Abstract
In this chapter, note that the simple historical concepts of war and peace have given way to complex, rapidly changing situations that are hard to classify. The law itself is susceptible to change and so a broad notion of ‘conflict’ is taken as the focus for discussion in the book. The principle topics that will be analyzed in the ensuing chapters are introduced. These include international manuals and other writings of experts, an emerging spectrum of conflict, automation and autonomy in attack, new weapons technologies, novel thinking as to the conduct of hostilities, depersonalization and civilianization of the battlefield, legal issues arising from detention operations, the relevance of human rights law to the regulation of conflict and the idea that conflicts are increasingly conducted in some sort of media and legal spotlight. The broad scheme of the book is laid out.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Setting out national interpretations of the law in military manuals, training armed forces personnel and others in the law, maintaining discipline among the armed forces, ensuring timely investigation of breaches of the law and undertaking prosecutions and inflicting punishment in appropriate cases are among the critical national measures that contribute to achieving legal compliance.
- 3.
See 31st International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, 28 November–1 December 2011, Resolution 1, Strengthening legal protection for victims of armed conflicts, preamble and paras 2, 5, and 6. www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/resolution/31-international-conference-resolution-1-2011.htm; last visited 24 Oct. 2013.
- 4.
See Lietzau and Rutigliano 2010, p. 11, at pp. 10 and 11: “That current norms ill fit current circumstances should not surprise. Rarely has mankind accurately predicted tomorrow’s challenge with yesterday’s law.”
- 5.
Protocol IV to the Conventional Weapons Convention, which prohibits the blinding laser weapons referred to in the Protocol, is cited as an example of law acting in an anticipatory way, and among the examples of international law inspired by past conflict, Geneva Convention IV is noted as a response to the victimization of occupied populations during World War II; Schmitt 2012, p. 455, 456.
- 6.
Sassoli 2011, p. 34 at p. 48.
- 7.
Marco Sassoli complains that those who assert such inadequacy rarely produce concrete proposals and that it is not always clear whether it is contended that the rules simply do not apply, or that they apply but are inadequate. For an interesting analogy relating to Marco Sassoli’s cat, see Sassoli 2011, pp. 49–50. There is undoubted force in the argument that the over-classification of certain situations, such as the so-called ‘war on terror’, as an armed conflict may deprive certain victims of better protection under the law of peace, may cause the applied body of law to appear inadequate, may cause the state to apply some of the provisions of the body of law while declining to apply some of its other provisions and that this pick and choose approach may erode wider willingness to comply with the law where it indisputably applies; Sassoli 2011, p. 52.
- 8.
Future conflict seems likely to be a development of the forms of modern conflict with which we are familiar, namely involving transnational, state, group and individual participants, operating at global and local levels, involving adversaries who present hybrid threats and combining conventional, irregular and asymmetric threats in the same time and space; DCDC 2010, Chap. 5.
References
DCDC (2010) Future character of conflict, UK Ministry of Defence 02/20. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/33685/FCOCReadactedFinalWeb.pdf
Lietzau W, Rutigliano JA (2010) History and development of the international law of military operations. In: Gill TD, Fleck D (eds), The handbook of the international law of military operations. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 11 et seq
Sassoli M (2011) The role of human rights and international humanitarian law in new types of armed conflicts. In: Ben-Naftali O (ed) International humanitarian law and international human rights law. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 34 et seq
Schmitt MN (2012) Classification in future conflict. In: Wilmshurst E (ed) International law and the classification of conflicts. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 455 et seq
Thürer D (2011) International humanitarian law: theory, practice, context. Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden
UK Manual (2004) Joint service manual of the law of armed conflict, 2004 edition. UK Ministry of Defence
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Boothby, W.H. (2014). Introduction. In: Conflict Law. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-002-2_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-002-2_1
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