Limited Force and the Fight for the Just War Tradition

"One of the most contentious developments in contemporary international affairs has been the increase in uses of force-short-of-war, such as targeted killings, limited airstrikes, and no-fly zones. On the one hand, uses of force-short-of-war appear more compartmentalized and containable, but on the other hand, they have encouraged a more frequent recourse to arms. How, then, are we to make moral sense of this shift toward the small-scale uses of force? This debate has divided just-war theorists, but author Christian Nikolaus Braun offers a new perspective. He evaluates comprehensively the ethics framework jus ad vim (the just use of force-short-of-war) as a pillar of just war theory and as a practical matter of deciding when military interventions below the level of war can and cannot be justified. The book's moral argument will rely on a historical reading of the just-war thought of Thomas Aquinas"--