Abstract
The idea of “clean war”5 first entered the public arena during the 1990s and quickly fuelled an intense debate. Western armies proclaimed it and reduced their losses (the “no casualty” doctrine), while at the same time claiming to inflict less suffering on civilians at the sites where they fought (there were fewer civilians killed than before, and fewer than there might have been). These two measures are often related, particularly in aerial warfare: the higher the bombers fly, the greater the risk to which civilian lives are exposed because of the difficulty of precise targeting from such altitudes.
“Rolling Thunder [in Vietnam] was one of the most constrained military campaigns in history. The restrictions imposed by this nation’s civilian leaders were not based on the law of war but on an obvious ignorance of the law—to the detriment of those sent forth to battle.”
W. Hays Parks, officer in Vietnam, senior prosecuting attorney for the First Marines Division, key figure in matters regarding the law of war within the American army.1
“The most legalistic war we’ve ever fought.”
Colonel Raymond Ruppert, staff judge advocate for US CENTCOM and General H. Norman Schwarzkopf’s personal lawyer, speaking about the First Gulf War.2
“It’s been very measured.”
Donald Rumsfeld, US defense secretary on the bombing in operation “Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan.3
“I want Americans and all the world to know that coalition forces will make every effort to spare innocent civilians from harm.”
George W. Bush, on the eve of the Iraqi campaign in 2003.4
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Notes
Quoted in Thomas Smith, “The New Law of War: Legitimizing Hi-Tech and Infrastructural Violence,” International Studies Quarterly 46, no. 3 (September 2002): 363.
Quoted in Sahr Conway-Lanz, Collateral Damage Americans, Noncombattant Immunity, and Atrocity after World War II (New York/London: Routledge, 2006), p. 222.
From the early 1990s onwards, a futurology very much in vogue among American military personnel predicted the advent of wars fought by machines that would dispense with the use of soldiers. See Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century (New York: Warner Books, 1994), p. 141.
John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of World Politics (New York: Norton, 2001).
Chris Coker, Humane Warfare (New York/London: Routledge, 2001). See chapter 1, “Humanising War,” pp 7–23.
For a historical approach, see Sahr Conway-Lanz, Collateral Damage Americans, Noncombattant Immunity, and Atrocity after World War II (New York/London: Routledge, 2006), p. 222.
In political science, see Ward Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 152
Race had a central place in these conflicts and this was true in the case of the Allies also, particularly in the attitude of the Americans toward the Japanese (without it being possible, of course, to equate this with the monstrosities perpetrated by the Nazis). See Michael Bess, Choices Under Fire Moral Dimensions of World War Two (New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 7.
Giulio Douhet, Il Dominio dell’Aria. Saggio sull’Arte della Guerra (Amministrazione della Guerra, 1932 [1921]). This work is a classic of air strategy, which, for years, inspired many armed forces in the 1920s, particularly France, Germany, and the United States, and, at a later period, the United Kingdom.
Sahr Conway-Lanz, Collateral Damage Americans, Noncombattant Immunity, and Atrocity after World War II. The academic work that is most “conciliatory” with the war waged by the Americans is Guenter Lewy’s America in Vietnam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). See in particular Chapter 7, “American Military Tactics and the Law of War,” pp. 223–270. Ward Thomas also points out that Vietnam does not equate with the image of “total war” that is generally ascribed to it. Ward Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction, pp. 152 et seq.
For a critique of the domino theory, see Robert Jervis, “Domino Beliefs and Strategic Behavior” in Robert Jervis and Jack Snyder (eds.), Dominoes and Bandwagons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 20–50.
Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge1975–79 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).
Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 311.
The opposition to this phenomenon is particularly strong in France. This has to do with the Republican tradition, the rejection of multiculturalism or the critique of Third-Worldism; it is seen in Pascal Bruckner’s highly stimulating and innovative first book on the subject, The Tears of the White Man (New York: Macmillan, 1987).
For an even more mordant follow-up, see Pascal Bruckner, The Tyranny of Guilt. An Essay on Western Masochism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).
Peter French devoted a book to the notion of collective responsibility, taking the My Lai massacre as his starting point and developing a philosophical reflection on the collective responsibility of the American batallion whose soldiers had murdered the civilians of that village. Peter A. French (ed), Individual and Collective Responsibility: Massacre at My Lai (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1972).
Paul Ramsay, The Just War Force and Political Responsibility (Lanham: Rowman, 2002 [1968]). See Chapter 24: “Counting the Costs,” pp. 523–536.
This was at least the case in the latter months of 2006. Colin Kahl, “How We Fight,” Foreign Affairs 85, no. 6 (November-December 2006): 83.
This is the opinion of a group of experts that published a report in 2005. See Human Security Report, War and Peace in the 21st Century, 2005, p. 158.
See also Bethany Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch, “Monitoring Trends in Global Combat: A New Dataset of Battle Deaths,” European Journal of Population 21 (2005): 145–166. Between 1946 and 2002, the number of deaths in combat has decreased by virtue of there being fewer wars between states.
Alexander B. Downes, Targeting Civilians in War, doctoral thesis, University of Chicago, June 2004.
Luc Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
This opinion is shared by a very great number of observers, commentators and practitioners. See Colin Kahl, “How We Fight,” Foreign Affairs (November-December 2006): 101. It is also shared by the ethics practitioners in the most recent handbook for preparing soldiers to fight (in appropriate fashion) the “rebels” (“insurgents”) in Iraq. See Headquarters Department of the Army, Counterinsurgency, Chapter 7: “Leadership and Ethics for Counterinsurgency,” p. 7. Legal scholars also share this opinion, reporting the testimony of combatants. See James E. Baker, “LBJ’s Ghost: A Contextual Approach to Targeting Decisions and the Commander in Chief,” Chicago Journal of International Law 4, no. 2 (Autumn 2003): 412. The author mentions the Second World War and repeats the argument that the Allied bombing that was-successfully-aimed at the systematic killing did not achieve the desired results (breaking the enemy troops’ “morale”). It is thought that the raids in fact hardened the civilians’ attitude and strengthened their spirit of resistance.
Nicolas Wheeler, “The Kosovo Bombing Campaign” in Christian Reus-Smit (ed.), The Politics of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 213.
Frederich Borch, Judge Advocates in Combat. Army Lawyers in Military Operations from Vietnam to Haiti, Office of the Judge Advocate General and Center of Military History United States Army, 2001, p. 31.
Charles J. Dunlap, “The Revolution in Military Legal Affairs: Air Force Legal Professionals in 21st Century Conflicts,” The Air Force Law Review 51 (2001): 293–309.
Ted Westhusing, “‘Target Approval Delays Cost Air Force Key Hits’ Targeting Terror: Killing Al-Qaeda the Right Way,” Journal of Military Ethics 1, no. 2 (2002): 128–135.
Martha Finnemore, “Rules of War and War of Rules: The International Red Cross and the Restraint of State Violence,” in John Boli and George Thomas (eds.), Constructing World Culture (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 149–165.
Michael Walzer is heavily represented in the reader used on the course. United States Millitary Academy, PY 201 Just War Reader, 2nd edn. (Stamford CT: Thomson, 2006). There are other textbooks used for the teaching of military ethics. They embrace cases of applied ethics in hypothetical or real situations.
For the Navy, see Captain W. Rick Rubel and Dr. George R. Lucas (eds.), Case Studies in Military Ethics (Boston, MA: Pearson Longman, 2004).
Nancy Sherman, Stoic Warriors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Jan Goldman (ed.), Ethics of Spying: A Reader for the Intelligence Professional (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2006); Tony Pfaff and Jeffrey Tiel, “The Ethics of Espionage,” Journal of Military Ethics 3, no. 1 (2004): 1–15.
Kenneth Anderson, “The Role of the US Military Lawyer in Projecting a Vision of the Laws of War,” Chicago Journal of International Law 4, no. 2 (Autumn 2003): 446.
Andy McNab, Bravo Two Zero (London: Bantam Press, 1993).
Grotius makes no mystery of this. Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, bk. 3 (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005), chapter XII (“Concerning Moderation in regard to the spoiling the Country of our Enemies, and such other Things”), § VI-1, pp. 1467–68.
Michael Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil-Political Ethics in the Age of Terror (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
Theo Farrell, The Norms of War Cultural Beliefs and Modern Conflict (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2005), pp. 69–70
Robert O’Connell, Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons and Strategies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
Carl H. Builder, American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1989), pp. 32–33.
“Immaculate coercion,” as the American air force puts it. Chris Coker, Humane Warfare (New York/London: Routledge, 2001). See chapter 1, “Humanising War,” p. 20.
T. Michael Moseley, Operation Iraqi Freedom by the Numbers. Assessment and Analysis Division, (April 30, 2003), p. 11.
Michael Carlino, “The Moral Limits of Strategic Attack,” Parameters 32, no. 1 (summer 2002): 15.
John Warden, The Enemy As a System, Air Force Element at US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, 2000.
Quoted in Michael Carlino, “The Moral Limits of Strategic Attack,” Parameters 32, no. 1 (summer 2002): 15.
On the First Gulf War, see Michael Lewis, “The Law of Aerial Bombing in the 1991 Gulf War,” The American Journal of International Law 97 (2003), pp. 481–509.
“[A] certain center of gravity … , the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends.” Carl von Clausewitz, On War, bk. 8, chapter 4 (London: Everyman’s Library, 1993), p. 720.
See also Antulio J. Echevarria II, Clausewitz’s Center of Gravity: Changing our Warfighting Doctrine-Again! (US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 2002).
Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi, and Gilbert Burnham, “Mortality Before and After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey,” The Lancet 364, no. 9448 (November 20, 2004): 1857–1867;
Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, and Les Roberts, “Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey,” The Lancet 368, no. 9545 (October 21, 2006): 1421–1428.
Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1983); see, in particular, Chapter 16, “The Whiz Kids,” pp. 248–257.
Roberta Wolhstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1962).
Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 162.
Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 173–4.
There are many debates today on the relations between human rights and international humanitarian law. The question of torture, for example, figures in each of these bodies of law. NGOs like Human Rights Watch more and more frequently combine human rights (their initial area of expertise) with international humanitarian law, creating a de facto rapprochement, if not indeed fusion between these two registers. Ruti Teitel sees this as marking a new “law of humanity.” Ruti Teitel, Humanity’s Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
For critical reflection on this question (which examines the reasons for, and consequences of, such a preference), see R. Charli Carpenter, “‘Women and Children First’: Gender, Norms and Humanitarian Evacuation in the Balkans (1991–1995),” International Organization 57, no. 4 (Autumn 2003): 661–694.
Timothy L. H. McCormack, Self-Defense in International Law—The Israeli Raid on the Nuclear Reactor (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996), p. 15. These are, however, minority opinions. The action was contrary to international law in its most traditional, consensual sense. Moreover, the effectiveness of such an operation is contested today.
See Richard Betts, “The Osirak Fallacy,” The National Interest 83 (spring 2006): 22–25.
Helen Duffy, The “War on Terror” and the Framework of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 156.
According to the Washington Post of December 5, 2006. This figure has been multiplied by ten since the First Gulf War. See Deborah Avant, The Market for Force: the Consequences for Privatizing Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), translated and with an introduction by George Schwab.
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© 2013 Ariel Colonomos and Éditions Denoël
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Colonomos, A. (2013). Precision as Justification. In: The Gamble of War. The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137018953_5
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