I would like to use this post to rearticulate something I tried to express in class in response to the question about the -isms' ability to prevent war. Wars of national liberation, genocidal wars and wars on terror are not accounted for in any of the theories we have discussed. Functionalism fails by preventing the international facilitation of peace, realism defines the action of rational states seeking security, and liberal wars are paradoxical in the sense of their mission to spread peace and democracy. National liberation and new wars, however, are ethically justified by the aggressor and the 'terrorist' agents. If a war is ethical and justified it is rational, yet warring states are generally considered to be acting irrationally under the constraints of international theories.