| Summary/Abstract |
Governing contemporary warfare is deeply rooted in the shift since the end of the Cold War towards humanitarianism, whose practice has been accompanied by the parallel evolution of international laws that regulate the use of force (jus ad bellum), the conduct of hostilities (jus in bello), and post-conflict justice (jus post bellum). Yet, new unequal obligations on behalf of the territorial state faced with proxy warfare internally and foreign intervention externally have challenged the core role of such governance, and led to further erosion of the normativity of those rules in the theatres of conflict. As a result, this rule-based approach to government falls short of restoring the actual relationships and human ties between the warring parties. The undesired outcome of such humanitarian ambitions can be mediated through relational governance, as espoused by Yaqing Qin, one of China’s leading international relations scholars, which is founded in a Chinese epistemological and relation-focused framework. Its tools and methods stress the importance of trust and harmonization of relationships, in order for the international laws governing warfare to regain their normativity based on such relationality; without a fertile soil, evolving norms may not gain root and compliance with those norms cannot be fostered in the first place.
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