It is a sad but obvious truth that studies of the ethics of force have been something of a growth industry since the early 1990s and especially, of course, since 2001. This speaks both to the sobering reality that force remains a central part of the political world—however unpalatable this may be to many—and to the recognition that there are very real and very powerful ethical issues intertwined with the human proclivity to use force. All three books under review here are excellent additions to this growing body of work. In this short review, I think it best to consider each of the books on their own (considerable) merits before closing with one thought that draws on all three of them.

Let me begin, then, with Mathew Evangelista's Law, Ethics, and The War on Terror. It is, he tells us, an attempt to provide “a basic overview for the non specialist of the key ethical and legal issues in the war on terror” (p. vii). Divided into five chapters, it moves from a discussion of norms versus practice in international law and ethics (chap. 1), to definitional questions surrounding terrorism (chap. 2), to problems with viewing suspected terrorists as prisoners or targets (chap. 3), to the vexed question of preventive war (chap. 4) and, finally, to an assessment of humanitarian objectives in antiterror wars (chap. 5). Evangelista has largely succeeded in his aim. He is clear that his book is primarily about the United States, and that it is “about the evolution of norms and laws governing warfare and the protection of civilians during a war on terror” (p. 5). And he adds that this is the final justification for focusing on the United States: “Most theories that accord state practice first place in shaping the evolution of norms would anticipate that the most powerful state in the system would be the most influential” (p. 5). While Evangelista qualifies this judgment from time to time, emphasising the role other states and nongovernmental organizations can play (“a small bit of hope in an otherwise bleak prognosis” [p. 5]), the bulk of the chapters are indeed concerned with the experience of the United States. The book is well organized and written, and the major ethical and legal debates arising out of 9/11 are, for the most part, well covered. The opening discussion in Chapter 1 perhaps overschematizes the evolution of the laws of war from the just war tradition, and could usefully have included a discussion of the relations between legal and moral obligation (for example, are there no circumstances when an illegal war might be morally required, or vice versa?). Then again, seen from the other side of the Atlantic, there are some other “ethical” questions that one might think of as having been given new life by the “war on terror”—the fact, character, and normative role of U.S. power, the reality of religious claims in politics and international affairs, and many others—that are not discussed. But that is hardly a cardinal sin, especially when Evangelista has declared his hand early on and when the book as a whole is so clearly and engagingly written.

The next two books are both more ambitious and longer, and both foreground what Evangelista's recesses—the just war tradition itself. Alex J. Bellamy's Just Wars is a major treatment of both the historical trajectory of this tradition and the dilemmas of it in the context of contemporary wars. The book is divided into two parts. The first part—“Mapping the Just War Tradition”—is concerned with its development historically from antiquity to the present. The second—“Contemporary Issues”—is concerned with the current shape of the tradition and with its approach to four important issues: terrorism, preemption, aerial bombing, and humanitarian intervention. As with Evangelista's book, there is much here to admire. Arguments are marshaled well, and one could not wish for a more tightly developed set of empirical cases illustrating very well the claims Bellamy wishes to highlight about the challenges faced by the just war tradition in contemporary contexts.

Bellamy sets out to show that the just war tradition has been, from its beginning, really not so much a single tradition but, rather, a broad intertwining of competing and collaborating traditions that are united simply by the task of trying to normatively judge acts of violence. The tradition, he argues, should fundamentally be seen as making claims about the legitimacy of particular acts of force in either ad bellum or in bello contexts. This claim is derived from Ian Clark's work on international legitimacy, where it is assumed that there are two approaches governing legitimacy, which Clark calls “substantive”—seeing acts as legitimate if they conform to certain rules—and “procedural”—where the focus is on the manner in which decisions are reached. Clark, and in the current context Bellamy, opt for a version of the procedural account, which emphasizes that “legitimacy claims are articulated and assessed by reference to three subordinate sets of norms … legality, morality and constitutionality…. The Just War tradition provides a legitimacy framework for war that encompasses these three norms through its three main sub-traditions [namely, natural law, or morality; positive law, or legality; and realism, or constitutionality]” (p. 7). And this, then, provides the shape of the historical narrative that Bellamy undertakes in the first part of the book, tracing the evolution of these three traditions and the gradual intertwining of them into the modern just war tradition.

But there are surely two problems with this. The first is the surprisingly unhistorical character of this argument—surprising in part because of Bellamy's avowedly historical focus. This is true across the board, but let me simply use as an example Bellamy's discussion of realism. Here, something called “realism” emerges in the sixteenth century with Machiavelli and passes through Hobbes, realpolitik, and raison d'etat through twentieth-century Realism to something called “Political Tradition: consequenialism, Prudence, power politics.” But this is—to put it mildly—stipulative. Why start realism with Machiavelli? That Machiavelli has been influential on Realism is certainly true—though by itself that says nothing about the accuracy of realist readings of Machiavelli—but to stipulate that realism “begins” in the sixteenth century (or indeed at any particular time), we need an argument, not merely an assertion, which we are not given, not even in the bulk of the historical material that dominates the first half of the book. It seems that realism is a “natural kind” that does not really make an appearance before the sixteenth century but is then constituted as a “tradition” after that point. But tradition understood how? And what about those also influential on realism before the sixteenth century (Thucydides, Augustine)? Rather than being a genuinely historical explanation of a body of thought, this looks suspiciously like a deployment of what Michael Oakeshott would have called “the practical past”: We know what “Realism” is; now let's see how history has led up to it!

There is a second and, to my mind, still more problematic concern, however. This is simply that for a book that seeks to discuss the ethics of the use of force, there is a rather curious reluctance actually to engage in any ethical discussion. This reluctance is all too common among “social scientists” who discuss normative questions (one sees it also in Evangelista): While they may comfortably analyze the genesis, contestation, and consequences of norms, they shy away from actually engaging and evaluating norms. In his conclusion, Bellamy argues that “rather than being a theory or checklist used to determine whether a particular war is just or unjust, the just war tradition offers a framework that diverse communities use to debate the legitimacy of wars…. [T]he tradition itself contains many competing ethical theories, each of which offers a different way of interpreting the legitimacy framework…. Viewed this way, the tradition poses a series of questions but provides few authoritative answers itself” (p. 229). Up to a point he is right, of course, but investigating “the normative dilemmas posed by contemporary wars with reference to the just war tradition” (the second task he sets for the book in the introduction) requires more than just narrative and description, however well done. It requires engagement and, especially, evaluation. And Bellamy seems curiously reluctant to do this.

By adopting the particular account of legitimacy he does, Bellamy produces a very thoughtful narrative, emphasizing the disparate elements that comprise the modern just war tradition. The one thing he does not do, however, is provide any argument for assessing the truth claims of the tradition. By focusing on legitimacy as procedure, Bellamy dodges the question of how we are to understand that the moral claims made in the tradition —any of the claims, at any given point in time—have actual moral force. A substantive view of legitimacy would not have the luxury of ignoring the authority of moral rules. And let me just say in passing that this question, to me, is one of the central questions of contemporary international legal and moral theory. What we tend to get, for the most part, are theories of international legitimacy that treat legitimacy as, effectively, “validity”; in the manner in which H. L. A. Hart famously saw a legal system as being valid—that is not self-contradictory without being in itself the subject of moral claims. This is, of course, important, but so, surely, is the question as to whether such systems are justifiable as well as being valid, and for that you need not a theory of legitimacy but one of authority.

In Tony Coady's Morality and Political Violence, one finds this question foregrounded much more, though not couched in quite these terms. Coady has long been one of the most acute thinkers on questions concerning morality and the use of force. His book consists of 14 chapters, some of which have previously been published. It focuses primarily on the classic dichotomy of the just war—jus ad bellum (chaps. 1–5) and jus in bello (chaps. 6–12), and includes two final chapters on “The Ideal of Peace” (chaps. 13) and “The Issue of Stringency” (chap. 14). His concern is emphatically with political violence, not simply with war. As he puts it, “My use of the expression political violence includes war as the primary instance of such violence but it is also meant to cover other violent activities that some would not include under the heading of war … terrorism, armed intervention (for ‘humanitarian’ or other purposes), armed revolution, violent demonstrations or attacks by citizens aimed at less than the overthrow of their government and the deployment of mercenary companies or individuals” (p. 3). Like Bellamy, Coady starts from the assumption that the just war tradition is the place to begin—though he accepts that there may need to be modifications to it along the way. He also argues, along with other writers—Larry May, in some respects Bellamy, and others, including me—that the just war tradition is much closer to both realism and pacifism than is usually assumed to be the case. The book knits a wide variety of specific discussions together. Some—such as interstate war, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, the problem of collateral damage, and the nature of intervention—are very familiar, and some—such as the ethical dilemmas associated with mercenaries—are less so. These topics are bound together by Coady's philosophical subtlety, elegant prose style and sharp eye for ethical puzzles and ambiguity. And he clearly offers serious ethical evaluations of different issues surrounding the ethics of force. He supports a conception of the just war that is both more expansive than usual—in terms of scope—and more restrictive than usual—in terms of the attitudes to the possible uses of political violence. It is a significant achievement, even if there are places where one might differ.

The breadth of Coady's book, and its concern with the just war tradition's capacity for evaluating nontraditional aspects of political violence, raises an issue that is touched on by all three books in their different ways. All three conclude that the dilemmas of modern political violence are great, and all three suggest (Evangelista perhaps less obviously than Bellamy and Coady) that the just war tradition still possesses resources to help us evaluate uses of force. Yet in none of the books are the foundational questions that have hovered around the just war tradition for some centuries really confronted. Evangelista expressly foregounds the legal aspects of the contemporary conventions, but as I have already noted, does not really look at how we should understand the relations of legal and moral obligation. Bellamy, again as I have discussed, shies away from a direct evaluation of the tradition and its claims. And even Coady, who does not shy away from evaluation, fails to confront directly the most pressing question raised by any consideration of the ethics of force: What authority is there than can claim the sacrifice of a life or can command someone to kill?

Moral, political, and international theory over the last half century has rightly prided itself on its inventiveness and originality when it comes to questions such as justice, liberty, or equality. Perhaps it is time that we give equal thought to one of the oldest, but recently most neglected, questions of political philosophy: the question of authority. When it comes to questions of life and death in war, such attention to authority is perhaps long overdue.