The politics of legitimacy and force in international relations: Vitoria and Rawls on the 'Law of Peoples' and the recourse to war

摘要

This article confronts two philosophical positions that define the nature of internationaludorder in matters concerning state legitimacy and the justifications for the recourseudto war. The first position, set forth by Francisco de Vitoria in the sixteenth century,udframes legitimacy and the use of force within the traditional, Christian natural lawudconception of justice. Legitimate are those states that uphold universal principlesudof justice, not the political principles of a particular regime form, while the recourseudto war is likewise justified by the constitutive tenets of the ius ad bellum and the iusudin bello. By contrast, Rawls’ Law of Peoples, which compares itself to the Christianudnatural law tradition, articulates nonetheless a particular liberal conception of justiceudthat defines legitimacy in wholly political terms. In addition, in its appeal to theudso-called ‘supreme emergency exemption’ the Rawlsian Law of Peoples dispensesudwith a crucial aspect of the traditional ius in bello that prohibits the targeting ofudcivilian populations, as an exceptional means for defending and promoting a liberaludinternational order. It is argued that such an ideologically based view of order positsuda non-inclusive conception of justice in a culturally and politically diverse worldudand, hence, encourages conflict, resistance and strife between liberal and non-liberaludstates, and even strengthens autocratic government beyond the liberal zone of peace.udA more tolerant and sound view, held by Terry Nardin’s conception of ‘commonudmorality’, is similar to Vitoria’s traditional conception of a more politically tolerantudjustice-based order and expresses in contemporary ethical language the principaludtenets of the tradition of the laws of war set forth by Vitoria himself.