Seven readings

Realism: the strong do what they can. Right that force is bounded by capacity. Wrong to make capacity the justification.

Just war: just cause, right authority, right intention, last resort, proportionality, discrimination. Right that force is conditional. Wrong to inherit the conditions by doctrine rather than derive them from the room.

Natural law of war: commitments bind every state regardless of position. Right that the joint structure is real above any one state. Wrong to ground it in natural law rather than the joint viable set.

War as politics by other means. Right that force is not separate from what it is for. Wrong to make the strategic frame the source of permission.

Contemporary just-war theory: adapted to non-state actors and irregular war. Right that the test must run at every scale. Wrong, at times, to fix the doctrine rather than read the consequences.

Humanitarian intervention: force at another architecture’s site where it is producing contraction it will not correct. Right that authority above the line is real there. Wrong to treat the warrant as licence. An intervention that produces more contraction than it addressed has failed.

Pacifism: refuse force categorically. Right that force almost always contracts more than institutions admit, and that they systematically overestimate their justification. Wrong to make the refusal categorical. Some force meets the test. Some refusals fail it by abdication.

Seven readings. The structure produces a conditional permission. Not a categorical one. Not a categorical refusal.

This is the short edition of Ø Applications — a summary. Where a step is compressed here, the original carries it in full. The original book (PDF) · This edition (PDF)

The same page on the420code.org: the420code.org/models/applications/11-the-architecture-of-collective-force/