Critics from the political right such as Carl Schmitt argue that the notion of Just War undermines the possibility of establishing restraints in the conduct of war by precluding the possibility of a ‘just enemy’. Critics from the political left agree with the sentiment concerning the conduct of war, if not with the Schmittian approval of the notion of a ‘just enemy’, but push their critique further, arguing that Just War actually legitimises war. Both of these positions have some purchase in so far as they point to a degree of self-righteousness which may sometimes accompany the concept – but such self-righteousness is not a necessary concomitant of Just War thinking. Part of the problem for both sets of critics is that they understand Just War thinking in theoretical terms, or as necessarily linked to a particular tradition. Rather, Just War thinking is better understood as providing a set of categories which help us to decide whether the resort to violence and coercion might be the morally justifiable response to a particular situation, all things considered. Such categories represent the beginning of the process of exercising political judgement on the matter in hand, and, in principle, are neither right wing or left-wing, radical or conservative – nor is Just War thinking necessarily state-centric (any more than Clausewitzian realism, which tells us when the resort to force might be effective is necessarily state-centric). In short, Just War thinking needs to be understood as contributing to a ‘phronetic’ , practice-oriented account of (international) politics.
