Abstract

This essay analyzes Walzer's argumentations on "just war" showing the relationship between theoretical and moral arguments, on the one hand, and political judgments, on the other. On the ground of "Arguing about War", the author focuses in particular on the concepts of "terrorism", "humanitarian intervention" and "extreme emergency" and points out how they are defined by formal universalistic criteria but applied in a particularistic way in the reconstructions of facts intended to justify recent usa and Nato war interventions in Iraq (1991, 2003), Kosovo (1999), and Afghanistan (2001).