Natural Law and Order: Criminal Intent
Daniel Edward Young Monday, 1 March 2004
Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (New York: Basic Books, 2003). 240 pp. $23.00.
Jean Bethke Elshtain is the most relentlessly sensible political theorist writing today, and Just War Against Terror is a worthy addition to the discussion of statecraft in our new "age of terror." This book is not solely, or even largely, about the technicalities of just war theory. Only a chapter or two deal with the specifics of deciding whether to go to war. Rather, Elshtain's purpose is a broader reflection on moral statecraft: the use of political power, particularly force, in the service of justice. To do this she draws deeply from the two-thousand year Christian tradition of political thought—and especially from St. Augustine.
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