Laws of War?

"War crimes" are keeping Putin from traveling except to friendly nations.
If only enforcement could let us realistically keep Trump from attending the G7 summit later this year in Kananaskis, Alberta. We have a law that says convicted felons aren't allowed to cross the border into Canada. The only people who want him to come are already his adoring fans.


As for "clean war", that's an oxymoron. War means someone dies and destruction happens, which automatically means it's dirty.

The closest anyone's come to inventing a "clean war" are those who wrote and produced an old Star Trek episode called "A Taste of Armageddon." Two planets at war for 500 years, waging war by computer, and anyone who's declared a casualty just calmly steps into a disintegration chamber and is zapped into nothingness.

This type of warfare is so "clean" and the people have been conditioned to accept it as so normal that they've had no incentive to make peace:


Is that the type of "clean war" people would prefer?
 
War is ultimately conducted to some kind of political end. If there is some kind of agreement on what is or isn't acceptable in warfare, even if there is no effective formal enforcement mechanism, breaches of the laws of war still detrimentally impact a belligerent's moral authority and therefore its legitimacy.

And there is agreement. No nukes, no plagues, no poison gas, no explicit genocide, no random executions of civilians, prisoners of war, etc are pretty universally accepted. Things like blockades, collatoral damage, strategic bombings are still grey areas
I think this agreement is really pretty weak outside of the West, and it's not at all clear to me that the publics themselves are actually opposed. More likely, non-Western elites consider Western disdain economically disastrous and avoid it.
 
It's easy to forget terrorism is just war lite. The resultant fear from an action is the mechanism leveraged. War uses violence broadly, as its own mechanism. War is considerably more evil dense. It's hard to argue there are really any rules when, "I'm going to bury you and keep your stuff and the ones I find pretty" is the explicit outward statement.

It's easy to confuse that though, having grown up in a global era where the hegemon at least theoretically attempted to be the good state rather than the "civilizing one," for most of the period.
 
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I think this agreement is really pretty weak outside of the West, and it's not at all clear to me that the publics themselves are actually opposed. More likely, non-Western elites consider Western disdain economically disastrous and avoid it.

It really doesn't matter if they really truly honest-to-God believe it in their hearts, what matters is their outwardly professed belief. Following the rules to avoid economic disaster is good enough.

Western aversion to wartime excesses arose out of their experience of the brutality of 19th - 20th century industrial warfare. Non-Western peoples also experienced this and in some cases far worse. I don't know why you'd think we wouldn't develop similar aversions unless you think we're like I don't know savages or something, haha, ha
 
Western aversion to wartime excesses arose out of their experience of the brutality of 19th - 20th century industrial warfare. Non-Western peoples also experienced this and in some cases far worse. I don't know why you'd think we wouldn't develop similar aversions unless you think we're like I don't know savages or something, haha, ha
Not any moreso than Westerners would be, in different circumstances.

I have a hunch that a willingness to do pretty extreme violence is the default human condition. People find a reason.

What's different about the Western experience isn't really so much that they "learned" from WW2. I think it's nukes. A buncha people here, I am 100% confident, be pretty savage warhawks if born at any other time in history, but are mellowed by the simple fact that war would go nuclear and produce genuinely apocalyptic carnage.

As nuclear profileration proceeds I would imagine a similar anti-war mentality spreads.
 
Look at how Russia has been committing war crimes in Ukraine. What can be done about it?

Look at how the U.S. ignores the ICC, how American soldiers rape Japanese citizens, and nothing ever happens.

Laws of war only apply to some.
 
As nuclear profileration proceeds I would imagine a similar anti-war mentality spreads.
That's a great filter question.

Edit: at least as far as we're concerned
 
No nukes, no plagues, no poison gas, no explicit genocide, no random executions of civilians, prisoners of war, etc are pretty universally accepted.
I mean, is it? It comes back to "is the side doing it politically supported" or not. Always will.
 
What's different about the Western experience isn't really so much that they "learned" from WW2. I think it's nukes. A buncha people here, I am 100% confident, be pretty savage warhawks if born at any other time in history, but are mellowed by the simple fact that war would go nuclear and produce genuinely apocalyptic carnage.

As nuclear profileration proceeds I would imagine a similar anti-war mentality spreads.

Non-Western countries also have nukes

I mean, is it? It comes back to "is the side doing it politically supported" or not. Always will.

The Russians aren't parading Ukrainian heads on spikes on state television are they. Assad didn't have people going around saying Ghouta children deserved to be gassed. No, they keep anything like that hushed up and deny

How often is it that political supporters of a side advocate using nukes or poison gas. How often does it actually get pass toxic corners of the internet where anything can be and is said and become mainstream
 
Non-Western countries also have nukes



The Russians aren't parading Ukrainian heads on spikes on state television are they. Assad didn't have people going around saying Ghouta children deserved to be gassed. No, they keep anything like that hushed up and deny

How often is it that political supporters of a side advocate using nukes or poison gas. How often does it actually get pass toxic corners of the internet where anything can be and is said and become mainstream
PoWs, executions, (not wanting to start a derail but) genocide, etc, is more what I wanted to highlight. As we can see, support for such, stomach for allegations, etc, et al, generally tends to come down to geopolitics and the cost of political support for a specific regime. It rarely comes down to actual morals, or even law.
 
Non-Western countries also have nukes
It's kept India and Pakistan from large scale violence against each other, to my mind.

But those that don't? Well, Iran-Iraq war, Vietnam War, Khmer Rouge, East Timor, a slew of brutal conficts in Africa, today in sectarian violence in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, and in other conflicts in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Mali, Nigeria, we seen mass violence at a greater scale than we otherwise would.

Populations far and wide seem willing to war, massacre varying in acceptance between tolerated and encouraged. What really seems to stop the show is when the other side has nukes.
 
Look at how Russia has been committing war crimes in Ukraine. What can be done about it?

Look at how the U.S. ignores the ICC, how American soldiers rape Japanese citizens, and nothing ever happens.

Laws of war only apply to some.
For one, do what you are doing here – pointing it out.

Apparently it's a real enough issue that you can formulate these examples as problems.

Otherwise they might just as well be ideals and models of action to be lauded and emulated – but they are not.
 
Not any moreso than Westerners would be, in different circumstances.

I have a hunch that a willingness to do pretty extreme violence is the default human condition. People find a reason.
Humans can rationalize anything – doesn't make rationalizing anything and everything remotely a good idea.

The drive towards legislation, general rule-making – even without the requisite coercive power to make it stick – is the objective of trying to make the world more predictable, less dangerous, less ruled by fear.

Fear, and unpredictabiolity, otoh is a political tool in some political systems as conceived. There is a fundamental conflict between models of society depending on the choice and preference for means and tools they favor. It's a non-trivial difference.
 
PoWs, executions, (not wanting to start a derail but) genocide, etc, is more what I wanted to highlight. As we can see, support for such, stomach for allegations, etc, et al, generally tends to come down to geopolitics and the cost of political support for a specific regime. It rarely comes down to actual morals, or even law.

What are laws and morals if not the result of geopolitics and the realities of political support

It's kept India and Pakistan from large scale violence against each other, to my mind.

But those that don't? Well, Iran-Iraq war, Vietnam War, Khmer Rouge, East Timor, a slew of brutal conficts in Africa, today in sectarian violence in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, and in other conflicts in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Mali, Nigeria, we seen mass violence at a greater scale than we otherwise would.

Populations far and wide seem willing to war, massacre varying in acceptance between tolerated and encouraged. What really seems to stop the show is when the other side has nukes.

Okay but do you see how you have moved the goalposts

Originally you were like "can laws of war can be said to meaningfully exist to any degree?"

Then you were like "well maybe so but does it count if people don't actually believe in them but still follow them because they don't want to be shunned"

And now you're like "well uhhh wars still exist though"

If there were no wars we wouldn't need laws of war would we

Note also that almost every conflict you've just listed aren't conventional interstate wars, the kind that the framers of the laws of war from the late 19th to the mid-20th century had in mind when they came up with them, the kind of wars fought between uniformed armies of states. Is a captured rebel insurgent in civilian clothes a PoW or just a criminal traitor with illegal firearms? If you can work it out there's a Nobel Prize in it for you.
 
What are laws and morals if not the result of geopolitics and the realities of political support
Collapsing words on each other kinda makes a semantic discussion pointless. And given that this is a semantic discussion, it kinda has to be open to it.

Otherwise we might as well end it and have everyone stop talking with the conclusion of "reality is reality, we can't change it, enjoy the status quo until somebody breaks it".

You're the one who claimed that certain things not being done was "pretty universally accepted". And yet in these things, there are things that are done, and accepted at the same time. So either your claim was wrong, or you've internalised the dissonance between group A being able to do things that group B can't.

In the latter case, fair enough, but that's pretty much just "might makes right", which kinda voids the whole concept of any lawmaking in the first place. In that case, the thread answer would be there can be no possible laws of war, because whoever can, will, and whoever can't, won't.
 
Collapsing words on each other kinda makes a semantic discussion pointless. And given that this is a semantic discussion, it kinda has to be open to it.

Otherwise we might as well end it and have everyone stop talking with the conclusion of "reality is reality, we can't change it, enjoy the status quo until somebody breaks it".

That's a strange conclusion to draw from what I said. Far from being fatalistic, it means if you're good at politics, you can change the law and culture and morality. I have no intention to simply enjoy the status quo.

You're the one who claimed that certain things not being done was "pretty universally accepted". And yet in these things, there are things that are done, and accepted at the same time. So either your claim was wrong, or you've internalised the dissonance between group A being able to do things that group B can't.
The things are very rarely done and even more rarely accepted. Now I understand it's hard to provide evidence of things not being done, but I have provided instances of when things are done and the almost universal response is not acceptance, but varying from armed response to condemnation to denial. There is little to the contrary case except assertions that "things are still bad though". Like I'm not claiming that wars no longer happen and even said that "clean" wars are impossible?

In the latter case, fair enough, but that's pretty much just "might makes right", which kinda voids the whole concept of any lawmaking in the first place. In that case, the thread answer would be there can be no possible laws of war, because whoever can, will, and whoever can't, won't.

Law is a labour-saving technology. Again going back to my original point, violence is costly in terms of material treasure and also legitimacy. If you are strong enough to be in a position to make and/or enforce laws that are respected, you decrease the need to use violence yourself to maintain/exercise your power (some is still necessary to enforce laws) and increase the cost of using violence for everyone else. Also see Verbose's point two posts ago saying much the same things more elegantly. Violence is Bad, but arbitrary violence is far worse.
 
That's a strange conclusion to draw from what I said. Far from being fatalistic, it means if you're good at politics, you can change the law and culture and morality. I have no intention to simply enjoy the status quo.
Politics reflects culture, everybody* follows the law. You can change culture in a variety of ways, it doesn't have to be via politics. I'd argue that the politics of it are immaterial - changing culture will itself change politics (as we observe with the rightwards shift of the Overton window in Western countries).

You said "what are laws and morals if not the result of geopolitics and the realities of political support". I fundamentally disagree, because you're inserting a realistic expectation r.e. outcome into things that don't require it. A law is a law, good or bad. Enforced or not, it exists. The same goes for morals. My morals should not be shaped by the likelihood of geopolitics making them a reality. It would be a very dismal world if that were the case.

(*usual caveats, etc)
The things are very rarely done and even more rarely accepted.
Strongly disagree, but can't give examples without ruining the thread, so, agree to disagree.
Law is a labour-saving technology. Again going back to my original point, violence is costly in terms of material treasure and also legitimacy. If you are strong enough to be in a position to make and/or enforce laws that are respected, you decrease the need to use violence yourself to maintain/exercise your power (some is still necessary to enforce laws) and increase the cost of using violence for everyone else. Also see Verbose's point two posts ago saying much the same things more elegantly. Violence is Bad, but arbitrary violence is far worse.
This is also simply "might makes right". Justification based on theoretical "worse" violence doesn't absolve the initial choice of violence.
 
Okay but do you see how you have moved the goalposts

Originally you were like "can laws of war can be said to meaningfully exist to any degree?"

Then you were like "well maybe so but does it count if people don't actually believe in them but still follow them because they don't want to be shunned"

And now you're like "well uhhh wars still exist though"

If there were no wars we wouldn't need laws of war would we

Note also that almost every conflict you've just listed aren't conventional interstate wars, the kind that the framers of the laws of war from the late 19th to the mid-20th century had in mind when they came up with them, the kind of wars fought between uniformed armies of states. Is a captured rebel insurgent in civilian clothes a PoW or just a criminal traitor with illegal firearms? If you can work it out there's a Nobel Prize in it for you.
Not really. The laws of war don't meaningfully exist in most of the mentioned conflicts.

The shunning disincentives genocide, but doesn't really influence following the laws of war, that bit doesn't really happen in any conflict, no matter the involved sides.
 
Basically if both sides are committing war crimes the outcome of the war is equal to if neither side commits war crimes so we just agree not to do them and give them a formal context to anchor it in peoples heads.
 
Politics reflects culture, everybody* follows the law. You can change culture in a variety of ways, it doesn't have to be via politics. I'd argue that the politics of it are immaterial - changing culture will itself change politics (as we observe with the rightwards shift of the Overton window in Western countries).

You said "what are laws and morals if not the result of geopolitics and the realities of political support". I fundamentally disagree, because you're inserting a realistic expectation r.e. outcome into things that don't require it. A law is a law, good or bad. Enforced or not, it exists. The same goes for morals. My morals should not be shaped by the likelihood of geopolitics making them a reality. It would be a very dismal world if that were the case.

Laws and morals are created, by societies, they don't exist out of the ether.

Whether you believe laws and morals should be shaped by politics or not, they are.

This is also simply "might makes right". Justification based on theoretical "worse" violence doesn't absolve the initial choice of violence.

Who says anything about absolving anyone. This is a calculation. I do believe it to be a morally superior calculation than "all violence is equally bad" but no one gets absolved of anything.

Not really. The laws of war don't meaningfully exist in most of the mentioned conflicts.

okay whatever

why did you even start this thread if you're just going to respond to arguments and examples with reflexive denial
 
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