Ending Wars Well
Policy planners, humanitarians, military thinkers, and academics interested in political science and ethics will all find valuable insights reading two well crafted volumes by Eric Patterson. Most readers will also flinch at the many examples of how, too often, the use of force ends poorly. Patterson provides practitioners and thinkers two excellent books for considering justice after war, jus post bellum, with careful attention to practical aspects of just war thinking. He advances the conversation about just war thinking, both by collecting numerous articles from leading thinkers in his edited book, and arguing quite effectively on his own for specific, relevant criteria that can organize thinking about post conflict entanglements. In Ending Wars Well, Patterson adds urgency to his argument by framing much of the book around the war in Iraq (2003) In a notably concise but compelling way, Colin Powell is attributed with framing the applicable ethic 'You break it, you buy it' [also sometimes quoted as 'You break it, you own it' Central to this case is the transition from a notable military success launched in late March 2003 to its aftermath a few short months later. Coalition troops were welcomed by jubilant crowds in March and April entering Baghdad in victory. But conditions on the ground deteriorated as a series of actions and inactions knocked the pillars out from under Iraqi society. What followed was widespread insecurity and disintegration of public order. Who did not watch with a sense of tragic puzzlement scenes of American troops seemingly passively observing chaos without intervening? Of course, they were following orders, but had the US led coalition gained military victory in weeks only to uncork disorder in a city of five million people and beyond? Crucial postconflict decisions followed and years passed and here, Patterson uses Iraq as the central connecting example for his three stage framework: Order, Justice, Conciliation. Noting that public leaders and just war theorists disputed the morality of launching the Iraq war itself (cited against are Jimmy Carter, Michael Walzer, and William Galston; cited for, John McCain, Michael Novak, and Joseph Loconte) absent was a moral and strategic framework for what followed, post conflict. Patterson positively and carefully constructs arguments advancing the idea that Order, Justice, and Conciliation provide criteria for jus post bellum. In an engaging, readable, and concise (seven chapters, 180 pages) book, he presents an orderly if not elegant framework for navigating the complex aftermath of conflict. The book devotes a chapter to the three key constructs, with