This symposium brings together five scholars to discuss Jessica Whyte’s important essay “The ‘Dangerous Concept of the Just War’: Decolonization, Wars of National Liberation, and the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions,” originally published in the Winter 2018 issue of Humanity. It also includes a response to commentary by Whyte. Whyte’s essay argues that during the International Committee of the Red Cross’s “Diplomatic Conference on the Laws of War” (1974-77) it was the Third World and Soviet states that used the language of the “just war” to distinguish wars of national liberation from wars of “imperialist aggression”—particularly the US War in Vietnam. In stark contrast, the Western states, including the United States, attacked the language of just war as a medieval licence to cruelty.
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