As international law evolves beyond ancient percepts of sovereignty, it should incorporate new thinking about pre-emptive strikes, human rights violations as casus belli and role and standing of international organizations, insurgents and liberation movements.

Yet, inevitably, what constitutes "justice" depends heavily on cultural and societal contexts, narratives, mores, and values of disputants. Thus, one cannot answer deceivingly simple question: "Is this war a just war?" - without first asking: "According to whom? In which context? By which criteria? Based on what values? In which period in history and where?"

Being members of Western Civilization, whether by choice or by default, our understanding of what constitutes a just war is crucially founded on our shifting perceptions of West.

Imagine a village of 220 inhabitants. It has one heavily armed police constable flanked by two lightly equipped assistants. The hamlet is beset by a bunch of ruffians who molest their own families and, at times, violently lash out at their neighbors. These delinquents mock authorities and ignore their decisions and decrees.

Yet, village council - source of legitimacy - refuses to authorize constable to apprehend villains and dispose of them, by force of arms if need be. The elders see no imminent or present danger to their charges and are afraid of potential escalation whose evil outcomes could far outweigh anything felons can achieve.

Incensed by this laxity, constable - backed only by some of inhabitants - breaks into home of one of more egregious thugs and expels or kills him. He claims to have acted preemptively and in self-defense, as criminal, long in defiance of law, was planning to attack its representatives.

Was constable right in acting way he did?

On one hand, he may have saved lives and prevented a conflagration whose consequences no one could predict. On other hand, by ignoring edicts of village council and expressed will of many of denizens, he has placed himself above law, as its absolute interpreter and enforcer.

What is greater danger? Turning a blind eye to exploits of outlaws and outcasts, thus rendering them ever more daring and insolent - or acting unilaterally to counter such pariahs, thus undermining communal legal foundation and, possibly, leading to a chaotic situation of "might is right"? In other words, when ethics and expedience conflict with legality - which should prevail?

Enter medieval doctrine of "Just War" (justum bellum, or, more precisely jus ad bellum), propounded by Saint Augustine of Hippo (fifth century AD), Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) in his "Summa Theologicae", Francisco de Vitoria (1548-1617), Francisco Suarez (1548-1617), Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) in his influential tome "Jure Belli ac Pacis" ("On Rights of War and Peace", 1625), Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1704), Christian Wolff (1679-1754), and Emerich de Vattel (1714-1767).

Modern thinkers include Michael Walzer in "Just and Unjust Wars" (1977), Barrie Paskins and Michael Dockrill in "The Ethics of War" (1979), Richard Norman in "Ethics, Killing, and War" (1995), Thomas Nagel in "War and Massacre", and Elizabeth Anscombe in "War and Murder".

According to Catholic Church's rendition of this theory, set forth by Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in his Letter to President Bush on Iraq, dated September 13, 2002, going to war is justified if these conditions are met:

"The damage inflicted by aggressor on nation or community of nations [is] lasting, grave, and certain; all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; there must be serious prospects of success; use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than evil to be eliminated."

A just war is, therefore, a last resort, all other peaceful conflict resolution options having been exhausted.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy sums up doctrine thus:

This is not likely to endear organization to Bush administration whose hawks regard it as a superfluous leftover from Cold War era. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) even introduced legislation to withdraw from organization altogether. Nile Gardiner, a visiting fellow at Heritage Foundation, summed up these sentiments in Insight Magazine thus:

"I think U.N. has been in gradual decline for many years. It failed to act spectacularly in Rwanda and did nothing about Slobodan Milosevic's brutal regime. Iraq is latest in a long line of failures."

Admittedly, like any bureaucracy, organization is self-perpetuating, self-serving and self-absorbed. But it - and its raft of specialized offshoots - still give back far more than they receive. In recognition of U.N.'s crucial role, several liberal Democrats have entered legislation to create a "permanent U.N. security force" and to "voluntarily contribute" to U.N. Population Fund.

Consider peacekeeping operations. At a total annual cost of c. $5 billion last year, U.N. peacekeeping missions employ close to 40,000 police and military and another 11,000 civilians from 89 countries. The budget is shoestring and more than half pledged contributions are still outstanding. The U.N. consumes less than 0.001 percent of world's gross domestic product. As James Paul, Executive Director of Global Policy Forum, observes:

"All UN staff, including specialized agencies and funds, are fewer than civil service of City of Stockholm or staff of McDonalds. The core UN budget is one half of one percent of US military budget and far less than cost of one B-2 bomber aircraft."

Even United States Mission to United Nations, on its Web site, seeks to debunk a few myths. Despite a massive increase in remit and operations, organization's budget, at $2.6 billion, has remained constant since 1995. The workforce was cut by 11 percent, to 9000 employees, since 1997:

"The UN has done a great deal to increase efficiency and overall accountability. In 1994, UN created Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) to serve as inspector general and promote efficient management and reduce waste, fraud and abuse. During year ended June 30, 2001, OIOS recommended $58 million in savings and recoveries for UN and persuaded UN program managers to implement hundreds of recommendations for improving management and internal controls. OIOS investigations also led to successful convictions of UN staff and others for fraud and stealing UN funds."

Yet, bad - and expensive - habits die hard. Budget discipline is lax with no clear order of priorities. The United Nations suffers from an abundance of obsolete relics of past programs, inertly and futilely maintained by beneficiary bureaucrats. Follow-up U.N. conferences - and they tend to proliferate incontrollably - are still being held in exotic resorts, or shopping-friendly megalopolises. United Nations entities at country level duplicate efforts and studiously avoid joint programming, common databases and pooling of resources.

The aforementioned OIOS has hitherto identified more than $200 million in waste and fraud and issued 5000 recommendations to improve efficiency, transparency and accountability. Disgusted by flagrant squandering of scarce resources, United States - which covers one fifth of august establishment's pecuniary needs - accumulated more than $1.2 billion in arrears by 1999, double debts of all other members combined.

It has since repaid bulk of these even as it reduced its share of United Nations' finances. It now contributes 22 percent of regular budget, down from 25 percent and 25-27 percent of costs of U.N. peacekeeping forces, down from 30-31 percent.