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October 2021 Vol. 59 No. 2

Mantilla (Univ. of Cambridge) explores the background to the creation of international humanitarian law (especially, the 1977 amendment to the Geneva Conventions) as applicable to the case of internal armed conflicts. His goal is to explain why countries would agree to establish rules to be governed by when faced with their own internal disputes. The extension of international humanitarian law to limit the ability of nations to take certain actions during internal warfare required states to abrogate their own sovereignty, originally a well-respected and well-guarded right of the state (to control its own internal disputes). Mantilla argues that part of the impetus for nations to give up some of their autonomy and regulate their own behavior was created by the pressure exerted from the international community, with the result that the stigmata of shame and hypocrisy were pushed on certain countries. This pressure created an obligation to act and in doing so to forgo certain protections entailed by sovereignty in favor of international rules governing internal warfare. The questions explored here represent Mantilla's attempt to theorize how nations respond to international pressure with actions such as waiving their own protection when the expectation is articulated such that the countries must respond with action and not solely words.

--W. R. Pruitt, Endicott College

Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and faculty.