The Return of Just Wars?

Today, international law condemns waging aggressive war as a punishable crime, with the consequence that every warring party declares its war to be a defensive act against foreign attack. But this has had the perverse effect of encouraging aggressors to plead defensive intent in waging "just wars" that are anything but just.

SALZBURG – As war loomed over Kosovo ten years ago, Germany’s then foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, explained that the principle that had always governed his involvement in politics was: “Never again war; never again Auschwitz!” Ethnic cleansing and violence in Kosovo, however, soon made it clear to him that there were moments when one had to choose between those two imperatives: a new Auschwitz sometimes could be prevented only by means of war.

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