Spring 1996
American Purpose
Issue 1, Volume 10

Publication Date: May 1, 1996
Posted: Wednesday, May 5, 1996

In mid-January, the Ethics and Public Policy Center hosted the first in a series of scholars' conferences intended to refine contemporary just war thinking by engaging some of the key dynamics of post-Cold War international life.  Excerpts from the conference papers are printed below, along with examples of the conversation the papers generated.  Articles in this issue include 'Just War in a New Era of Military Affairs'; 'The Concept of Just Cause'; 'Humanitarian Intervention: From Concept to Reality'; and 'Competent Authority Revisited'.


In This Issue :

Just War in a New Era of Military Affairs
Few would deny that we live in an era of rapid and momentous change in military affairs. Awareness of this phenomenon fairly burst upon the public consciousness at the time of the Persian Gulf War. It manifested itself above all in the dazzling "systems" that figured prominently—or at least appeared to figure prominently—in securing victory over Iraq: stealth aircraft, anti-ballistic missiles, an array of "smart" munitions, and above all an integrated architecture of command and control. Embodied in hardware such as surveillance satellites, the Global Positioning System, JSTARS and AWACS aircraft, and Aegis warships, American superiority in command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, and information (C4I2)—the product of a concerted effort to tap the military potential of microelectronics—rendered Saddam Hussein's old-style arsenal not so much inferior as all but irrelevant. [More]

The Concept of Just Cause
What are the contemporary implications of the idea of just cause, which is one of the fundamental elements in the just war tradition? That is, what sorts of concerns and situations should be judged to satisfy the requirement that for resort to armed force to be justified, a just cause must exist?...  [More]

Humanitarian Intervention
From Concept to Reality
Humanitarian intervention is an uneasy compound notion whose two components have very different evaluative and ontological connections. "Humanitarian" and related terms are generally brought into discussions of international politics to express a worthy and indeed compelling concern, a value that appeals across the customary divisions of ethnicity and race, of interest and alliance, of ideology and religion, and of class and gender in order to evoke benevolent responses in the face of suffering and injustice....  [More]

Competent Authority Revisited
It cannot be said too often that the possibility of peace requires the concerted influence of the major military powers of the day, backed by their willingness to use force if necessary to attain peace and to maintain it. The nineteenth century was the last time the world enjoyed such a period of peace. The idea of the Concert of Europe is the indispensable component of the concept of world peace. For the century between the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo and the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the major powers of Europe, under the leadership of Great Britain, achieved a greater and more sustained degree of peace than any of their predecessors since the heyday of the Roman Empire. [More]