ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on NATO's 1999 humanitarian war in Kosovo. It offers a theory of the constitutive impact of rights on wars in which rights are viewed as a special kind of normative structure. The book demonstrates that the medieval concept of rights is embedded in Orthodox Christian society's conception of security, the soldiers of Christ, and the apocalyptic monarchy. It examines the prospects for humanitarian wars in the twenty-first century, and discusses recent events such as Darfur and Libya. The chapter discusses how rights have the capacity to constitute an international order that is either homogeneous or conflictual, and maintains that the choice of outcome is very much in our hands. Rights, their nature and definition, are not something external to humanity like nature, but a product of human thought, social convention, and a result of cultural and historical development.
