Against Victory: Decolonising Justice After War

This article makes a case for a theoretical reorientation of post-war justice that moves away from the colonial imaginaries of military victory in just war theory. This intellectual tradition typically theorises a just peace from the perspective of ‘just victors’ interested in the definition of their rights and responsibilities in the aftermaths of a military confrontation against ‘unjust aggressors’ or ‘inherently aggressive and murderous regimes’. I argue that this approach finds its historical roots in the colonial imaginaries of the ethics of conquerors, which have been reformulated in the modern languages of rights and responsibilities. Coloniality explains such historical continuities and discontinuities in this intellectual tradition. The origins of this conception are not only of theoretical interest but also of practical relevance due to the entrenchment of colonial relations of punishment, protection and education rather than political relations of dialogue, compromise and mediation as the foundations of post-war justice.