South Sudan Independence: Contingency Planning about Just Armed Intervention

Eric Patterson and co-author John Lango (Hunter College) investigate in the International Journal of Applied Philosophy how just war theory provides policy guidance about contingency planning for armed interventions in civil wars that may occur in the future. With Sudan’s failed 2010 election and ongoing referendum on southern secession in mind, they argue that the just cause principle can be used prospectively by the US and the international community to plan and prepare a deterrent to the return of a disastrous civil war—whether in Sudan or in other places were grave regional and humanitarian (e.g. genocide) implications exist.