War and Law since 1945

by Geoffrey Best

Civilization has long tried to limit the violence and cruelty of war. This important new book by a leading authority on ethics and war traces the recent history of these efforts, and explores key contemporary issues in this area. Best shows how the Second World War prompted reconstruction of international law, and charts the fortunes of its relations with war since then. He surveys the whole range of post-1945 armed conflict--high-tech international wars, wars of national liberation, revolutions, and civil wars--to offer an original and thought-provoking approach to contemporary history, law, politics, and ethics.

450 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

An historian of 19th and 20th century Britain, Geoffrey Francis Andrew Best was Emeritus Fellow of the British Academy, a former Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Professor of History at Edinburgh, Dean of European Studies at Sussex, Academic Visitor at the London School of Economics, and Senior Member of St Antony's College, Oxford.