ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a systematic examination of the justifications for war in the post–Cold War era. It analyzes justification frameworks used by political and military leaders in the weeks surrounding the initiation of nine conflicts from 1990 to 2008. The chapter offers a critique of the just-war revival literature that connects these arguments with the just-war tradition as well as more recent scholarship on the changing nature of the state in a globalized context. Understanding transformations in the sovereign state system is an extremely large and complex puzzle, and examining justification frames for war can only address one small, but important, piece of that puzzle. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 is perhaps the most commonly cited example by just-war revival proponents of the resurgence of humanitarian claims. A justification frame that employs a sovereign rights logic and an interest-centric discourse is referred to as a state power-interests frame.
