As we quite often hear arguments which include the rules of war being tossed about,
I ask:
why do we have rules of war, and should we have them?
What do you think your self?
Maybe its humiane to have them ,and what sthe piont of having them
when certain counties brake them.
Probably not dissimilar thoughts to yourself, I try to think laterally, but would like to explore other views and perhaps broaden my own.
Yes we have invented the Rules of War ( in 1899 for the first time)
But… nothing bother us to violate it. Just like during ww2.
I think the more rules you have to follow the harder it gets to win a war. E.g. when you have to worry more about avoiding “collateral damage” than the sake of your own troops.
One angle which comes to mind, and there are many, is the example of the Athenian invasion of Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War (not unlike the occassion of Stalingrad). The Athenians invaded with a huge force and laid siege. The Spartans sent a general by the name of Lysander to help the Syracusians. They turned the siege around and the Athenians found themselves besieged and isolated.
When the Athenians were finally defeated some thirty thousand survivors were sent to the mines, most of them never surviving to see Greece again – sounds reasonable to me they invaded of their own volition and suffered the consequences. No rules involved here.
On a more personal or individual level, I would suggest that the ‘fear factor’ plays a role in the actions of the individual (as does discipline and compassion), stimulating a desire to punish.
I think the rules of war came about largely due to advances in war technology. When the capabilities to kill started to grow exponentialy. As I remember, the machineguns, f.ex., were first described as almost criminal weapon (I think it was first used in Anglo-Bore war, right?).
The same goes for the rockets. When British bombarded Copenhagen in 1807 (arguably the first bombardment of the civilians in a city) it was very frightening and despicable event.
But give it a bit time and people get used to…
An other thought: I feel that the modern man perception that the wars in older times were much crueler is a bid exaggeration. True that some of them were pure slaughters. But not all of them. At least the notion “Total war” is relatively new. And it was not like that before. Very often war was just a matter between the noble families and such. So a peasant could just get about by paying high taxes and otherwise stay out of the conflict.
What is the sense in rules that, for example, prohibit dum dums but allow small arms projectiles that are about as damaging, not to mention Claymores, land mines, grenades, mortars, artillery and aerial bombs? Would you rather be hit in the foot with a legal infantry round; an illegal dum dum; a legal mine; a legal grenade; a legal mortar shell; a legal 25 pdr shell; or a legal 500 pd bomb?
Completely illogical, in the same way that it’s illogical to insist on Queensberry rules in a street brawl.
If you’re fighting for your life, why isn’t everything permissible?
Especially when your enemy isn’t constrained by the rules you’re observing.
Depends what you want to use as an example.
The Romans weren’t exactly charitable when they destroyed Carthage and killed and enslaved its citizens.
Medieval wars often saw the feudally conscripted peasant soldiers in terrible conditions and not infrequently slaughtered after battles while the royalty and richer knights were held for ransom (under a code of ‘chivalry’ which applied only to the rich and powerful), as part of the still standard practice of the rich and powerful refraining from specifically targeting each other in warfare while the proles are just cannon fodder.
The British weren’t very charitable when they massacred civilian spectators after Culloden.
The groups which could be relied upon to suffer most in all wars were the peasants and townspeople caught up in battles between powerful interests which trampled militarily across geographic areas with the same contempt they have always shown in ravaging economies and the masses for their own profit.
Probably came about around the time of the Crusades, if not earlier(?). Chivalric knights and all that.
(“ ‘O ‘tis expressly against the law of arms!”) Willaim Shakkespeare …Henry V
If a besieged city held out longer than it should, then ‘Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!’.
The same goes for the rockets. When British bombarded Copenhagen in 1807 (arguably the first bombardment of the civilians in a city) it was very frightening and despicable event.
The Turks bombarded Constantinople with the heads of their fallen victims.
The Romans were rather adept with artillery as were the ancient \Greeks.
Agree
So, we’re agreed.
But do you, like me and just about everyone else, still have the gut response that some things are ‘unfair’ and should not occur even if they are the best way of fighting a war?
Such as targeting Main Dressing Stations for artillery or aerial bombardment or, better still, hospitals further back to kill combatants who have survived an RAP and ADS and depleted resources hugely by getting the wounded to the RAP and ADS, at least on the WWII basis that it takes four men to carry one stretcher and it’s more effective to cause grave injuries than to kill enemies, at least in Western armies, as a wounded man takes more men out of the battle than a dead one. So the best weapons are ones which cause serious but not necessarily fatal wounds. Which should make the pacifists happy. :rolleyes:
Plus there is the negative effect on morale of realising that if a man survives and gets to the MDS or hospitals further back, he’s just about certain to be killed in a bombardment despite surviving the battle.
That is an efficient way of running a war, but most people still think we ought to leave people alone after they’re badly wounded.
Don’t kick a man when he’s down, and all that.
But if we’re trying to beat his lot, why not kick him when he’s down? It’d be stupid not to.
Culturally…probably, after the event (RC guilt complex and English fair play). It’s paradoxical.
Big boys games etc.
Terror is not a new tactic.
I speaking of writen rules between the countries.
The era of Chivalers had different rules. As well as Roman era and so on.
Every period has certain customs. But they are not nesseseraly writen ones.
F.ex. how the infantry battle was done in early 18th century. Two armies gathered on the field in rows. Then they would start approaching. At certain range they would stand and fire salvoes at eachother. In turns. And when the enemy would fire at you, you were suposed to be standing fully erected. Then after certain number of fire exchange the armies would clash in hand fight. That is a raugh idea of course but it shows how customs of war were back then. Idiocy by the todays standards.
The Turks bombarded Constantinople with the heads of their fallen victims.
The Romans were rather adept with artillery as were the ancient \Greeks.
Bombardment of the city with the heads of victims is a phsyhological (and a bit biological) warfare. Besides IIRC the rople of the “artillery” in Roman age (it also goes for seige of Constantinople by Ottomans) was mainly in braking the walls. So it was the means, an assistant action, but not the aim itself. In 1807 the bombardement was the aim - the destruction of the town until the inhabitants surrender and fullfill the seigers demand.
The Copenhagen 1807 was a bombardement in modern sense (though it, probably, was not the very first one).
What is RC?
Okay, I could go off on a tangent, here, but I take your point.
War is war, modern, medieval or ancient, it’s about killing .
RC = Roman Catholic.
And usually judged by those who weren’t there, some of whom might not even suffer from RC guilt (which is mild compared with the Jewish version and profound compared with the Proddies who lack the understanding of and need for the sacrament of confession).
Yet there remains the fact that at national levels we have so far, apart from a WWI excursion into the C aspect and two instances of N in WWII, refrained from NBC warfare despite having huge capacity in all NBC aspects.
Because somehow we find those things too terrible, or too unfair, or maybe we’re just too afraid of the MAD response they might provoke.
But, really, why should the Yanks have sent soldiers into, say, the boonies in Vietnam instead of just nuking NVN when they had the capacity to turn NVN into a glass-surfaced carpark for a few thousand years?
The answers are all about politico-military reactions and consequences, not fair play for the poor bastards who would suffer the consequences.
Aah, you’re going to get me going on about economics: need and greed; power and influence and all that…