The Justification of War and International Order: From Past to PresentEdited by Lothar Brock and Hendrik SimonOxford University Press, 2021

Sovereign states have historically employed violence as an instrument of state policy to achieve political objectives. The realm of International Relations has been marked by repetition and recurrence premised on the realist assumptions that war is inevitable either due to human nature (classical realism) or anarchy (neo-realists) which have predominated the discourse on understanding use of force by states (Morgenthau 1948; Mearsheimer 2001; Levy 1998). The myriad forms of force used in the international realm: wars of aggression, pre-emptive and preventive wars, colonial wars, the war on terror, humanitarian interventions have all sought justification (Der Derian 2000; Walzer 2006, Asad 2010; Nye 2020). How does one account for justification of war within international order and its impact on geopolitical configurations? 

The Justification of War and International Order is a pursuit in tracing the genealogy of the dialectical relationship between war and multi-normativity (p.3) through exploring variations in the justification of war. Brock and Simon use multi-normativity as a heuristic device to engage with questions regarding legitimacy which have been the cardinal subject of concern during use of force by states. The edited volume is a prodigious attempt to examine the co-constitutive nature of international order and rationale expended for war capturing the zeitgeist of every epoch hinging on various normative anchors. It comprises of twenty-eight chapters and seven thematic sections that aim to bridge the gap between the theoretical explanations and the historical and political state practices seeking justification of war. It is a comprehensively curated source for tracing the evolution of war across a wide spatial-temporal context from the early modern era to the present with an eclectic array of trans-disciplinary scholarly contributions spanning a wide range of perspectives from just war imperatives, international history, legal and institutional frameworks to post-colonial ontologies. The contributions in the book illuminate the ethical liminality at play during justification of war while addressing the inter-textuality between international order and moral imperatives. The appeal of the justification is undergirded by empirical case studies and theoretical exegesis.

In an attempt to move beyond the realist justifications of war grounded in ‘might is right’ which attribute ethics as a function of politics, the book traces the relevance of norms in providing grounds of reasoning from wars in antiquity to contemporary conflicts. As opposed to mainstream realist accounts, norms as not merely ceremonial but constraining, regulating, socializing and enabling state behaviour. The common theme across various sections of the volume is scrutinizing the binary division of world politics into the realms of power/material capabilities and norms. The contributors to the volume advocate analyzing the inter-relationship between power and norms and look beyond the material capabilities and power politics to take into consideration the........

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