The Internationalists

June 12, 2017
Yale legal scholars Hathaway and Shapiro adopt a fundamentally revisionist perspective on the oft-dismissed Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, positing that the agreement “marked the beginning of the end” of war between states. The pact inspired the human-rights revolution, the use of economic sanctions, and the creation of international organizations focusing on peace. In the wake of WWI, the Kellogg-Briand Pact stipulated that “military might no longer made legal right.” The notion was quickly tested, but despite the legal and academic hairsplitting that culminated in the Nuremberg trials, the authors provocatively argue that, since 1945, conquest “has nearly disappeared” as “an accepted procedure for changing borders.” The persistence of conflict is best explained by two factors outside the pact’s parameters. One is “uncertain sovereignty,” where rightful authority over territory is difficult to determine. The other is violence originating within weak states—whose survival is facilitated by the delegitimizing of “predators in the international ecosystem.” The work concludes with a discussion of sanctioning rule breakers until they comply; the authors describe “outcasting” as a step in the right direction, as a way to limit war’s physical and social destruction. Hathaway and Shapiro’s conclusion can be debated—but not easily dismissed. Agent: Elyse Cheney, Elyse Cheney Literary.

July 1, 2017
"If law shapes real power, and ideas shape the law, then we control our fate"--a searching analysis of contending views of state violence and warfare.Signed into law in 1928 and ratified by the U.S. Senate with just one no vote, the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy effectively outlawed war. It remains in effect. Of course, the treaty, better known here as the Kellogg-Briand Pact, has not had much force. Yale Law School professors Hathaway and Shapiro (Legality, 2013, etc.) work their way through a vast body of data and centuries to examine how such an "internationalist" view of state relations came to be. They begin with the work of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), a "corporate lawyer" in a time when the concept of the corporation was new, who had to tease out some thorny problems--e.g., is loot gotten in war justly gained? And what of piracy, especially when committed in the name of a corporation? (Grotius' conclusion: an "employee of a trading company could wage war on his own authority.") Against this "Old World Order" backdrop, Hathaway and Shapiro chart the development of an internationalist ethic embodied by the United Nations, whose constraints on war are less thoroughgoing than Kellogg-Briand strictly interpreted--for in the place of a no-war stance, a "just war" theory has evolved and is still evolving. Where war was once "the mechanism for solving disagreements between states," as the authors write, it has been increasingly seen as the act of last resort. However, they add, given the new U.S. administration, that assumption may be outmoded: Donald Trump entered office on an "anti-internationalist platform that promised to restrict the movement of goods and people across borders," a platform that risks the idea of peaceful cooperation in favor of "zero-sum military competition." Rich in implication, particularly in a bellicose time, and of much interest to students of modern history and international relations.

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July 1, 2017

The 1928 Paris Peace Pact has been discredited by historians and heads of state because it failed to prevent the rise of Nazism during the 1930s and World War II that followed. Hathaway (international law, Yale Law Sch.; coauthor, Foundations of International Law) and Shapiro (law and philosophy, Yale Law Sch.; Legality) convincingly challenge this interpretation in their significant revisionist investigation, which concludes that war was successfully outlawed with the establishment of the UN in 1945. This lucid account, which occasionally lapses into legalese, offers fascinating background on the lesser-known academics and diplomats who carved out the framework for the post-World War II new world order that made wars of conquest illegal. Included is a chilling overview of the rise of the Third Reich and Carl Schmitt, its malevolent legal apologist. Although "outcasting" (settling disputes through treaties) now governs diplomacy, the authors warn that the rise of the Islamic State and Russia's invasion of Crimea could lead to a resurgence of the Old World Order and its promotion of war as a first resort. VERDICT An often engrossing narrative that provides a new framework for interpreting international relations over the previous five centuries. For informed readers and diplomatic historians. [See Prepub Alert, 3/27/17.]--Karl Helicher, formerly with Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA

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