War by Agreement

Guest Lecture by Professor of Philosophy, Daniel Statman, University of Haifa.

The goal of War by Agreement is to develop a contractarian justification for just war theory. The basic idea is that the rules that guide the conduct of wars are anchored in a mutually beneficial and fair agreement between states. The general form of the argument runs as follows: States have a strong interest in being able to defend themselves from unjust attacks against them; since they cannot be sure that they will always be the stronger party in such conflicts, they have an interest in limited, rule-governed wars over unlimited, total ones; and since deciding on such rules would be impossible once war breaks out, they have an interest in agreeing to such rules ex ante. The book seeks to show that such contractarian thinking can explain both the rules that govern jus ad bellum as well as those that govern jus in bello.