From Kosovo and Iraq to Syria and Crimea, the specter of military intervention is a core theme within international law and policy literature. Rather than address ‘warfare’ and ‘humanitarian intervention’ as something actually occurring ‘out there in the real world’, this essay focuses on their functions within the text as a rhetorical device that helps constitute the structural conditions of disciplinary argument. In the face of what feels like escalating threats requiring immediate reaction, this essay seeks to demonstrate that it is instead exactly the right moment for reflection on the analytical toolkits that we take with us as partisans of a legal persuasion into given conflicts.
