Despite the disaster of Iraq and ever more visible evidence of the horrors of war, the concepts of 'Humanitarian Intervention' and 'Just War' continue to exercise a seemingly unshakeable grip on our imaginations. Even today, the concepts enjoy widespread legitimacy within the halls of power, and armies of experts line up to provide legal justification for such conflicts. Robin Dunford and Michael Neu provide a clear and comprehensive critique of both Just War Theory and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, deconstructing the philosophical, moral and above all political arguments that underpin them. In doing so, they show how proponents of Just War and R2P have tended to treat killing in a way which obscures the complex and often messy reality of war, and pays little heed to the real, human impact of such conflicts. Going further, they provide answers to such difficult questions as 'Wasn't the Second World War a "Just War"?' and 'Surely it would have been just for us to intervene in the Rwandan genocide?' An essential guide to dealing with one of the most difficult moral and political issues of our age.