The Moralization Bias of War

Nations have felt at liberty to justify their belicocity through war manifestoes, legal documents out in their just causes for just wars. Hathaway and chapero compiled over 400 such documents into a data base on which they conducted a content analysis that is a catalogue of reasons why nations said they had to fight. The most common rationalizations for war were, self defence, enforcing treaty obligations, compensation for tortuous injuries,. 35% violations of the laws of war or law of nations; 33% protection of trade interests: 19%. Those percentage is obviously at a way higher than those sent because they typically listed multiple reasons in these statements justifying war. Instead of i came, i saw,