IR1198 LECT 4 pt 2

• War


  Central concern for International Relations
• Peace


  Central concern for International Relations
• International law is an imperfect tool, but a growing body of law constrains when states fight and how states fight
• The specific issues posed by the 2003 Iraq war point to a more general set of questions that have been debated for centuries - the ethics of war and what kinds of war may or may not be deemed to be 'just'
• Realists


  Wars happen and that is that, there's no point worrying about morality - the main aim is to win the war and not to worry too much about its causes or the means employed to win it
• Pacifists


  Wars are by definition barbaric and can therefore never be justified by morality or ethics
• The Peace of Westphalia reflected the idea of territorial understanding of political power (sovereignty)
• Geographically self-contained political community


  With its own law and government, defence of boundaries
• The plurality which boundaries maintain is constitutive of the states system as a whole
• Non-intervention


  No state may interfere in the domestic affairs of another state
• Non-intervention is intended to preserve the power of existing international boundaries and the sovereign communities within them
• International security is associated with the preservation of the existing plurality of states that boundaries create, hence the international presumption in favour of the territorial integrity of existing states and against secession and irredentism
• Jus ad Bellum


  International law deals with rules and conventions surrounding the legality of going to war, sets criteria to judge whether an actor's choice to go to war is justified
• Jus in Bello


  International law that governs the types of behaviour that an actor can use to prosecute a war, sets criteria to determine whether a war is being fought 'in a just manner'
• Jus ad Bellum criteria

  • Just cause: self-defence or defence of a 3rd party
  • Right authority: only states can wage legitimate war
  • Right intention: address an injustice or aggression, not glory/expansion/loot
  • Last resort: exhausted all other reasonable avenues of resolution
  • Reasonable hope of success
  • Restoration of peace
  • Proportionality of means and ends
• Jus in Bello criteria

  • Proportionality of means: minimal, proportionate force and weaponry
  • Non-combatants immunity: do not directly target non-combatants
  • Law of double effect: unintended but foreseeable civilian deaths
• Just War Theory (JWT)


  A set of guidelines for determining and judging whether and when a state may have recourse to war and how it may fight that war
• The aim of JWT is not a just world, instead it aims only to limit wars by restricting the types of justification that are acceptable
• Deciding that a war is just does not mean that it is good - a just war is permissible because it is the lesser of two evils, but remains an evil nonetheless
• War is arguably the oldest topic in international relations, and one of the most uncomfortable - studying humanity at its most brutal and barbaric
• Today's 'new wars' are the latest evolution of this ancient phenomenon, a negative consequence of globalisation that is sometimes overlooked
• Peace is often defined simply as the absence of war
• Peace and war are obviously connected
• Given a choice, most individuals and states claim to prefer peace as it does not kill their citizens, allows economies to function, and is generally less expensive than conflict
• Peace seems morally superior and is deemed socially positive, as opposed to being warlike, which carries political risks
• Negative Peace


  Absence of war
• Positive Peace


  Absence of social injustices caused by structural violence (starvation, ethnic-racial conflicts, lack of human security)
• Structural violence refers to the deprivation, repression and alienation built into social, political and economic structures, which may kill more people in the long term than direct violence
• Types of Violence


  • Classical Violence: deliberate infliction of pain
  • Deprivation: lack of fundamental material needs
  • Repression: loss of human freedoms
  • Alienation: against identity and non-material needs
• Peace treaties, peace movements, and peace processes are important practices of peacemaking in international relations
• clothing, food and water
• REPRESSION


  refers to the loss of human freedoms to choose our beliefs and speak out on their behalf
• ALIENATION


  this is a form of structural violence against our identity and our non-material needs for community and relations with others
• How do we make peace?

  1. why (and how) do we make peace?

  2. three important practices of peace making in international relations:

  3. peace treaties

  4. peace movements

  5. peace processes
• Peace Treaties


  formal agreements made between official states
• Peace Treaties


  • Peace of Westphalia, 1648
  • Congress of Vienna, 1814-1815
  • Treaty of Versailles, 1919
  • Charter of the United Nations, 1945
  • Declaration on Granting Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, 1960
• Peace Treaties


  • They are agreements between consenting parties, and can therefore assume a legally binding character
  • They can demand legal compliance from their signatories
  • Ratification of treaties in domestic institutions may be difficult as some states perceive them as threatening their autonomy/sovereignty
• The failure of the USSR, USA and UK to agree on common values helps to explain why their peace talks failed to produce a treaty to end WWII
• The growing harmony between the superpowers in the late 1980s helps to explain why the treaties that ended the Cold War were more successful
• Successful peace settlements tend to be inclusive, drawing winners and losers alike back into a shared international society