What role should national militaries play in an increasingly globalised and interdependent world? This book examines the often difficult transition they have made toward missions aimed at protecting civilians and promoting human security, and asks whether we might expect the emergence of armed forces that exist to serve the wider human community.

"Forces for good develops and explores the concept of 'cosmopolitan militaries'. It examines how governments, militaries and institutions have responded politically, doctrinally and operationally to claims that militaries have a new role in cosmopolitan law enforcement that allows and perhaps even requires the use of force to protect and defend those who are the victims of gross abuse of human rights. The contributors include academics, defence practitioners and serving military officers."--BOOK JACKET.

Just war theory exists to stop armies and countries from using armed force without good cause. But how can we judge whether a war is just? In this original book, John W. Lango takes some distinctive approaches to the ethics of armed conflict. DT A revisionist approach that involves generalising traditional just war principles, so that they are applicable by all sorts of responsible agents to all forms of armed conflict DT A cosmopolitan approach that features the Security Council DT A preventive approach that emphasises alternatives to armed force, including negotiation, nonviolent action and peacekeeping missions DT A human rights approach that encompasses not only armed humanitarian intervention but also armed invasion, armed revolution and all other forms of armed conflict Lango shows how these can be applied to all forms of armed conflict, however large or small: from interstate wars to UN peacekeeping missions, and from civil wars counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations.

War is about individuals maiming and killing each other, and yet, it seems that it is also irreducibly collective, as it is fought by groups of people and more often than not for the sake of communal values such as territorial integrity and national self-determination. Cécile Fabre articulates and defends an ethical account of war in which the individual, as a moral and rational agent, is the fundamental focus for concern and respect—both as a combatant whose acts of killing need justifying and as a non-combatant whose suffering also needs justifying. She takes as her starting point a political morality to which the individual, rather than the nation-state, is central, namely cosmopolitanism. According to cosmopolitanism, individuals all matter equally, irrespective of their membership in this or that political community. Traditional war ethics already accepts this principle, since it holds that unarmed civilians are illegitimate targets even though they belong to the enemy community. However, although the traditional account of whom we may kill in wars is broadly faithful to that principle, the traditional account of why we may kill and of who may kill is not. Cosmopolitan theorists, for their part, do not address the ethical issues raised by war in any depth. Fabre's Cosmopolitan War seeks to fill this gap, and defends its account of just and unjust wars by addressing the ethics of different kinds of war: wars of national defence, wars over scarce resources, civil wars, humanitarian intervention, wars involving private military forces, and asymmetrical wars.

From a feminist constructivist institutional approach the author explores how gender aspects and UN SCR 1325 has influenced the way that the post-national defense organizes its practices and the policies pursued.

The events of the 11th of September 2001 revealed most dramatically that globalization has a shadow. While large sections of the world’s population enjoy the perceived benefits of globalization, others seek to utilize globalization for their own politically violent purposes. If 9/11 demonstrated anything, it is that globalization can as readily facilitate violence and insecurity as it can produce stability, prosperity and political order. This edited volume offers important new methodological and multi-disciplinary insights into the study of globalization and political violence. It brings together studies from various disciplines in order to address the precise nature of the relationship between globalization and political violence as it seeks to offer new theoretical and empirical understandings of the types of actors involved in political violence, either as perpetrators or victims. Examples of the studies include the changing character of state militaries and state-to-state conflict under globalization, the emergence of ‘new wars’ fuelled by globalization, the role of state militaries in intervention, new forms of violence directed by states against refugees and anti-globalization protesters, the role of terrorist actors post-9/11, networks for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the rise of private military firms amongst others. The Globalization of Political Violence will be of interest to students and researchers of politics, international relations, security studies and international political economy.

This book explores the role that states might play in promoting a cosmopolitan condition as an agent of cosmopolitanism rather than an obstacle to it. In doing so the book seeks to develop recent arguments in favour of locating cosmopolitan moral and political responsibility at the state level as either an alternative to, or a corollary of, cosmopolitanism as it is more commonly understood qua requiring transnational or global bearers of responsibility. As a result, the contributions in this volume see an on-going role for the state, but also its transformation, perhaps only partially, into a more cosmopolitan-minded institution -- instead of a purely 'national' or particularistic one. It therefore makes the case that the state as a form of political community can be reconciled with various form of cosmopolitan responsibility. In this way the book will address the question of how states, in the present, and in the future, can be better bearers of cosmopolitan responsibilities?