James Skillen on Just War and U.S. Policy

James Skillen, founder and president of the Center for Public Justice, has done years of good work in Christian political philosophy, especially with the rubric of "sphere sovereignty," which is something like the Calvinist version of subsidiarity.  Now Skillen has a book out on U.S. foreign policy and, among other things, just-war thought.  With or Against the World? America's Role Among the Nations (Rowman & Littlefield)  Sounds like a rich work, from this review in The Christian Century:

In this provocative, wide-ranging and well-reasoned book, James Skillen, president of the Center for Public Justice, analyzes the roots of the deep ambiguity in U.S. foreign policy. The humble and modest view of a constitutionally limited state, Skillen contends, stands in sharp contrast to the grandiose religious vision of a redeemer nation that will bring freedom to the entire world. . . .

Also critical of Jean Bethke Elshtain [in her book Just War on Terror], Skillen contends that she fails to place war in the broad context of just governance and that she takes a narrow, negative view of just war as a matter of responding to evil by punishing evildoers. Because a true just war is a response to a specific instance of unjust aggression and has a reasonable chance of succeeding, "working to stop terrorism cannot justifiably be called war if one is making careful use of just war criteria." The best way to fight terrorism, Skillen says, is not by war initiated by a particular state but by a cooperative international effort of just governance, just policing and policy that responds to underlying irritants that cause terrorism to flourish.

There's more, on the mixture of morals and self-interest in foreign policy, the nature of just war, the interpretation of Romans 13 (on the purposes of the state), and the nature of peacemaking by the Christian Church as a global institution among other global institutions.

Tom