Making War on the World: How Transnational Violence Reshapes Global Order, Mark Shirk (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022), 256 pp., cloth $140, paperback $35, eBook $34.99.

Abstract

orists to confront the likelihood that unjust sides will prevail at least as often as just sides will (even in that small subset of historic wars where there is something that could meaningfully be called a “just side”). Against this image of just war that O’Driscoll builds, contemporary accounts are often too optimistic, he states, because they are too coy about war’s physically brutal and morally untidy nature. He agrees with critics of “ethical war” like Ken Booth, Maja Zehfuss, and Andrew Fiala that “the language of just war is seductive. It has a way of lulling people into a sanguine acceptance of war by leading them to believe that, so long as all the relevant jus ad bellum and jus in bello principles are satisfied, the use of force can be, not merely justified, but unproblematically so” (p. ). It would be interesting to hear more about the precise nature of O’Driscoll’s conception of “tragedy.” His reference to the likelihood of moral “remainder” suggests an affinity with Michael Walzer’s notion of “dirty hands,” for instance, but he does not engage extensively with this idea. In any case, O’Driscoll’s book will have great value both to just war theorists and their critics. It is original, provocative, and insightful, and it is a delight to read.