Since 9/11, a striking number of Shakespeare productions have appropriated the distinctive colours of desert camouflage. The print – marked by faded tones and an overall impression of dry and earthy environs – has become almost the standard choice for productions of Macbeth, Othello, and Henry V. Yet there has been little, if any, discussion of desert camouflage as a costuming decision. Examining productions ranging across two decades – from Nicholas Hytner’s Henry V (2003) to Max Webster’s Henry V (2022) – this essay argues that the use of the print synopsizes the ways in which productions refract contemporary understandings of global conflict. Camouflage costuming ignites a nexus of Shakespearean meanings around the brutality of the protagonist, war-crimes, PTSD, veteran-ship, and spectacular violence. The newly cynical readings that result render irrelevant traditional debates about the pro- or anti-war stance of Shakespearean theatre. In representing – via desert camouflage – a new kind of warfare, theatre in the post-2001 era envisages conflict as self-defeat. Finally, then, these productions speak to incompleteness, irresolution, regret, and a never-ending cycle of global violence.

Norway’s “nation brand” rests on the notion that this country is characteristic for its inclination to do good on the world stage. This brand is at risk of being exposed as hypocrisy, however, since Norway demonstrably also causes harm. In this chapter, I focus on the work that goes into maintaining Norway’s image as a good power. I will argue that a key mechanism of such maintenance work is the strategic production and management of ignorance, a phrase that refers to various forms of secrecy, selection, or suppression of information. As an extended illustration, I provide a reading of the TV series Nobel, which details a whole catalogue of Norwegian vices and crimes, and which fictionalizes how those vices and crimes are hidden or marginalized. But if Nobel might thus appear to be a hard-hitting piece of national self-criticism, I suggest that its effect could actually be the exact opposite: In line with its tragic form, what Nobel ultimately offers its viewers is a momentary – self-critical – venting ritual, after which everything can return to normal.

Contemporary war seems to be both perpetual and everywhere – not enclosed by neat pair of finite dates nor limited to a particular field of battle. Yet despite that ubiquity, war stories remain largely on the margins. The Hurt Locker, for instance, won the Academy Award for Best Picture (and five other Oscars to boot), but remains the lowest-grossing film ever to do so. This essay addresses the field of twenty-first-century representations of war, including work by Kevin Powers, Kayla Williams, Brian Castner, Siobhan Fallon, Brian Turner, and others, noting common themes such as the nature of an all-volunteer military, the widening gap between military and civilian cultures, the expanding presence of women, and changing experiences with technology and the nature of trauma. The essay also addresses the war stories that are immensely popular with the public – the ever-expanding cinematic universes of superheroes that are built on never-ending conflict and combat. These, too, are forever wars.

In this chapter I apply the Augustinian Liberal just war framework to contemporary cases of war and conflict: Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorism, Syria, North Korea, and selected cases of cyberwar and autonomous weapons. I discuss Iraq because it is the largest recent war and has animated a huge amount of commentary from just war scholars. I contrast my approach with that of several other thinkers to show the original insights of my approach. Second, I discuss Afghanistan and the War on Terror because the wars illustrate some features of the moral reality of contemporary war that I hope shape our understanding of just war in the future. Third, I use Syria to discuss humanitarian crises, the use of weapons of mass destruction, and the costs of nonintervention. Fourth, I use North Korea to discuss nuclear war, nuclear deterrence, and preemptive and preventive war – issues that have been with us since the dawn of the Cold War and are still with us. Fifth, I discuss cyberwar and autonomous weapons as novel forms of conflict whose moral dimensions are still coming into focus.