A long-standing aspiration in international law has been to regulate and moderate the use of violence in war. This paper looks at the Enlightenment origins of the project of civilizing warfare, focusing specifically on its flip side: the barbarian or uncivilized, who allegedly wages war with neither legal authority nor regard for humanitarian conventions. The paper examines how the structures of political authority and reciprocal restraint define the normative landscape of legitimate, regular war. Agents deemed lacking in the capacity to self-rule or to exercise restraint in the use of force are deprived of belligerent rights, and as such suitable to being treated as outcasts, criminals, or worse. Somewhat paradoxically, then, the project of civilizing war holds the potential for unlimited violence. I examine these conflicting dimensions of the civilizing project in the works of Vattel, Rousseau, and Kant, and point to some of their enduring legacies in contemporary war.
