ABSTRACT
As it is commonly understood, the discipline of international law and international relations (IL/IR) deals with the order of foundations, power and generations. This means to say that its jobs are often associated with the marking out of territory, with war (not simply as the end of peace but also as the life-spending power at the source of culture) and with the stability and persistence of given communities. Such is the doxa, the common opinion in the discipline. The aim of the present chapter is to question the predominant opinion
just outlined. In what follows I will be putting forward a thesis about that dominant position and call for a switch of standpoint. Common opinion in IL/IR assumes the centrality of group survival and the necessity of the realization of the inherent potential of the group in a ‘perfect community’ or a state-form that must persist at all costs. The possibility of bracketing war in international law emerged as a corollary of this assumption. ‘Total war’, which was related to credal disputes and the problem of just cause, gradually became a matter of ‘state war’. The crucial element in this transformation was the emergence of the state as a spatially defined unit recognizable as a public person by other similar units. It will be argued that the assumption and its corollary are a persistent
feature in international law since at least the 1550s debates at Burgos and Valladolid. The units referred to above were first described by Francisco de Vitoria in the context of such debates. He named them ‘perfect communities’ for the first time. He defined the ‘perfection’ or realized potential of these communities and others during the course of such debates, in contrast with the ‘lesser perfection’ of the communities found in the Americas. Only ‘perfect’ communities would recognize one another as public persons of the same character and similar rights, and thus, the conduct of war could be formalized only between them. European soil would become the theatrum belli in which politically and militarily organized ‘perfect communities’ could test one another under the watchful eye of other sovereigns.
