Neff, S. C., War and the Law of Nations

Neff, S. C., War and the Law of Nations: A General History. Cambridge University Press, 2005
ISBN-10: 0-521-66205-2

Neff’s book contains a lot of useful material on legal theories concerning wars and accompanying legal issues (neutrality, reprisals and other sub-war actions and the status of civilians). It also provides sensible discussion of the definition of war and its distinctions from other forms of organized violence.
However, the legalistic constructs of the book are designed to justify the neocon agenda of “liberal imperialism.” In an attempt to justify his position, Neff twists historical facts in many instances, and demonstrates complete lack of interest in non-legal history in general. For instance, he mentions “the suppression of …Yellow Turban Revolt in CE 184, (p. 20)” when in fact, the revolt was a qualified success precipitating the fall of the Han Dynasty. He obviously does not know that “Pragmatic Army” had nothing to do with pragmatism in a literal sense but derived its name from a “Pragmatic Sanction” of the Hapsburg Emperor Charles VI stipulating an irregular transfer of power in his empire because of the lack of a suitable male heir (p. 122).
Neff’s admiration for the “just war” concept of the ancients flies in the face of fact, that ancient wars were conducted with rare brutality and knew few restraints of violence committed against non-combatants. His only anecdotal example of the contrary (p. 23) and a few semi-legendary stories from the times of early Roman Republic are mostly borrowed from non-contemporary sources of I-II Centuries CE. They owe more to a Stoic philosophizing than to any documental evidence.
The author characterizes a relatively benign environment of the XVIII-XIX Centuries as a time of degeneracy. Indeed, after the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and before the First World War (1914), most European wars were fought with little or no ideological justification, for pure power balance and territorial interests. The combatants left intact property laws on the occupied territories, preserved economic assets wherever possible and rarely attempted to change political regime of the opponent.
The degeneracy of the 18th Century Enlightenment obviously runs against neocon political dogma of “regime change” and dehumanization of the enemy by all means of propaganda through the mass media, which is in the essence a modern extension of the concept of “just war.” Too bad for the author, that Holbrookes, Wolfowitzes and Perles of the world fell far short of their self-styled vision of building a new Empire for a thousand years.