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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2012
After twenty years, Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars continues to engage scholars in discussions of the moral realities of war. Smith provides a summary of Walzer's work, with particular emphasis on his method of moral argument. Walzer's argument focuses on moral norms or “practical” morality, but ultimately emphasizes the importance of moral judgment based on the principle of human rights rather than on utilitarian calculation. Addressing realists' critiques of Walzer, in particular David C. Hendrickson's (see below), Smith reaffirms Walzer's call for the need to constrain the realist doctrine of necessity, which argues that moral considerations should be subordinate to the security of the state. Walzer's treatment of nuclear deterrence and intervention is discussed in relation to the end of the Cold War. Smith concludes by paying tribute to Just and Unjust Wars as a continuing reminder of the human capacity for hope and the will to change our world for the better.
1 See especially Slater, Jerome and Nardin, Terry, “Nonintervention and Human Rights,” Journal of Politics 48 (February 1986), 86–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Walzer, Michael, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War, and Citizenship (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970Google Scholar).
3 Walzer, , “The Moral Standing of States,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 9 (Fall 1980), 226Google Scholar.
4 For a penetrating historical review of this issue see Bernstein, Barton J., “Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender: Missed Opportunities, Little-Known Near Disasters, and Modern Memory,” Diplomatic History 19 (Spring 1995), 227–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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6 National Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace (Washington: NCCB, 1983), 58, par. 186Google Scholar.
7 Walzer, , “The Politics of Rescue,” Dissent (Winter 1995), 41Google Scholar.
