Creative non-fiction, including modes of essay, letter and journal writing, has been an important genre in Caribbean writing. Caribbean literature has had a long history of creative/critical intersections, and many of the most significant creative figures have also been influential in setting critical agendas through these literary forms (Brathwaite, Brodber, Lamming, Walcott, Wynter). During the contemporary period, creative non-fiction has also functioned as a key site for writers to explore ideas about the changing Caribbean, in its political, social, artistic, and spiritual dimensions, and to constantly recontextualize the Caribbean’s place in the world. This essay addresses how selected Caribbean writers have participated in the genre of nonfiction from the 1970s to the present. The discussion explores the issues and problems of categories and classifications and offers close readings of non-fictional works by V. S. Naipaul, Jamaica Kincaid and Rachel Manley.

Natural law, in the Augustinian and Thomist sense, reflects not merely man’s nature as it is, but as it should be, accounting for the moral aspirations and moral instincts they believed were natural to man’s being. Natural law requires us to live justly: to live well in society, with love towards one another. What does it mean to love our neighbors politically? It means to live and govern in accordance with the “tranquility of order.” Responsibility for upholding this kind of peace is what “sovereignty” meant in the Augustinian era. Peace is not merely the absence of violence, but the presence of the conditions that enable flourishing. Just war is war that accords with justice: it is authorized political violence required to uphold love-directed justice. War is an instrument for defending and sustaining the tranquility of order, understood as an act of love for our neighbors and our enemies alike. With this framework, Augustinian thinkers generally favored humanitarian and state building interventions: military operations to protect the innocent, stop war crimes or crimes against humanity, punish tyrants and war criminals, and foster conditions of lasting peace and stability.

In this chapter I apply the Augustinian Liberal just war framework to contemporary cases of war and conflict: Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorism, Syria, North Korea, and selected cases of cyberwar and autonomous weapons. I discuss Iraq because it is the largest recent war and has animated a huge amount of commentary from just war scholars. I contrast my approach with that of several other thinkers to show the original insights of my approach. Second, I discuss Afghanistan and the War on Terror because the wars illustrate some features of the moral reality of contemporary war that I hope shape our understanding of just war in the future. Third, I use Syria to discuss humanitarian crises, the use of weapons of mass destruction, and the costs of nonintervention. Fourth, I use North Korea to discuss nuclear war, nuclear deterrence, and preemptive and preventive war – issues that have been with us since the dawn of the Cold War and are still with us. Fifth, I discuss cyberwar and autonomous weapons as novel forms of conflict whose moral dimensions are still coming into focus.

The Westphalian tradition of just war thinking rooted itself in a different understanding of natural law. Instead of understanding natural law as part of the divine law and reflecting humanity’s moral aspirations, the Westphalians’ natural law was rooted in the “state of nature” and reflected what reason and custom told us about humanity’s actual conduct. Justice, in this view, did not include liberality or charity; it involved the protection of the rights of sovereigns. International justice became equated with the rights of sovereign autonomy and reciprocal non-interference associated with the Treaties of Westphalia. The just war thinkers of this era are thus more hesitant to endorse a right of rebellion, intervention to support rebels, humanitarian intervention, war as punishment, war to defend the innocent, or war against those who commit crimes against nature. War is an instrument to defend international borders, not to enforce an abstract ideal of justice. This leads to the signature contribution from the Westphalian tradition: that the preservation of the balance of power is a just cause because it preserves the independence and territorial integrity of every state.

When is war just? What does justice require? The just war framework is an attempt to answer those questions. But there is no singular tradition and no consensus on the answers. Just war inquiry is best understood as three traditions: the Augustinian, the Westphalian, and the Liberal. Augustinians understood war to be a just response and an act of love to defend the tranquility of order when that order was violently disrupted, including exceptional cases of a disruption in other states. Justice required the restoration of a just peace. Westphalians reinterpreted sovereignty so that it was no longer understood as responsibility for the common good but as defense of international borders and the sanctity of national autonomy and independence. War was just when it was waged to defend the state from external attack and, sometimes, to preserve a balance of power and prevent any one state from amassing enough power to threaten others’ independence. Justice required the maintenance of international order and stability.

In the 20th century, some thinkers, like Paul Ramsey, tried to reestablish the older, explicitly religious foundations for just war thought. Others, like Michael Walzer, did the opposite, trying to found just war on felt the moral intuition of liberalism. Both sought to amend the Westphalian order to make greater room for human rights or the sanctity of human life, which marks the beginning of the Liberal tradition of just war thinking. Ramsey approached the subject from an explicitly theological perspective but still supported key Liberal tenets, like democracy, human rights, and the “international common good.” Ramsey’s emphasis on love as the cornerstone of just war meant human life was an absolute value, more important than Westphalian sovereignty. Walzer was more explicit about his liberalism, but he built it on weaker foundations. He sought to amend the Westphalian tradition to allow for intervention for humanitarian purposes, a position he strengthened in later work, but he also maintained a preference for national self-determination without concern for ideology or regime type that was in tension with his commitment to human rights.

The intellectual history of just war thinking should be understood as unfolding in three traditions: the Augustinian, the Westphalian, and the Liberal. The Augustinian tradition of just war thinking rested on the idea that natural law exists and should guide human social and political order to fulfill natural human moral aspirations; that sovereignty means responsibility for the common good; and that justice should guide states to use force to defend the common good. In the Westphalian tradition, sovereignty evolved from defense of the common good to defense of international borders, and just cause shrank to encompass only territorial self-defense. In the embryonic Liberal tradition, concepts like human rights and accountable governance do the work that natural law and justice did in the Augustinian tradition: external standards outside and above the state used to judge the state’s legitimacy. The Liberal just war tradition allows war to vindicate the rights of individuals suffering under a humanitarian emergency, insists on respecting individual rights in how war is fought, and understands the vindication of individual rights a crucial part of ending wars justly.

The Augustinian, Westphalian, and Liberal traditions are each insufficient to guide ethical reasoning about war today. The answer lies in a partial synthesis among them, especially the Augustinian and Liberal traditions. The language of natural law and human rights are especially useful because they can make moral claims about the common good across the boundaries of culture and religion. In the Augustinian Liberal perspective, the principles of ordered liberty, human rights, and human flourishing do much the same work that natural law and justice did for the Augustinian tradition as an external standard above the state, to which the state must be accountable. Justice requires the vindication of rights but is not exhausted with rights because it also requires the sustainment of conditions required for rights to be meaningful, to promote human flourishing—which is a long way of saying that justice requires ordered liberty. Sovereignty means responsibility for the common good, which means responsibility for establishing, sustaining, and defending a system of ordered liberty at home and abroad. And ordered liberty is as close to a universal value system as the world has yet seen.

During the Reformation and the Age of Exploration, just war thinkers were forced to reexamine the premises on which the Augustinian tradition had stood, including their understanding of natural law, justice, and sovereignty. This chapter examines three thinkers crucial to that transition: Alberico Gentili, Francisco Suarez, and Hugo Grotius. They are part of the Augustinian tradition, but clearly show signs of subtle departure from their predecessors. Grotius, especially, is a hybrid between the Augustinian past and Westphalian future. They understood themselves to be engaged in a project of continuity: they wanted to salvage and reinterpret the intellectual inheritance of Christendom and reapply it to the changing and fracturing landscape of their day. But the new age inaugurated by the treaties of Westphalia transformed it in subtle but important ways, most prominently by secularizing its discourse and changing its understanding of natural law.