Strangers Saving Strangers? Sketching a Vernacular Just War

Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, many individuals have volunteered to fight in foreign conflicts even when their state has declared neutrality or non-intervention. From American volunteers in World War 1 to western volunteers fighting against the Islamic state, individuals volunteering for violence has been a reoccurring theme in war. These subjects, and more importantly their relevance for the subject of war, have often been overlooked in the state-centric international relations literature. This paper addresses this omission by interrogating the manner in which volunteers speak a vernacular just war. Two literatures are drawn from and synthesised in this paper. First, one question within the just war tradition is the extent to which it can integrate non-state actors into its framework (e.g., Heinze and Steele, 2009). Second, the vernacular turn focuses on how individuals–rather than political elites–negotiate and articulate security and insecurity (e.g., Vaughan-Williams and Steven, 2016). This paper contends that both advances offer a first-cut into understanding how foreign volunteers negotiate the justness and legitimacy of their actions in the absence of just authority as typically understood. Consequently, this paper asks the following questions. First, how do foreign volunteers legitimise their decisions to go to war and their actions in war? Second, what relationship, if any, do these justifications have to the just war tradition? That is, does just war in the vernacular offer anything to the just war tradition more broadly? Third, how does volunteering in the absence of just authority impact on the political communities to which foreign volunteers appeal to? To answer these questions, the paper analyses the memoirs of foreign volunteers. For American volunteers in World War 1, the paper utilises James Mcconnell’s Flying for France, Charles Nordhoff’s The Fledging and Arthur Gleason’s Our Part in the Great War. Claire Chennault’s Way of a Fighter, James Childer’s, The War Eagles and Arthur Donahue’s Tally-Ho are utilised for American volunteers in World War 2. For volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, the paper will turn to the memoirs housed at the Marx Memorial Library. For volunteers in the wars of Yugoslav succession, Steve Gaunt’s War and Beer, Simon Hutt’s Paint and Robert Krott’s Save the Last Bullet for Yourself will be employed. The paper will also incorporate the as-of-yet only memoir from a western volunteer in Syria and Iraq, namely Tim Locks’ Fighting ISIS.