Just War, by Murray Rothbard, is essential reading. It's probably a 30-60 minute read, depending on how fast you go though it or ponder it. As with almost all things, I don't accept many of the implicit premises. However, I do agree that Rothbard's political and legal logic within the confines of the premises is pretty consistent. The main idea advanced by this essay is that America has only fought been involved in two just wars: The American Revolution and Southern Independence (The "Civil War"). In other words, and he lays out a pretty good argument, the Southern States were conducting a just war against the unjust North for pretty much the same set of justifiable reasons the American Revolutionaries waged a just was against the unjust British crown. It's certainly not a new idea that the South was right -- Southerners being Southerners -- but the just reasons they had to go to war have always been overshadowed by the slavery issue. After all, the North won and the winner gets to write and teach history. A few key excerpts: ...a just war exists when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people,...