demonstrates that contemporary students, scholars and policymakers can still learn a great deal from the questions raised by classical European thinkers, the problems they highlighted, and even the problematic character of some of the solutions they offered. The aim of this volume is to open up current assumptions about military intervention, and to explore the possibility of reconceptualizing and reappraising contemporary approaches.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: the enduring relevance of classical thinkers
• 1 Intervention in European history, c.1520-1850
• 2 War in the face of doubt: early modern classics and the preventive use of force
• 3 Vitoria: the law of war, saving the innocent, and the image of God
• 4 Grotius, Hobbes, and Pufendorf on humanitarian intervention
• 5 John Locke on intervention, uncertainty, and insurgency*
• 6 Intervention and sovereign equality: legacies of Vattel
• 7 David Hume and Adam Smith on international ethics and humanitarian intervention
• 8 Sovereignty, morality, and history: the problematic legitimization of force in Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel
• 9 Revisiting Kant and intervention
• 10 Edmund Burke and intervention: empire and neighborhood
• 11 The origins of liberal Wilsonianism: Giuseppe Mazzini on regime change and humanitarian intervention
• 12 J. S. Mill on nonintervention and intervention
• Select bibliography
• Index