In Defence of War - Tapa dura

There is a serious disconnect between scholars exploring just war theory and those engaging the Christian just war tradition. The language of religion is foreign to many in the secular camp thereby leaving us bereft of a rich and sometimes compelling perspective. Provocatively titled, In Defence of War brings this tradition to the fore. It is well worth the read. (Michael L. Gross, Mind)

In Defence of War is an excellent book ... Combining deep understanding of the just-war tradition with impressive knowledge of military history, this book makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate. I highly recommend it (James Anderson, Expository Times)

Nigel Biggars In Defence of War is, in my judgment, the best contemporary theological exploration of the ethics of war since the work of Paul Ramsey ... A robust book like In Defence of War, which has its own internal dialogues among different ethical frames, is a contribution that should be respected and taken seriously across the range of all who address military ethics (James Turner Johnson, Journal of Military Ethics)

This is a significant book. It provides a defense and clarification of just war theory within the Christian tradition through a series of extended engagements with Christian and secular critics of that theory. Biggar makes a clear and important case, and does so with impressive learning and literary style (Kenneth R. Himes, Theological Studies)

In Defence of War is a searching, challenging book. It deserves much discussion (John Kelsay, Studies in Christian Ethics)

There are many fine books on the morality of war, but every so often a book comes along that really distinguishes itself in the field. Paul Ramsey's The Just War (1968) was certainly one. Appearing as it did in the midst of the Vietnam conflict, it served as a kind of bellwether of Christian moral reflection on a host of complex issues surrounding a controversial war. Nigel Biggar's new book is the same sort of text that comes to us in the aftermath of another very controversial conflict, the invasion of Iraq by the United States and Britain. Biggar's book is a veritable tour de force in Christian ethical reflection on war and surely the best such text that has appeared since Ramsey's work. (Darrell Cole, Journal of the American Academy of Religion)

Anyone who cares about questions of war and peace - and who wishes to think deeply about how to assess those questions morally - should buy and promptly read Nigel Biggar's In Defense of War. (Damon Linker, The Week)

This is an important book. (Church Times)

Every once in a while, a truly special book comes down the theological pike ... Now comes Nigel Biggar's In Defence of War. Biggar's careful moral reasoning offers a model that, if followed, would deepen and mature the Christian discussion of the ethics of war and peace. (First Things Magazine)

A very important book. (Reform)

Pacifism is popular. Many hold that war is unnecessary, since peaceful means of resolving conflict are always available, if only we had the will to look for them. Or they believe that war is wicked, essentially involving hatred of the enemy and carelessness of human life. Or they posit the absolute right of innocent individuals not to be deliberately killed, making it impossible to justify war in practice.
Peace, however, is not simple. Peace for some can leave others at peace to perpetrate mass atrocity. What was peace for the West in 1994 was not peace for the Tutsis of Rwanda. Therefore, against the virus of wishful thinking, anti-military caricature, and the domination of moral deliberation by rights-talk In Defence of War asserts that belligerency can be morally justified, even though tragic and morally flawed.
Recovering the Christian tradition of reflection running from Augustine to Grotius, this book affirms aggressive war in punishment of grave injustice. Morally realistic in adhering to universal moral principles, it recognises that morality can trump legality, justifying military intervention even in transgression of positive international law-as in the case of Kosovo. Less cynical and more empirically realistic about human nature than Hobbes, it holds that nations desire to be morally virtuous and right, and not only to be safe and fat. And aspiring to practical realism, it argues that love and the doctrine of double effect can survive combat; and that the constraints of proportionality, while real, are nevertheless sufficiently permissive to encompass Britain's belligerency in 1914-18. Finally, in a painstaking analysis of the Iraq invasion of 2003, In Defence of War culminates in an account of how the various criteria of just war should be thought together. It also concludes that, all things considered, the invasion was justified.