Is Just War Doctrine Still Relevant

Outsourcing War examines the current status of just war doctrine in a privatized and globalized world and finds it wanting. The increased presence of nonstate actors wreaking havoc on civilian populations and the unprecedented deployment of private military companies (PMCs) in the war on terror has seriously complicated moral reasoning that is premised on the state as a unitary actor. Eckert rightly points out that, while jus ad bellum (justice of war) criteria were developed prior to the rise of the modern nation-state, jus in bello (justice in war) frameworks were a later creation, designed for a Westphalian world where Max Weber’s definition of the state prevailed. Weber defined the state as “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” As Eckert argues, “[n]onstate actors have effectively lacked standing in international society since the emergence of the modern state system” (p. 7). As a result, just war normative frameworks have become ill-equipped to guide moral choice in a world of asymmetric warfare, which has undermined the Weberian state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force

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