Diplomatic Interventions argues that war is a social construction. In so doing, it unsettles the common definition of intervention, as a coercive interference by one state in the affairs of another, to examine the range of communicative of 'diplomatic' practices which through their presence modify the experience of war. The tension between the claim that war is pervasive at the international level and that it is a social construct, given form and meaning through human and state interactions, is analysed in relation to moral interventions, such as just war theory; legal inventions, such as the Genocide Conventions; military interventions in the form of coercive diplomacy, humanitarian intervention and pre-emptive strategies; economic interventions, including the arms trade and economic sanctions; cultural interventions from the media to practices of dialogue; and therapeutic interventions, from Truth and Reconciliation Commissions to demands for reparation. The concluding chapter highlights the extent to which the book itself represents a critical intervention that requires us to look again from a new angle at international practice.