ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the existence of justification reveals important insights about the nature of international politics. It explains much about how nations manage the processes of international conflict and cooperation—both at home and abroad. The chapter also argues that, at the very least, justification in international politics demonstrates that states recognize the centrality of domestic politics for foreign policy. It highlights the incompleteness of realist theory. Iraq's explanation of its conquest of Kuwait exemplifies the use of limited-aims justification to divide other states and minimize the adverse consequences that aggression might otherwise generate. A state can signal limited aims in order to make it difficult for other states to mobilize in response when state-society relations in those other states require rationalization for such mobilizations. Justification as pretext implies that the meaning of actions are not self-evident, but contingent and open to interpretation.
