J
just war A war whose cause and conduct
can be ethically justified (seeethics). The
desire to specify the conditions under which
it is morally acceptable to resort to military
violencehas a long and complicated history,
in whichreligion,geopoliticsandlawhave
all played central roles.
Christianity has embraced both a presump-
tion against war and a belief that war may be
justified to spread or defend the faith (the
Crusades) or to combat evil. In Islam, the
concept ofjihadinvolves a struggle against
evil, but the ‘greater jihad’ is a personal, spir-
itual struggle, while the ‘lesser jihad’ is re-
served for armed struggles to spread or
defend the faith (Devji, 2005). Much of the
rhetoric surrounding the ‘war on terror’ (see
terrorism) has traded on these twin versions
of a supposedly ‘holy war’, Christian and
Muslim, but within both theological traditions
geopolitical and juridical issues have also
loomed large.
Both theological traditions have invoked a
geographical imaginaryin which the loca-
tions of the sacralized ‘heartland’ orhome-
land and that of the enemy Other are
identified. Modern geopolitics has often ap-
propriated the language of Just War traditions
too, but typically in a secularized form in order
to legitimize conventional wars and, more re-
cently, military interventions in the name of
what Chomsky (1999) calls a ‘new military
humanism’ (cf. Douzinas, 2003; see alsohu-
manism). But Megoran (2008) objects that,
whilecritical geopoliticshas no hesitation
in advancing all sorts of normative claims and
moral judgements, it has conspicuously failed
to interrogate its own ethical presuppositions
in any systematic and detailed fashion. In op-
posing some wars and endorsing others, prac-
titioners of critical geopolitics have implicitly
adopted the categories of just war reasoning,
he argues, but ironically failed to subject them
to critical scrutiny. This has a number of con-
sequences, Megoran concludes, the most im-
portant of which is a silence over the
production of spaces of non-violence and ‘a
vision of peace and justice that explicitly es-
chews the resort to force’ (p. 494). This is true
ofhuman geographymore generally, how-
ever, which has long been more invested in
warthan in peace (cf. Wisner, 1986).
Modern juridical doctrines of just war distin-
guish (1) law governing when a war may be
fought (jus ad bellum) from (2) law governing
how a war is to be conducted (jus in bello).
In general, the first requires a just cause (for
example, self-defence, not aggression), a
declaration by a legitimate authority, a right
intention (so that the motivation must be
moral rather than, for example, economic: cf.
resource wars) and a reasonable prospect of
success. The second requires, among other
things, discrimination between military
targets and civilians, the proportional use of
force, and the humane treatment of prisoners
of war and civilians (cf. Gregory, 2006). These
two sets of requirements raise considerable
philosophical and legal issues, and several
commentators insist that they need to be sus-
pended in situations of ‘supreme emergency’
(Walzer, 2000) (cf.exception, space of). But
they have been put under further strain by
new forms ofwarand their geographies, includ-
ing the ‘war on terror’, which raise complex
questions aboutsovereign powerandterri-
tory, and which often refuse any clear distinc-
tion between military and non-military spaces.
The rhetorical power of a ‘just war’ depends on
more than legal arguments, however: it also
depends on the mobilization ofimaginative
geographiesto legitimize the identification
and characterization of the enemy – which is,
of course, where theological and geopolitical
claims so often make their most forceful
appearance (Falah, Flint and Mamadouh,
2006). dgSuggested reading
Megoran (2008).just-in-time production A system of manu-
facturing in which inputs are supplied and
outputs are delivered very soon after demand
for a finished good has been registered.
Perfected by Japanese automobile producers,
and since emulated by North American
and European assemblers, this set of practices
has also diffused to other industrial sectors
such as computer manufacturing. As oneGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_J Final Proof page 397 31.3.2009 2:27pm