On Just Cause in Law and the Morality of War: Between National Defence and Interventionism

Essay from the year 2009 in the subject Politics - Political Theory and the History of Ideas Journal, grade: 1,3, University of Birmingham (Department of Political Science and International Studies), course: The Theory and Ethics of Terrorism and Political Violence, language: English, abstract: As the Spaniard Francisco de Vitoria noticed, war can only be justified as response to previous wrongs. The issue here is the extent and manner of inflicted harm justifying the use of violence on behalf of third parties - the legal and moral preconditions for interventions. National defence should remain the central basis for just cause in the law and morality of war, however, in the area of tension between national self-determination and the most fundamental human rights, the prevalent principle of non-intervention reaches its limits and allows for humanitarian interventions as response to acts that shock the moral conscience of mankind. In order to avoid instrumentalization or misemployment of these instruments and guarantee protection of peoples from human rights abuses, an institutionalization is absolutely essential; hence, proper international authority has to be established and has to conduct these interventions on multilateral grounds with care for the cultural circumstances - for the solution of societal problems and of nation-building cannot simply be imposed on nations from outside.