Holliday Article

Holliday discusses the numerous problems that exist when one tries to define when there is just cause to go to war. He says that although "global rule of law probably is a pipe dream...the absolutely key requirement is a set of shared understandings that can underpin military interventions undertaken in the name of just cause" (572). The problem is that the agencies at war with each other in the contemporary world are partially at war because they do not have shared values. Further, they have values that conflict to the point that war seems to be the only outlet to let the ideological conflict play out. Is Halliday speaking exclusively about the Western world? If so, is his claim that "shared understanding" will "move us away from a unipolar world in which the US acts as very neraly the only global policeman to..."community policing"" really just perpetuating a Western conception of just law?

Understanding how different agencies perceive just law, and then acting accordingly is the best way to prevent war, or at least ensure just war. Anti-US terrorists are really good at doing this, while the United States acts to achieve its own conception of justice, even if it is not a practical and effective way of achieving justice. President Bush may have had just cause to go into Iraq, but because the rest of the world did not perceive this to be so, the US went to war at more of a disadvantage. When going to Iraq, Bush should have contemplated more than just validating to himself and the American people that there was just cause, rather he should have thought about what Iraq, its neighbors, and the rest of the world thought.