The Internationalists: How a Radical Programme to Outlaw War Remade the World , by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro, New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017, 578 pages, $30

In brusk, the Peace Pact formed the groundwork of rules and assumptions against which the balance of the new organisation operated. As states adapted to the transformed legal gild, their adaptations helped reinforce those new rules and get reasons of their own for playing by them. The Pact did not bring near the end of conquest and interstate war on its own; no treaty, no police force could have. But it was a necessary showtime, the beginning of the stop of the Sometime World Club.

The Internationalists, p. 335

Tensions effectually the world seemed to have heightened with the election of U.S. President Donald J. Trump. Mayhap it has nothing to practice with him; peradventure it is merely his in-your-face style that tends to make us more aware of how dangerous and volatile the world has get. It is hard to signal to a region on the global map and not find a disharmonize that has just ended, is raging on, or about to commencement. The most eye-popping disharmonize started every bit a civil war in Syria in 2011. The end is not in sight despite the use of an inordinate amount of difficult and soft power by regional state players and their proxies, permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the United Nations (United nations), the European Union, so on. Cherry lines have been drawn and crossed, chemical weapons used against combatants and non-combatants, indiscriminate bombings of civilian-populated areas, acts of terror committed with an aim to make life so unbearable and then as to bring near death or forced dislocation. All of this and much more in the name of sovereign rights, self-defense, security (national, regional, international), reprisals, deterrence (sending messages), and, of course, peace.

Syria may exist the most talked-well-nigh conflict, just there are other conflicts that are just as repulsive, such equally the one in Yemen. And much like the Syrian disharmonize, the Yemeni disharmonize is fueled by states big and small-scale, in and outside the region, with and without security interests or risks (salve for having access to or a dominance over the authorities and/or the state for strategic or geopolitical reasons). Meanwhile, the ordinary, unproblematic, police-constant civilians suffer the consequences. And so y'all accept conflicts such equally the one in Ukraine, which, by many accounts, is attributed to Russia'south (President Vladimir Putin'southward) belief in its inherent entitlement to lord-over neighboring states (its sphere of influence), and, as is the case of Crimea, to self-assist by "annexing" territory it believes rightly belongs to it – historically or otherwise.

Professor Oona A. Hathaway

Considering the country of the world affairs, Yale Law School Professors Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro in The Internationalists : How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World (The Internationalists) offer an accessible legal history and how a few individuals finer set up out to outlaw state of war. While it provides no answers on how to end or solve the ongoing conflicts, it gives us greater understanding of

Professor Scott J. Shapiro

how far we have come from when wars were waged as supposedly simply, when there were no global institutions such as the UN, no recognized human being rights and humanitarian conventions, no acceptable accountability mechanisms for atrocities committed during wars. Some answers are provided in Seeking Accountability for the Unlawful Utilise of Force (edited by Leila Nadya Sadat), which I will review in my next mail equally a continuum of the theme in The Internationalists – merely wars, aggression, and accountability.

The overarching thesis of The Internationalists is that the General Treaty of Renunciation of War every bit an Instrument of National Policy (referred to as the Paris Peace Pact of 1928 or Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928) heralded the beginning of a New World Club, bringing an end to the Old Earth Club represented past the just war theories catalogued and synthesized by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) some 40 years before the treaties of Westphalia (p. 19).

The Commencement World War epitomized the Former Earth Club, though equally we will see, as early as 1914, i individual, Salmon Levinson, a U.S. commercial lawyer from Chicago, in thinking of how to finish the war, would excogitate the idea of branding state of war a crime and with "the force of the world organized to deal with the criminal." 1    Salmon O. Levinson, The Legal Condition of War, Center Works 11: 388-392 (1918). With the League of Nations failing to live upwards to its hope, the Peace Pact of 1928 emerged as the treaty to end state of war between states. Of class, history proved otherwise every bit some of the signatories would go along to initiate the Second Earth State of war.

Notwithstanding the obvious failure of the Peace Pact to prevent wars leading up to the 2nd World State of war and thereafter, The Internationalists makes a compelling argument of the lasting efforts of a few visionaries, namely Levinson, Philander C. Knox, James T. Shortwell, Frank Kellogg, and Henry Stimson, to outlaw war past conceptualizing a new set of rules that cut confronting much of the just war rules chronicled by Grotius (and others who followed). Contrary to the conventional (realists') wisdom that the Peace Pact was "as irresistible as it was meaningless" (Henry Kissinger), "kittenish" (George Kennan), "singularly vacuous" (Ian Kershaw), "a laughingstock" (Kenneth Adelman) (p. xii) – the authors persuasively prove how the Peace Pact has yielded sustained results from which the international community can go on to build on.

The Internationalists is divided into three parts with 17 chapters. Though dense with facts and highly sourced, information technology makes for a pleasant and effortless read (save for sections of Part III; more below).

In Role I, Erstwhile Globe Order, the authors set up the stage with Grotius, reputed as the father of modernistic international law. Here nosotros delve into his background and his efforts (and purpose) for defining the then-norms of just wars and cataloging adequate practices. During the Old World Order, but war theory mirrored Carl von Clausewitz's famous maxim in his seminal book On War: "War is but the continuation of policy past other means." ii    Carl von Clausewitz, On War, (G. Howard and P. Paret eds., Princeton 1989), Book 1, Affiliate 1, #24, p. 87. Any land could claim that it was wronged by another state; failure of the offending state to brand the reparations claimed to be owed to the aggrieved state could rightly trigger retaliatory activeness: capturing territory and ruling over the residing subjects as compensation. State of war was a means of asserting legal rights much similar a legal crusade of activity; the casus belli (the justified causes of war) – expressing a wrong (not always clear or right) – permitted war to be waged, and fittingly, any holding seized was considered prize or booty belonging to the victor. The authors phone call Grotius' solution the Might is Right principle, which, incidentally, also applied to private wars, allowing traders to accept possession of appurtenances and control over the territory as legal buying (p. 23). The vanquished, even if wrongly attacked, could do nix only accept the issue. Broken, or seemingly cleaved treaty obligations were viewed every bit broken contracts. "Violations of international law were non just a cause for complaint. They were a simply cause for war." (p. 44)

Interestingly, though three kinds of state of war crimes were recognized (the use of poison, treacherous assassination, and rape), Grotius – being the man of his time – was fine with enslavement, torture, execution of prisoners, pillage, and plunder. Effectively, senseless killings of unarmed women and children while technically illegal, were not prosecutable if conducted while fighting; only rape was considered a state of war crime (pp. 71-72). It was not until the eighteenth century that European armies recognized the Principle of Distinction, eventually followed by other efforts to get rid of repugnant practices such as reprisal killings. Information technology was during this menses that a host of rules were adopted to regulate certain conduct, including the behavior of states that wished to remain neutral by being impartial. This meant that discrimination in trade amounted to an act of state of war, permitting the other side to answer. Neutral states could not impose trade sanctions.

It is confronting this backdrop that the authors take us to Role Two, Transformation. It is in the adjacent viii chapters that the authors develop their theme, albeit not straightforwardly. Though I plant some of the asides distracting, the details provided are interesting and informative. Considering that the authors are weaving a tapestry from a host of events and personalities, these distractions are outweighed past the contextual information imparted. Their narrative is, after all, a composite of legal history, international law, diplomatic history, and international relations.

Transformation picks up with the Starting time World War; despite some progress having been made in establishing some international norms, the Might is Right theory prevailed. With the establishment of the League of Nations peace was to exist secured through compulsory dispute resolution either through the Permanent Court of International Justice or an enquiry by the League Council. States were to look until a judgment could exist reached by either body. The irony of it was that if a country lost, it could yet go to state of war provided information technology waited three months before doing so. These modalities were hardly a ways for enforcing peace, let solitary preventing assailment.

In Transformation we are introduced to the protagonists that volition lead the charge to outlaw war – or to put it more accurately, pause from the merely war norms of the Old World Social club. While Levinson wanted to make waging war a crime for which individuals would be held to business relationship, Shortwell, a Columbia University Professor, thought that defining a workable definition of waging an aggressive and unjustified state of war would be impracticable. He opted instead for a procedural mechanism: states should be required to bring their disputes to a courtroom and to accept its decision; those refusing would exist accounted aggressors. This would come to be known equally The American Programme; the irony beingness that the U.S., having conceived the League of Nations, had walked away from it. Nether this program, aggression would be forbidden by international law, and the Permanent Court of International Justice would take jurisdiction with the power to impose astringent financial sanctions. Kellogg, the U.S. Secretary of State would go on to sign the Peace Pact in Paris on August 27, 1928, marvelously described in the Introduction (pp. ix-eleven).

The Peace Pact would prove to exist a game-changer. Somewhat. Japan, a signatory of the Peace Pact, invaded Manchuria in September 1931 to but find out that applying what had been accustomed practice under the Old World Order would non be countenanced; new territorial claims through gunboat diplomacy or outright aggression would not be recognized. Japan's activeness would requite rise to the Stimson Doctrine, when the then-U.S. Secretary of Country Stimson declared: "[T]he American Government does not intend to recognize whatsoever state of affairs, treaty or agreement which may exist brought nearly past means reverse to the covenants and obligations of the Pact of Paris of August 27, 1928."

Unsurprisingly, goose egg much resulted from the nonrecognition of Nippon'southward claims to Manchuria, and when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1934, the League of Nations demurred from taking any deportment even though Italy was declared an aggressor. Noteworthy, the Peace Pact de facto legitimized all previous conquests, subjugations, and claims by the European colonizers in Africa and Asia that had occurred prior to the Pact (p. 151) – something they connected to abet as their legitimate right to control and economically exploit fifty-fifty after the 2nd Earth State of war.

Notwithstanding the meek response to Japan's acts of aggression in Manchuria, the authors encounter the League of Nations' nonrecognition of Japan's territorial gains as the advent of the New Earth Order. Equally the narrative progresses, they link this bold movement to the events that follow, the Second World War, when a host of other visionaries, namely, Hersch Lauterpacht, Hans Kesler, Robert H. Jackson, and others, creatively interpret international law to justify charging high ranking Nazis at Nuremberg with aggression every bit a crime against peace, along with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Peace Pact played its role.

Part III, New World Society, brings the narrative to present. Based on empirical information from Correlates of War (which examines such things as militarized involvement disputes, world religion data, bilateral trade and territorial trade), other academic studies (mainly referenced in the footnotes) and their own study of 254 cases, the authors conclude that "[c]onquest, once common, has nearly disappeared (pp. 312-xiii). They credit this, in no small office, to the Peace Pact, which "suddenly caused all nations to play by a new prepare of rules," though it would accept years for this new legal social club to supplant the old one (p. 330). They credit mercantilism for fueling the Old World Order by "encourag[ing] states to make state of war to expand territorial control and market size, while state of war, by expanding the markets under unified sovereign control, helped sustained mercantilism." (p. 340) But with the New Earth Club no longer rewarding the seizing, holding, and exploiting captured territory (as the European colonial powers had indulged with abandon under the Former Globe Order), they opine, perhaps rightly, that it no longer makes economic sense. They argue that free trade and international competition play a major role, as do countermeasures (such every bit trade sanctions, in this new legal social club).

Perhaps the authors are correct, though I find their empirical proof and arguments deficient. They could have, for instance, elaborated on their own empirical report, comparing it with other similar studies which they cite. Granted, this would accept expanded what is already a lengthy book with statistical data and charts, which, salve for those who relish poring over such political science tools (I am non one of them) would find slow and distracting. But even without this added data, I am nonetheless not entirely persuaded. One demand only wait at what is happening around the earth to conclude that their thesis is tenuous. Russia'south annexation of Crimea, or its adventurism in Eastern Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, or China's aggressive claims of diverse remote islands thousands of miles off its cost line in the Southward China Ocean, or what is happening in the Eye East, makes it hard to reconcile their conclusions. States no longer need to outright conquer territory; in that location are other ways of reaping illicit economic (mercantile) benefits, as can be seen in parts of East Africa. So, while invading and conquering territory by state actors may have macerated, acts of aggression in its various forms persist.

Whether the Peace Pact is wholly or primarily responsible for ushering the New World Order, every bit claimed by the authors, is arguable. Information technology certainly served as a catalyst for trying the Nazi leaders for crimes against peace, and, to some degree, contributing to the debate on defining and adopting the offense of aggression as an international offense. Credit can also be given to the League of Nations; lessons learned helped shape the Un – though when considering the powers accorded to the v permanent members of the UN Security Quango, elements of Might is Right persist. Statistics and data may tell u.s.a. that there are fewer conquests of territory, but this does not seem to exist borne out by what is heard in the news daily. And what of cyberwar?

In The Internationalists, Professors Hathaway and Shapiro deliver an insightful legal history on aggression, contextualizing the evolution and purpose of international law in world diplomacy. Anyone involved in international criminal police force or interested in a historical perspective on the international efforts to outlaw aggression (contextually essential to understating the drafting history in adopting a definition for the crime of aggression and the ongoing reluctance of Country Parties to the International Criminal Courtroom to opt in to the statutory provisions to the Rome Statute negotiated during the Kampala Conference in 2010), would assuredly discover this book worth reading. Those interested in diplomatic history, international affairs, and the backside-the-scenes machinations in conceptualizing, negotiating, and drafting the Peace Pact volition also find many of the details provided by the authors illuminating.

With all the ongoing conflicts, threats of whose nuclear push button is bigger, U.South.'south disagreeable beliefs and attitude towards many of the international institutions that it helped establish to foster the New Earth Society, and I could go along, The Internationalists is a timely and rewarding.

The example of the Internationalists offers a hopeful message: If law shapes real power, and ideas shape the law, and so we control our fate. We can choose to recognize certain deportment and not others. We can cooperate with those who follow the rules and outcast those who do not. And when the rules no longer work, we tin alter them. (p. 423)

Michael G. Karnavas is an American trained lawyer. He is licensed in Alaska and Massachusetts and is qualified to appear earlier the diverse International tribunals, including the International Criminal Court (ICC). Residing and practicing primarily in The Hague, he is recognized every bit an proficient in international criminal defense, including, pre-trial, trial, and appellate advocacy. View all posts by Michael G. Karnavas