Just war debate!

19 July 2006, 0209 EDT

The subject is strategic bombing, the backdrop the unfolding crisis in the Middle East.

I am reminded that the spirit of Athens lives on.

Melians of the world, beware.

To be fair, not everyone there advocates “the strong do what they will and the weak do what they must.”

Some merely believe that if you fight on the side of providence, any action becomes legitimate. Nevertheless, as articulate a set of comments as I’ve ever seen.

Filed as: , and

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.