Humane

How the United States abandoned peace and reinvented war

Bibliographic Data

ID4031014
AuthorsAurélie Basha I Novosejt (0000-0003-3751-2360, University of Kent, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume98
Issue3
Pages1120-1122
Publication date2022-05-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-5850 • E-ISSN: 1468-2346
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ia/iiac095
OpenAlexW4229364606
LanguageEN
Citations received40

In Humane, Samuel Moyn makes a deceptively simple and yet startingly original argument: that a ‘nefarious tandem’ (p. 10) exists whereby the move towards more humane methods of carrying out war has paved the way for permanent war. The book is simultaneously a history of pacifism from Leo Tolstoy to the present day, and a history of the evolution of international law on war, in particular its shift from focusing on war itself as a crime (as articulated in the Nuremberg trials) to conduct in war. Moyn's real ambition, however, is to trace the intellectual legacies and precedents that permitted the ‘war on terror’ and the unquestioning extension of US-led violence across the globe. Moyn's contribution is ground-breaking and will likely become a seminal text. It will almost certainly shift the terms of current national security debates. This is true not just because of its content but also because he has captured a generational moment in the United States. In many respects, the book acts as a foil and should be read in tandem with Samantha Power's A problem from hell (New York: Basic Books, 2002). As scholars, both sit between history and law and capture the Zeitgeist of their moment. However, where Moyn focuses on the moral dilemmas and unquestioned assumptions behind US action, Power does the same for US inaction. Just as Power's account is read today as evidence of the mood in the 1990s, including an ambivalence about the Clinton presidency, Moyn's reads as a reaction to the post-9/11 administrations

Political science · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Law

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Open DOIOpen Access