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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"
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!
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
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.
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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."
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And yes, like every law, also international laws are often and constantly broken, and enforcing those laws is even more complicated than national law.
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".
That sounds really great, but I doubt it would work well in practice. The colonies would still be under the Crown, who never lost power. France would be under control of Louis XXXXII, the South would still run on slavery, etc. Without war and revolution, how would despotic regimes ever end?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
"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.
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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
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.
Actually that is the law. Starting a war of aggression is always a crime in international law. The only reason any nation is allowed to wage war is in self defence. That is why many people consider the Iraq invasion to have been illegal.
As for colonies international law requires that populations be given the right to self determination. It's hard to enforce but in theory if the population of a geographical area within a country can show that they wish to be independent the country is obliged to try and facilitate that, perhaps through devolved powers or by letting them set up on their own. Slavery is illegal, internal revolutions are not wars per-se but internal conflict or civil war. The law only applies to nation states, not individuals or factions within nations.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
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.
I spent some time volunteering in Africa, and I've seen the problems of hunger firsthand.
There is enough food overall... not much excess, but often enough for everyone to survive. The problem is that, for example, the food is over on the fertile side of a mountain ridge, while the starving people are on the other side. The only pass is controlled by a local oppressor who charges high tolls to use "his" road, and he's able to bribe the government agents and local police into letting him stay.
One option is to just keep paying the tolls, and those starving people keep starving... but it's easy, and offends nobody.
Someone with wealth could pay the toll or use a different route, and bring ample food to support the locals, but then they're dependent on those gifts, and the oppressor could start using force to maintain his rule. The money used for support is also a drain on the provider's economy, so the future stability of such a supply is questionable.
The reliance on the pass could be removed, but that means improving local production. It's a long process, at best, and requires a large start-up cost.
Finally, we could just use force. Send in a squad of trained soldiers to forcibly allow traffic through the pass, even if that means killing the armed guards enforcing the tolls. Through overwhelming force, ensure that no replacements will be able to oppress traffic again.
Of course, force is never easy. There's always the risk that the oppressor will fight back, or that a new oppressor will patiently wait until the squad leaves to take over again. There will be some locals who oppose the intrusion, especially since they have been told (often by the oppressor himself) that the greatest embarrassment they could have is to accept help from outsiders. There will also be those who don't understand the connection between the tolls, the food supply, and standard of living - they just think they're poor because God is punishing them (and the church's leaders don't understand well enough to change that, either).
Going from that 0% to a sustained 0.1% is the hardest step, because it means removing the long-term limits that have already exhausted the local ability to provide for themselves. Once those barriers are gone and food is available at reasonable prices, going to 0.2% or higher is just a matter of doing the same thing more... move more trucks of tubers, make more salable products, and so forth. It's an upward spiral, but starting the process isn't easy.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
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
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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.
Actually, no one ever wins in Afghanistan but the Afghans (a grouping of peoples which is about as nebulous as can be). No one has managed to hold that territory for more than a generation since Alexander the Great. Not the British, not the Moguls, not the Mongols, not the Kazakhs, not even the Persians. The utter stupidity of the Pentagon rarely amazes me any more, but when they agreed to take over Afghanistan I was totally flabbergasted. WTF were they even thinking?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
By all the gods, there are still people who spout this nonsense? Good grief. Vietnam was unwillable from the moment the French originally invaded. It's impossible to permanently hold a territory where the population hates you, and the day they organize is the day you start to lose. Why do you think that Cuba is still free? Even the morons in the Pentagon don't want to touch that one.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The purpose of warfare is generally to control something, be it territory, a trade route, raw materials, a population, whatever.
I think that's the traditional purpose of warfare but today it's not. America fights wars of principle. Why do we interfere in random civil wars like Bosnia? What did we gain? Why did people want the US to get involved in Rwanda? Why did we start giving weapons to Syrian rebels? Because we think we'll be in control of Syria afterwards?
It's a product of being rich and detached from the actual conflict. Personally I think it's linked to the decline of religion in the US. People need something to believe in, and war gives us such a thing -- that we're these awesome champions of justice, that we're going to go make a positive difference in the world, etc. I saw it first hand when the US liberated Iraq. Nobody who supported the war said "Oh sweet we'll control their territory forever." People GENUINELY thought that once we liberated them and showed them democracy and stuff that they'd be our new buddies.
After a dozen years of the second-most expensive occupation in history the entire accomplishments of the US in Afghanistan is that they control most of Kabul and some if its suburbs, their heavily-armed military bases are secure, and they control some of the mountain passes.
Look I readily agree that if the goal is to control the territory and make them like us, then we've lost. I don't think that's the goal. If the goal is to say "This is what happens when you harbor terrorists who we don't also support.." then we won. If it's just to say "Look we can still do what we want when we want and no other country is going to step in to help our target" then we won.
If you're cynical maybe it's to say "Look we have enough control over our domestic affairs and population that we can wage the 2nd most expensive occupation in history, get nothing out of it, and face no consequences."
Bottom line, winning a war today, when war is about principles, is entirely subjective. There are winners and losers on both sides. In my opinion, the Afghanistan War was about punishment and we won. Then it morphed into a humanitarian mission, which is separate, and stupid, and we will not win that. The Iraq War also had two parts. We obviously won the military part, and again lost/will lose the humanitarian part. That said, who knows... maybe the Kurds will break away from Iraq and in hindsight it will be a net win (though why we care is beyond me).