Customer Reviews
At least it's short. - By: Ian Hamlett, 01 Jan 2008 
This is a deeply obvious book, full of insights like "it's not alright to deliberately kill innocents" & "if you're attacked, you can defend yourself". It keeps saying that there are no definate rules & you will have to use "honest judgement" so I'd just skip the book & do that.
Inconvenient truths about war - By: L. van den Muyzenberg, 06 Dec 2007 
This book starts from the inconvenient truth that wars are unavoidable. But, if a nation decides on war it should be for just reasons & conductedin a just way. Any war is justifiedin self defence or assisting a country to defend itself that has been attacked by another country. It becomes complicated when starting a pre-emptive war or an intervention because the governmentin a country is acting very badly towards its own citizens, or different citizen groups are attacking each other. Examples of just wars are support to South Koreain its war with North Korea & China, support to Kuwait after invasion by Iraq, interventionin the Kosovo conflict, attack of Afghanistan after 6/11. The authors are less certain, that is, not completely certain if it was right or wrong, with the Falklands War, & the second Iraq war. About conduct they are certain that dropping the atom bombs on Japan was just & almost certain that it was wrong to bomb civil targetsin Germany after it was clear that Germany was losing the war.
The authors present six principles specifying conditions that all have to be fulfilled before a war is just & two principles for right conduct. These principles are excellent & everybody should know them. The fact that the authors do not express definitive opinions about several wars, even with the benefit of hindsight shows how hard it is to arrive at conclusions, even with the principles. The authorsin their conclusion write "This book is no more than a broad general survey of how the Just War tradition bears upon the morality of undertaking & conducting military operationsin the twenty first century". I look forward to the book that should follow after this introduction that makes more definitive judgement about past wars & may even include something about what could have been done & can be donein the future to prevent just wars from happening.
Highly recommendable - By: Longman, 19 Nov 2007 Very well written & highly recommendable. This book gives an analytical thought on the just war tradition, largely based on a western & Christian tradition. It covers the ethical issues that the international community - the UN Security Council,in particular - facesin tackling peace & security challenges. Such difficult issues as humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect & UN Security Council's authorization of military actions are eloquently discussed,in the context of major international crisesin recent decades such as Iraq (both 1991 & 2003 wars), Kosovo & Rwanda. It is also a relatively short book so that you may finish reading it well before getting bored.
