ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the grounds of justified intervention are applicable to determining whether a resort to war—international or civil—is justified. It defends this view against the claims of political realism and pacifism, and applies it to the Gulf War and the Kosovo War in order to shed light on both the implications of the view and the moral status of these wars. Political realism developed in the aftermath of the two world wars and became the prevailing orthodoxy in policy circles in the United States. Pacifism presents a different kind of challenge to the criteria for justified military intervention. Normative pacifism holds that even "just wars" are morally impermissible because they involve the commission of wrongs not captured by the criteria of just war theory. The chapter applies the criteria as the requirements that states or parties struggling for state power must meet in order to be justified in resorting to military force.
