Just war theory is the traditional approach taken to questions of the morality of war, but war today is far from traditional. War has been deeply affected in recent years by a variety of social and technological developments in areas such as international terrorism, campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing, the global human rights movement, economic globalization, and military technology. This book asks whether just war theory is adequate to the challenges these developments pose. Just war theory provides rules for determining when it is justified to fight a war. But some have argued that the nature of contemporary war makes these rules obsolete. For example, genocidal and aggressive regimes may require the use of military force that is not strictly in self-defense, as just war theory requires. In addition, the theory provides rules for determining what the limits are on justified conduct in war. But the random violence of terrorism and the deliberately inflicted violence of torture seem endemic to our age, yet take us beyond the limits set by these rules of conduct in war. By carefully examining the phenomena of intervention, terrorism, and torture from a number of different perspectives, the essays in this book explore this set of issues with insight and clarity.

Just war theory is the traditional approach taken to questions of the morality of war, but war today is far from traditional. War has been deeply affected in recent years by a variety of social and technological developments in areas such as international terrorism, campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing, the global human rights movement, economic globalization, and military technology. This book asks whether just war theory is adequate to the challenges these developments pose. Just war theory provides rules for determining when it is justified to fight a war. But some have argued that the nature of contemporary war makes these rules obsolete. For example, genocidal and aggressive regimes may require the use of military force that is not strictly in self-defense, as just war theory requires. In addition, the theory provides rules for determining what the limits are on justified conduct in war. But the random violence of terrorism and the deliberately inflicted violence of torture seem endemic to our age, yet take us beyond the limits set by these rules of conduct in war. By carefully examining the phenomena of intervention, terrorism, and torture from a number of different perspectives, the essays in this book explore this set of issues with insight and clarity.

Is the democratization of Indonesia affecting its relations with the US? Yes, but not always in anticipated ways. Indonesia-American relations in Soeharto's time were not always smooth. But the volatility came mainly (not wholly) in the form of NGO and Congressional criticism in the US in response to human rights violations in Indonesia. In Washington DC, the executive branch was not always supportive of the Indonesian government, but many of the occasions when, for example, the State Department criticized events or conditions in Indonesia were prompted by American legislative pressure. Without such pressure, including pressure by NGOs, would the Dili massacre have prompted the US to suspend inter-military (mil-mil) relations with Indonesia? Probably not.

An idealized image of necessarily friendly democracies would extend the negatively phrased "democratic peace" thesis, that democracies don't fight each other, to the positively wishful thought that by virtue of having (relatively) accountable governments, democracies are bound to get along. But such a "democratic amity" thesis is untenable. It was easier for DC to deal with Jakarta when power was concentrated in the hands of a man who, notwithstanding his Javanist style or, at any rate, proverbs, upheld a version of the anticommunist assumptions that drove much of US foreign policy during the Cold War while lifting his country's macroeconomic indicators and welcoming FDI.

Now that both countries are democratic -- a rough likeness that hides many differences -- one could argue that Indonesian-US interactions, far from being smoother, as "democratic amity" would have it, should be more turbulent. For now that power no longer clearly resides in one place in the archipelago, Indonesian as well as American pluralism can contribute to instability in the relationship.