EPP Inaugural Lecture Series: Governments, grunts, or graduate students: to whom is revisionist just war theory of any use?

Just war theory has been the subject of an ongoing debate between traditionalists and revisionists. The latter make sharp and radical criticisms of the ‘war convention’ while the former have defended it. Revisionism faces a dilemma. Either it is primarily committed to guiding choice and action or not. If so, then it should be addressed to governments and grunts but its flaws are profound. Specifically, its failure to seriously engage with psychology or war render many of its key proposals unworkable. Or, it is not. In that case, it would seem that revisionism would primarily aim to uncover what we should think, regardless of its practicality. But if the theory is primarily addressed to graduate students and scholars, then it risks becoming another normative theory that we applaud but we rarely, if ever, apply. If just war theory becomes a puzzle for clever people, then they have no one but themselves to blame when real and difficult questions about war are guided by realpolitik.

Join Dr. Renaud-Philippe Garner as he takes aim at the general debate between the two.