Justice, Intervention, and Force in International Relations by Kimberly A. Hudson

Author:Kimberly A. Hudson [Hudson, Kimberly A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, General, House & Home, Security, Law, International, Philosophy, Ethics & Moral Philosophy, Political, Political Science, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9781134009282
Google: HVN5AgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2009-03-05T01:41:53+00:00

Historical views on last resort

Grotius affirmed that force should be a last resort. Gentili, however, argued that preventive war might sometimes be just: “one can sometimes anticipate that the trend of events will lead to a situation of extreme necessity; in such cases one is fully justified in taking preventive action.”19 Gentili was not only writing about preemption of imminent attack; he meant that force was sometimes justifiable to prevent the formation and consolidation of “probable and possible” threats as well:

One ought not to delay, or wait to avenge at one’s peril an injury which one has received, if one may at once strike at the root of the growing plant and check the attempts of an adversary who is meditating evil. … A defense is just which anticipates dangers that are already meditated and prepared, and also those which are not meditated, but are probable and possible.20

Grotius explicitly and vigorously disagreed with Gentili, and devoted several pages to arbitration as a means to avoiding the rash resort to war:21

It is then only our Interest to run to Arms, when we cannot otherwise have Justice done us by our Enemies. The way to prevent War between those, who, not belonging to the same Jurisdiction, have no common Judge to appeal to, is to put the Matter to Arbitration.22

Whenever war may be avoided by appeal to a common judge or by arbitration, it should be; Grotius is very clear that war ought to be prevented by making use of diplomacy and arbitration wherever possible. For Grotius, the last resort hurdle is cleared only if diplomacy, courts, and arbitration cannot solve a dispute that rises to the level of just cause for war: “where the power of law ceases, there war begins. Injury, or the prevention of injury, is the only just cause for war.”23 By this Grotius means to disallow war as a means of settling disputes that might be otherwise settled, for example, through arbitration, but he allows that wars may be justly undertaken to “prevent wrongs not yet committed.”24 Grotius’ endorsement of prevention is not an endorsement of the early kind of preventive war allowed in Gentili’s construction: by “wrongs not yet committed,” Grotius explicitly means that the danger must be immediate, not merely a “supposed intention,”25 seems to be referring to Gentili’s argument: “The danger must be immediate, which is one necessary point. But they are themselves mistaken, and mislead others, who maintain that any degree of fear ought to be a ground for killing another, to prevent his supposed intention.”26 Grotius says leaders should take heed of Cicero’s council that many wrongs are done through fear. In that discussion, he approvingly quotes Livy, who writes, “Great infamy redounds to those, who by anticipation perpetrate the criminal act which they fear.”27 In the event of a conspiracy and a planned attack, Grotius insists that there is no right of preventive self-defense until the attack is otherwise unavoidable (that is to say, unless it is the last resort). This

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