Over the centuries, humanity has held dreams of a world beyond war, and even of a patchal

peace.

But in recent decades, a more restrained ambition has emerged.

The ideal of humane war, where conflict between and within nations still exists, but is

regulated by an ever more sophisticated patchwork of laws and conventions.

Since September 11, 2001, this notion of humane war has intersected with a new wave

of foreign intervention.

But in seeking to make war more humane and embed it in a context of rights, have we also

made it more legitimate?

Are the forever wars so extensive and ambiguous and reach precisely because they claim to

be humane?

And have ethical wars essentially created a license for wars without end?

With me to discuss that is Samuel Moyne, whose new book Humane, How the United States

Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, offers a powerful overview of the ethics of force

in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Sam, welcome to Navara FM.

Thanks for having me, Aaron.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your work, and where humane fits more broadly

within the books that you've published?

So I'm a historian by training, and I work as a law professor in the United States.

And for about a decade, I worked on where the idea and politics and law of human rights

came from.

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