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Valerie Morkevicius, Re-Thinking Legitimate Authority: Incorporating Nonstate Actors into the Just War Framework, International Studies Review, Volume 16, Issue 1, March 2014, Pages 158–160, https://doi.org/10.1111/misr.12110
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A credit to the editors' efforts, the nine chapters contributed by prominent just war scholars work well together toward the development of an argument in favor of expanding the just war concept of legitimate authority to better deal with nonstate actors in international politics. Historically, legitimate authority has been limited to sovereigns in the canonical tradition, or to sovereign states in just war's more modern iterations. In a world where inter-state war has become a rarity—but various forms of intra-state violence, sadly, have not—it is well worth asking how useful the just war tradition can be in helping to navigate this new and complex ethical terrain.
As Nicholas Onuf points out in the concluding essay, the traditional just war concept of legitimate authority “unduly simplifies the complex relations of authority in today's world,” which challenge the simplistic division of agents into state and nonstate actors, or public and private ones (p. 240). Likewise, Cian O'Driscoll argues that while the just war tradition has begun to evolve in response to challenges posed by international actors (such as the United Nations and various regional organizations) and by substate actors in the wake of decolonization, its fundamental assumptions about the basis of authority are even more threatened by the rise of transnational actors, particularly terrorist organizations (p. 22). These various nonstate actors are part of the reality of war in the twenty-first century, and just war theory risks atrophying into a quaint historical artifact unless it can usefully address the way war is fought today. Indeed, Melissa Labonte goes as far as to suggest that the emerging “third pillar” of just war thought—jus post bellum—may be dead on arrival if it cannot take into account the roles played by nonstate actors and their linkages with the state (p. 230).
