In the ongoing argument between foreign policy realists and
idealists, the just-war tradition of moral reasoning about the use of
force has played a crucial mediating role for centuries. Rooted in
the conviction that all human action--even in the distinctive field
of international affairs, and even in the extremity of war--is
susceptible to moral scrutiny and judgment, the just-war tradition
has insisted that moralists take a realistic account of politics as
an arena of conflict in which the quest for justice and peace is
inevitably fraught with ambiguity and disagreement. Its mediation has
also enabled statesmen to maintain an accepted role for moral
judgment in the very domain--that of war--farthest from the regular
application of human compassion, law, and comity. Just-war theory
has, in short, been a civilized and civilizing agent in the darkest
corners of the human social endeavor, and it has kept the church from
straying too far from the realm of this world.
The ancient question--How can the use of force serve just ends?--that
has been the centerpiece of Christian reflection on just war from the
fifth century has lost none of its urgency today. Indeed, post-Cold
War international politics offers a fertile field for reflection by
moral philosophers and statesmen alike, as the world stands on the
edge of the third millennium of the common era. With the fear of and
focus on superpower nuclear tensions now subsided, world politics
offers situation after situation in which one can imagine the use of
proportionate and discriminate force serving just and prudential ends.
