“Unjust enemy” or “Monster dilemma” revisited. On the conditions and the paradox of a theological fiction1

Abstract

The text once more reconstructs the perennially fashionable “figure” within public and international law, as well as a theologized construction: an evil-doer who must be destroyed in the conflict or war. The “unjust enemy”, always mutually recognized and often indicated as the other side in every conflict (and particularly ambiguously and obscurely in the current war between Russia and Ukraine), should satisfy certain conditions for them to be linked to “evil” and “the alliance of all against evil”, in the production of world peace and infinite restraint from war. By classifying various forms of hostile protocols, my intention is to show the substantive incompleteness and weakness of the term “enemy”, and thus the impossibility and myth of a symmetric use of force.

Keywords

• unjust enemy
• monster
• criminalization
• hostility
• destruction