Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

Operational experience has shown that although efforts to achieve justice will rarely, if ever, be the sole mission of the United States military, they are often an integral component of the broader military mission. If the use of American military forces on foreign soil is the quintessential expression of what some regard as hegemonic power, then the purposes for employing that power are surely relevant in assessing its merits. When efforts to restore justice are based on U.S. interests, it follows that such efforts will be undertaken on a multilateral basis if possible, but as a unilateral expression of power if necessary.

The pursuit of justice represents a shared goal that can help create a multinational coalition, even one which relies predominately on American military and diplomatic power. The shared aspiration for the pursuit of justice is one that seeks to build judicial systems capable of investigating, apprehending, and processing criminals in a fair, independent, and relatively expeditious manner. However, the phrase "pursuit of justice" is really nothing more than shorthand for the intimate linkage between justice and liberty that most of us would embrace in the deepest part of our consciousness as being an innate and enduring truth worthy of cooperative efforts.

This essay will consider the relative merits and purposes behind the use of U.S. military power to reinvigorate, or in some cases, create a system of truth-based justice. On the one hand, American military power can enhance international harmony by restoring legal norms in such a fashion that accountability and the rule of law form the cornerstones of stability and peace. The norms of criminal accountability enjoy an unusually high degree of consensus as a matter of accepted human rights law. Stability based on the rule of law has the pragmatic effect of strengthening American national security.

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