I thank David Rousseau for his thoughtful review of my book. He summarizes its key points and themes and raises a number of provocative questions. I will try to answer some while also clarifying a few points.
In summarizing my argument, Rousseau elides some of the nuance I worked hard to maintain. For example, he asserts that I believe that “the only just form of government involves democracy and human rights.” But I instead wrote, “Democracy and human rights are the closest approximation in this world to a just regime” (p. 158). Some may feel that is a distinction without a difference, but I chose my phrasing carefully. I do not believe democracy and human rights are the ideal form of true justice, nor that other regimes are wholly and completely unjust. I recognize there is a spectrum of justice. I do believe, without apology, that democracy and human rights are the furthest along that spectrum, but that is a far cry from saying they are “the only just form of government.”
Similarly, Rousseau suggests that I argue that “any threat to ordered liberty at the domestic or international level justifies war”; that “if rebels express liberal views, you can intervene in a civil war on their behalf”; that “any military intervention, humanitarian or otherwise, must end with ordered liberty”; and that “liberal states are just and illiberal states are unjust. Liberal states are sources of peace and illiberal states are sources of war.” These statements all reflect something of what I believe, but I would want to qualify them: not “any threat” but violent threats of sufficient magnitude; not any rebels but those who already have just cause.
Most importantly, I do not assert that “any military intervention” must end in democratic state-building. As I argue, “These [jus post bellum] criteria will look different in different kinds of military operations. At the low end, I suggest that there are no jus post bellum obligations in the wake of a simple punitive strike or a one-off military reprisal against a terrorist attack,” but post bellum obligations scale up under some conditions, such as if the scope of the war grows larger (p. 187).
These matters aside, Rousseau raises a crucial point. He suggests, “If liberal publics are impatient, the requirement for ordered liberty may prohibit any military intervention.” He makes the point specific to Afghanistan: “But if transforming Afghanistan into a liberal image of America is unlikely to succeed or be prohibitively costly, is order without liberty a just option?” I am more sympathetic to this argument now, after having seen how the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq ended, than I was five years ago—or even five months ago. Nonetheless, I am still cautious: we did not know at the beginning how impatient the public would become. Nor am I convinced that the project in Afghanistan was intrinsically too difficult; we made too many mistakes to disprove the possibility of doing it right. But his point is one I make in the book as well: if ending wars well is too hard, better not to fight in the first place because war, to be just, should establish a better peace.
