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Are New Technologies Undermining the Laws of War?
Lasrick writes "This is a great read — from the article: 'Today, emerging military technologies — including unmanned aerial vehicles, directed-energy weapons, lethal autonomous robots, and cyber weapons — raise the prospect of upheavals in military practice so fundamental that they challenge assumptions underlying long-established international laws of war, particularly those relating to the primacy of the state and the geographic bounds of warfare. But the laws of war have been developed over a long period, with commentary and input from many cultures. What would seem appropriate in this age of extraordinary technological change, the author concludes, is a reconsideration of the laws of war in a deliberate and focused international dialogue that includes a range of cultural and institutional perspectives.'"
"All is fair in love and war"
and use technology for accomplishing things like ending hunger.
Newer technology applied by one side in a conflict have cause important victories before throughout history. The ability to totally outclass an adversary is from a military point of view desirable. I did skim the linked article, one issue is that of proportionality, but still, those who win do not really care.
in the land of rainbows and happiness.
Nobody declares war anymore! Everything is a peacekeeping operation, drone strike, or terrorist attack, these days.
if the State wants you dead, they are gonna kill you, whether its legal or not, period.
And seeing how any countries army/law enforcement _will_ and does kill civilians, worrying more about publicity, then about the killing itself... how can you even open your lousy mouth and talk about laws of war. There are no laws, there are just lame excuses. And dont get me started on USian cowards with their drone strikes and cruise missiles. Faggots like those deserve everything they get ( asymmetrical warfare ftw).
Cambodia, Laos - and now these days Pakistan. The rule only applies if someone you really don't want to piss off is on the other side of the line.
Ignorance is undermining the laws of war, the laws of commerce, and every other law our society used to have. This is what happens when you allow the world to be run by frat-echnocrats in suits.
May the Maths Be with you!
International laws? what? They only arose after the nuclear arms race and have never been abided by. There is only one justified cause for warfare and that's self defense, and even then it raises moral objections.
Those barbarians with the bows & arrows are completely dishonorable, unmanly, and don't know how to fight with coura--UGHH! [thump]
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
...where the lemonade springs, and the bluebird sings, in the Big Rock Candy Mountain!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
In this case, "Yes"
The technology is not undermining the established laws but the US use of the tech sure does. Using depleted uranium, murdering civilians based on shoddy intelligence, torturing people with new methods, social media puppetry, wholesale wiretapping etc is just things that have been avoided before but has been reintroduced when they could do it in new ways.
The technology is not the problem at all, its the people using it.
HTTP/1.1 400
Firstly, Betteridge's law applies here.
Secondly, the laws of war have never been developed through "a deliberate and focused international dialogue that includes a range of cultural and institutional perspectives." The laws of war have, unfortunately, always developed just after a major conflict, when lots of people said, "Whoa, we should do something to stop that happening again."
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
The only "law of war" that we need is one that states that war is not allowed, period. If you're an aggressor, you are breaking the "law of war". Seriously, we've come too far as a civilized society to still condone such a barbaric practice as war. If you do anything more than to defend yourself, then you become an aggressor. As far as I'm concerned, if you're an aggressor you forfeit all "rights" to your own safety as you are attempting to deprive others of similar rights, thus making pretty much everything against you fair game. That doesn't even touch on the moral aspects about compelling individuals to murder on your behalf by virtue of conscription and other practices that have a similar effect. And those that get paid to do such aggressing are nothing more than paid murderers.
On a side note, quite a few world leaders (ahem, America) have broken both the above simplistic "law of war", as well as actual torture, war and genocide laws of war that we already have. And we, as a supposedly civilized society, don't even have the backing/support/power to pressure their countries for any sort of accountability. Not to mention the fact that there is no ruling body that has any sort of jurisdiction to remedy this by getting those horrible individuals to a war crimes court. The current laws of war don't work, and are only there to make it unfeasible for smaller/less-powerful countries to fight in an asymmetric force situation. A similar thing was imposed on guerilla warfare when "formal" and "gentleman" warfare required countless fodder to stand in neat long rows to be slaughtered one at a time; essentially making war about who had more cannon fodder.
There isnt any.
You might like to think there is a law, that bubble wraps the situation. But your being an idiot if you think war follows "rules".
War is War. A country will go to any length to prepare/protect itself, regardless of what special "laws" you think exist.
And that is: dominate the enemy. Better still, cripple the enemy so they expend their resources trying to move their wounded. All the other "rules" are routinely broken, obviously.
Are New Technologies Undermining the Laws of War?
Yes? No? I don't know! Get out of my house!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
"You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no Third Worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems. One vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-varied, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rands, rubles, pounds and shekels"
- Arthur Jensen (in the 1976 movie "Network")
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Today, emerging military technologies — including breech-loading cannons and rifled barrels — raise the prospect of upheavals in military practice so fundamental that they challenge assumptions underlying long-established international laws of war....
Today, emerging military technologies — including tanks, aeroplanes and machine guns — raise the prospect of upheavals in military practice so fundamental that they challenge assumptions underlying long-established international laws of war....
Today, emerging military technologies — including long range monoplanes and submarines — raise the prospect of upheavals in military practice so fundamental that they challenge assumptions underlying long-established international laws of war....
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
and it is to win at all cost.
Winners being in charge of judging the others and writing history, there is not even a need to think about the consequences once war is over.
Winning at all cost is the only law.
The thing about humans piloting machines of war is that you still need a lot of people's consent to fight the war. With a remote drone operator you could have a lot fewer folks consent for the same or more war-fighting: Have one guy take the helm of the lead fighting machine in an autopilot squadron. Kill their drone, it doesn't injure the pilot, not a scratch. Their neck's not on the line. They switch drones and keep coming for as much money as it takes to win.
Against enemies yields less risk of life for your soldiers, more bag for your Buck, more death dealt, more atrocities. Given that these systems aren't even needed due to our existing military might it just seems a little too convenient that it would also take less folks to fight against their own people with these drones -- detached, not having to show your face on the battle field -- and especially when we discover government drones are making their way to the homeland skies.
If your neck is not on the line, you have no right to pull the trigger. To remove the human element from war is inhumane by definition.
War is a brutal savage activity that spreads disease, decimates populations, lays waste to cities, destroys entire cultures and civilizations, will eventually destroy the habitability of our planet, and is the ultimate expression of the human desire to possess their neighbor's belongings and force them to do one's bidding. Yes, some countries have entered into agreements with other countries about the humane treatment of non-combatants and prisoners, and the limitation and use of certain horrific weapons but...in the end, the 'laws of war' fall into the same category as 'honor among thieves' as being an idealized concept to make the non-practitioners feel good but one with no actual meaning.
and use technology for accomplishing things like ending hunger -> thats the best way!
Xhamster Xhamster Xhamster
I sometimes think of what conflicts would be like without these laws. In other words, would conflicts end faster if they didn't exist or if countries didn't care about perception?
For example, what if after demanding the extradition of Bin Laden from Afghanistan and being refused, the US went in and went all Roman Empire - killed every last man, woman and child?
We would have been finished long ago. There would be peace. And countries and individuals would think REAL hard about attacking us. We are already hated - going Roman wouldn't increase the hate and I think it would increase the respect: none of this "Paper Tiger" bullshit that only encourages terrorism and attacks.
We seem to be in this mode of pussy footing around and having these endless conflicts that I think, in the long run, cause much more pain, suffering and economic damage.
This World is getting more and more crowded and more conflicts are inevitable. War needs to change.
Sure, in fantasy land, war wouldn't exist and we could all talk together and settle our differences over tea (every culture seems to drink it.)
Fist, we'd need to execute Kim Jung-Un and his buddies and every other despot around the World - irony not intended; although, you have to fight fire with fire.
~JFK
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
That's your idea of happiness?
Surely you jest. War is not a civilized activity, no matter what the excuse for starting one. "Law" is a facet of civilization, not war.
Are you refering to the old Bushido code from the days of archers and swords?
The behaviour of soldiers in the musket days of the American Revolution?
Perhaps the days of the tank, rifle, and gas weapons in WWI?
The dawn of the air strikes and nuclear weapons in WWII?
War is uncivilized, and it has always been fought with new technologies that were deemed to be "game changers" by those wielding the weapons. No one goes to war unless they think they can win, and the Americans, UK, Israel, Russia, etc. are no different with their "next generation" tactical fighters, laser weapons, drones, and so on.
There should only be one law of war: don't start one, or the whole world will turn against you.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Did the machine gun change the rules of war? Rules of engagement yes. Where you lie down in the mud to avoid all the lead flying whereas you stood shoulder to shoulder before. Rules about who can be rightfully killed as a combatant and how prisoners of war and non combatants are treated, no. The only thing that's changed recently is the attitude of a certain super power towards obeying the current laws that work perfectly fine.
"Laws" is the wrong word here, Wars are waged under traditions, conventions, rules, etc. not laws.
The USA is the prime developer of all these new technologies, and by far the biggest user of them. The USA has also declared that it is not bound by the International Criminal Court which investigates and tries criminal acts during wars. As a consequence the US feels that it is above the sanction of the rest of the world and has no need of it's "rules" for warfare.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Clausewitz stated in his book "On War" that war is won by the most violent. Therefore the one with the biggest guns (or at least the one who makes the most effective use of them) wins. And he gets to write the rules, and ignore the inconvenient ones. After all - who is going to stop him? The "rules of war" are only good during peacetime, and usually only as a pretext to help justify another war. Ironic, no?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The forgotten 4th category for the Laws of War, jus ad beryllium, states when in war if you are a super power use any weapon that contains beryllium for autowin.
Do you think killing civilians in targeted drone strikes in areas where you've not declared war is legal?
In some places, that's just called terrorism.
The US has reached the point where they're killing wedding parties because they think it's someone else.
You're well beyond the 'laws of war', and well into 'indiscriminately killing civilians'.
If the US was a signatory to the ICC, there would be people charged with war-crimes. Instead, the US has staunchly decided they should be able to do anything they want as long as they declare it legal.
Amerika sucks, and no longer deserves 'freedom'. You're just killers and thugs acting as if you're the great defenders of freedom, but you're not.
It's simple in this day and age where face time means chatting via IM online of through Skype instead of one to one face time in person, the rules will disappear.
Gone are the days when a solder might be close enough to smell the odor of his enemy, see the sweat on his brow or hear the cries as he passed on.
It's all point n click now, home in time for American Idol.
14 hour shift piloting fighter drones, "can you pick up milk and sugar on your way home honey?"
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Was is chaos, there are no rules.
All is fair in love and war.
Love is the greatest asymmetrical threat of all.
This is not Haiku.
From a Marine Major General: http://warisaracket.org/racket.html "Smedley Butler: War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket."
At length: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
Another quote by Einstein: "The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. (1945)"
See also this essay by me on how that applies to all forms of modern weaponry, inspired by that Einstein quote, given a modern-day digital watch has more computing power than was used to design the first atomic weapons:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
----
Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?
Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land?
Biological weapons like genetically-engineered plagues are ironic because they are about using advanced life-altering biotechnology to fight over which old-fashioned humans get to occupy the planet. Why not just use advanced biotech to let people pick their skin color, or to create living arkologies and agricultural abundance for everyone everywhere?
These militaristic socio-economic ironies would be hilarious if they were not so deadly serious. Here is some dark humor I wrote on the topic:
A post-scarcity "Downfall" parody remix of the bunker scene. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/openmanufacturing/8qspPyyS1tY/vZacyDL86DIJ
See also a little ironic story I wrote on trying to talk the USA out of collective suicide because it feels "Burdened by Bags of Sand". http://www.pdfernhout.net/burdened-by-bags-of-sand.html
Or this YouTube video I put together: The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA
Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possibl
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Is this a joke? There is only one law: Win, or you are conquered.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The question of WWII being justifiable is all in how you look at it. The response of the allied forced to Germany and Japan were justified. But neither Japan nor Germany's war on other nations was justified. Had Japan and Germany not attacked, WWII might not have happened. But both of those wars were old fashioned compared to the non-declared wars of today. We don't even have the guts to declare war, now they're all police actions.
New technologies can undermine all laws. Laws must be updated to address the new technologies. Surveillance is another area where the effects are obvious.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You can't have weapons I can not afford!
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
As technology advances it can also decentralize power. Laws of war are cute to discuss if there are nations that are only capable of waging war. They are a mute point when some crazy dude in a home made bio lab engineers the next bubonic plague.
I love it when idiots speak. "There are no justifiable wars." Get a life, get an education, then get a woman. The reason that the Taliban are going to win is because we can no longer prosecute a war properly due to all the fucking pansies in our own country. The rules are now something like this. Don't hurt any civilians. Do not cause any collateral damage. Do not do anything that could be construed as not nice. Then and only then if you are still alive can you start to think about killing the enemy. The rules should go back to ... Kill the enemy, Destroy their ability to prosecute the war and then try to kill as few innocents as possible.
War is bad. When you start one do what it takes to win it fast.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
As stated by the Geneva convention, humane treatment, civilians, and non-combatants are a separate class. They are supposed to be protected from the war. By both sides. If one side decides to kill or injure the non-combatants, they have committed a war crime, as defined by the world courts system. Some has to control the "troop" committing the crime, they are guilty of promoting a crime, and there is a punishment for that, just as the accused is supposedly punished. I wonder if that is why the military is heading for contractors? But someone gives the contractor instructions, and they are culpable also. Someone flies the machine, or programs the machine to do a job, even if the job is wrong, they have commited a war crime, it's just our way of saying, we want slaves to do our bidding....
Also ask the corollary, how accurate was the Allied bombing of WWII? You will see, not much better. both were just as bad. Both killed unnecessarily. But the winner of the war, is the one who writes the revised history, we "wore the white hats" supposedly. But we were just as bad as the bad guys.
Should be noted that even back during the Napoleonic era, organized armies struggled with rules and regulations how to deal with irregular forces. The term guerrilla after all came from that era. They struggled with how to treat such individuals and were forced into the same messy counterinsurgency campaigns that you see today (perhaps even uglier since there were less restraints on just outright torching villages and massacring civilians). This wasn't just limited to the French or that time either: you saw this with just about every major civilization throughout the world and most of history as a continuous problem up until today. Any laws or conventions were always thrown out when dealing with unconventional forces, with organized armies feeling "freed" of constraints when dealing with them.
While I'll give our views are largely due to our cultural religious heritage, violence is intrusive and unexpected while sexuality is welcome and often the product of considerable effort. That is a highly important distinction when we consider how often to discuss them culturally and when and how we introduce the topics to our children.
The laws bind the nation states. The nation states are obligated to control non-state groups by the law and convention. Nationally legal cross-boundary action by non-state actors is either an act obligated by mutual agreement, or an act obligated by general humanitarian principles. For other acts the non-state actors have no legal position which make their actions non-legal or illegal. Nationally illegal cross-boundary action by non-state actors is common or usually organized criminal activity by those actors. Such nationally legal or illegal actions may or may not be legal internationally.
Nationally legal cross-boundary actions by state actors is either an act of war, an act obligated by mutual agreement, or an act obligated by general humanitarian principles. Nationally illegal cross-boundary actions by state actors is common or usually organized criminal activity by those actors. Such nationally legal and illegal actions may or may not be illegal internationally. For some reason, certain nation states want to reserve the right for unprovoked aggression against the interests of other nation states which is why acts of war stay internationally barely legal for some time to come.
Weapons are weapons regardless of the technology. The results of their use and the manner they are used is what matters, just like with the clubs, spears and arrows.
Therefore you can be sure the answer is "No".
Roman emperors sent their legions out to make war. Those men were expendable, same as an unmanned drone today; nothing has changed.
Do you think someone trying to kill you gives a fuck about rules?
No I won't kill you like this, but I will kill you like this. WTF is up with that?
There are no justifiable wars ...
... how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
I'll leave you with this well known Einstein quote:
Einstein also wrote letters to President Roosevelt to convince him to create an atomic bomb. If you read the quote you offer you will find that it refers to offensive wars for patriotic reasons. It does not preclude defensive wars in response to an actual threat. Which is the context in which he wrote President Roosevelt.
The quote you offer in fact contradicts your premise. Even Einstein believed that some wars were justifiable. In this case a war resisting the Nazis.
Before you offer his later quote regretting his role in the atomic bomb's development note that it was in the context that Germany would not have developed the bomb prior to its defeat. That the fear of a Nazi a-bomb would never have been realized. He still considered his action justifiable in the sense that at the time (1939) it seemed very plausible that that Nazi's might attain the a-bomb.
War is bad/wrong/immoral.
That is what an elderly man once taught me when I was a child. He also taught me that it was regrettably necessary at times. The elderly man was once a paratrooper who jumped into Normandy the night before the D-Day landings.
He deeply regretted the regular army troops they killed, he wished there had been some way to get to those responsible for the war without going through these men. But there was not so they did what was unfortunately necessary. He had no regrets about the SS troops they killed, they were part of the political machine that caused the war.
Certainly the Iraqi's and Afghani's would call their defense of the US invasion a justified war.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
at least the first part.
the IDF has the highest senior officer/commander casualty rate in the world because they are required to lead their troops out front on the battlefield. you often see generals on the front lines directing combat.
they also have mandatory military service, so any gov member who votes for war is sending their children/family to war.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
As long others can use EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) weapons and general blocking of communications it seems fair. For example if I was a president in some country being attacked for example the same suspect as usually: USA or other, I would definitely be sure to send them a few EMP to their own country... no electronics no more way to send your order to destroy my country... or at least you are already attacking it so making some good damages to your economy seems fair, at least I did not intentionally kill anyone with EMP.
'Total War' is pretty much an invention of the industrial age. If you look at various ancient tribes, you'll find that their conflicts are wrapped in various traditions that if you strip the various trappings away amount to 'make sure your tribe survives, even if it means that you can't wipe out the other tribe'. Things like if you kill a single enemy you must immediately leave the battlefield and purify yourself, which helps ensure that your best warriors(who are often also your best hunters) are preserved to fight another day. The Medieval period had a fairly elaborate ransom system.
Even without ransom treating captured enemies relatively well helps encourage them to surrender faster, which helps preserve your own troops. When conducting war to gain resources, it's almost as important to avoid pyhrric 'victories' as it is to avoid defeats.
Please note that I'm not making moral judgments about justifications for war here
I don't read AC A human right
Actually, a few did. Germany was pounding the RAF into the ground (figuratively and literally) to achieve air supremacy before invading across the Channel. Long range bombing attacks on Berlin were ordered, inflicting little damage, but enraging Hitler. Who ordered the massive bombing campaign of London (against the council of his generals). Leaving the RAF alone to recover.
A brilliant case of knowing your enemy and manipulating him into doing what you want.
Any serious debate about the "laws of war" must include a debate about the enforcing unenforceable laws. Such as International Law.
There is no way to enforce any law of war except by "permission" of the country that breaks the laws.
So you can debate the laws till you are blue in the face. But only a hand full of countries have ever paid any heed to the laws and even then they all without exception take a liberal viewing to the laws scope and meaning.
First the "laws of war" is a total joke. DU rounds vaporize about 40% which will stay in the environment for more than a billion years. It will blow around with the wind and when inhaled will kill men, women, children and animals in a completely indiscriminate fashion. That is a weapon that is worse than chem or bio and yet the USA, Britain & Israel use it all the time. Of course they are the good guys so everything they do must be right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-VkpR-wka8
Second the technology to use nature (weather, tsunami, earthquakes, etc) was being looked at a long time ago. We are talking at least 2 decades ago. Check out
"Weather As A Force Multiplier: Owning The Weather In 2025." sometime.
There is only 1 law in war. Win. Then you get to write history and your intentional genocide of civilians by firebombing whole non-military cities will be lauded as a great accomplishment. "I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. " - Curtis LeMay