Thinking of drafting a post on war crimes, trying to answer the following puzzles:
Why do we have a notion of war crimes at all, given how bad war itself is?
Why are some things war crimes and not others?
Why do precursor notions to war crimes appear, independently, in essentially every culture that has fought wars at scale?
Given that essentially every culture has also broken these norms, sometimes spectacularly, why does the norm always come back, and often come back stronger?
Common answers to these questions seem profoundly misguided. The naive answer, that war crimes are simply the most horrible things that we all agree is collectively wrong, does not survive even five minutes of scrutiny. More sophisticated versions of that argument also do not survive scrutiny: Just War theory is similarly flawed and question-begging on the descriptivist front, and the Schelling point—shaped argument that war crimes can’t limit all of war’s badness, but are aimed at curbing the worst excesses, does not explain why mass bombings and medieval sieges are/were considered acceptable, but false surrender is not.
The “cynical” answers are (differently) flawed. eg some people think war crimes are completely fake and anything other than total war is just modern virtue signaling, ignoring the thousands of years of documented history we have on precursors to war crime (Xerxes in 400s BC: “The Spartans, when they do such things overthrow all law and justice among men.“). If anything, the modern version of “total war” is much newer than the idea of war crimes. Similarly, a naive “power analysis” that war crimes are simply defined by the powerful to limit the options of the powerless ignores that powerful people are often themselves constrained by these norms, sometimes hugely.
Instead, my core answer here is surprisingly simple: A “war crime” is, in its oldest and clearest form, the category of acts that destroy the means by which wars can be ended early. The prohibitions track not the moral worst things people do in war, but the acts that, if generalized, would turn every future war into a total war.
I don’t think my theory here is very novel. Indeed, as I’ll discuss, this theory is literally thousands of years old and likely arose independently in many places. I will try, however, to make my post the best modern articulation of these ancient ideas.
Lack of military necessity is pitched in the “official” definitions as an aspect of one subcategory but it strikes me as almost the whole thing. Certainly from a game theory perspective, ”dont do anything cruel unless its important for winning” is easy to coordinate on, as it should prevent war crime law adherence from being a prisoner’s dilemma, iterated or otherwise.
It’s also: don’t do actions which force the other side into being unnecessarily cruel (e.g. false surrender, hiding among civilians, dressing up as medics)
Just to spell out the obvious, I think the two biggest things to consider for norms-shaping include
a. the costs of this norm. In this case, lack of military necessity means the direct costs of the norm can’t be very high, at least if we think of states as rational-ish actors. There are also coordination costs to consider, as you say.
b. the benefits of this norm. Where abstract notions of just war is one answer, what the Gods want is another similar answer, to curb the worst excesses of war is a third answer, and the answer I favor in terms of both explanatory power and normative force is to allow wars to end earlier, which the literature calls the “duration-multiplier argument”. I believe my answer might actually be the oldest.
Have you read Schelling’s “Arms and Influence” (IIRC, chapter 1)? He argues that norms against killing civilians made a lot of sense for the couple of hundred years leading up to World War 2, but then stopped being as stable, hence strategic bombing.
That sounds so weird to me. Weren’t there many many civilians being killed in wars before World War 2? I’m thinking for example of the Ottoman genocide of Armenians and of the Thirty Years War. (I haven’t read Schelling.)
I think this mostly tracks with how many military professionals talk about this stuff. It’s beneficial for all sides to have rights of surrender in the special case of surrender, even though it’s beneficial for all sides to be clever generally in war. So, we absolutely ban the act of falsely surrendering under a white flag (to, e.g., enable an ambush) as the war crime of perfidy, even though we allow many other “ruses de guerre” that involve deceit in other contexts.
This makes sense. A subset of “my” theory[1] is that this is the oldest/original theory of taboo actions during war and arose independently in many places (which explains why the norms keep coming back even after violations; divine punishment alone can’t explain it, the Gods are famously fickle). A challenge to this hypothesis is that in some ways its own rarity in discussions is self-refuting.
The fact that military professionals talk about stuff in this way comforts me.
I think the prohibitions of land mines is not there because it prevents wars from being ended early. It’s that even after the war is ended the land mines still pose problems. There are still areas in Germany where humans don’t go because of land mines that were put there in the second World War.
Chemical weapons that cripple a lot of people who stay crippled even after the war is over also get banned. A lot of norms around war crimes are about reducing the amount of collateral damage.
I think limitations on certain classes of weapons are the sort of fake law of war which many countries haven’t signed on, those that do is because they anyways don’t use them, and when there’s a need get immediately discarded.
Meanwhile there’s a stronger core of laws which most countries for much of history have mostly kept to. That’s the more interesting aspect to talk about.
There are actions of war that are not done because there’s a need to do them. You don’t rape a city after you conquered it because you have a need for it. A lot of the more modern law of war is about preventing unneeded collateral damage.
Instead, my core answer here is surprisingly simple: A “war crime” is, in its oldest and clearest form, the category of acts that destroy the infrastructure by which wars can be ended
How do prohibitions on torture of POWs destroy the infrastructure by which wars can be ended?
A better answer than what you write to be the common answer is, imho an obvious candidate when thinking about it 10 sec: severe atrocities that do not actually bring you much advantage in the war at all. So it’s ‘wasteful harm’ as opposed to ‘well targetted harm’. Surely in practice, as none uses that definition very strictly, sometimes we call this or that warcrime that doesn’t fit perfectly, and the other way round. But I think the gist of a natural definition would be mostly that.
Not convinced about “wars not being early-endable anymore”—it seems like an interesting idea but neither specifically fit intuition about “warcrime” nor common usage of the term.
The article does an excellent job for 2020 but has become a bit dated in regards to the static warfare due to the recent Drone Revolution, the author briefly addresses that in comments
Thinking of drafting a post on war crimes, trying to answer the following puzzles:
Why do we have a notion of war crimes at all, given how bad war itself is?
Why are some things war crimes and not others?
Why do precursor notions to war crimes appear, independently, in essentially every culture that has fought wars at scale?
Given that essentially every culture has also broken these norms, sometimes spectacularly, why does the norm always come back, and often come back stronger?
Common answers to these questions seem profoundly misguided. The naive answer, that war crimes are simply the most horrible things that we all agree is collectively wrong, does not survive even five minutes of scrutiny. More sophisticated versions of that argument also do not survive scrutiny: Just War theory is similarly flawed and question-begging on the descriptivist front, and the Schelling point—shaped argument that war crimes can’t limit all of war’s badness, but are aimed at curbing the worst excesses, does not explain why mass bombings and medieval sieges are/were considered acceptable, but false surrender is not.
The “cynical” answers are (differently) flawed. eg some people think war crimes are completely fake and anything other than total war is just modern virtue signaling, ignoring the thousands of years of documented history we have on precursors to war crime (Xerxes in 400s BC: “The Spartans, when they do such things overthrow all law and justice among men.“). If anything, the modern version of “total war” is much newer than the idea of war crimes. Similarly, a naive “power analysis” that war crimes are simply defined by the powerful to limit the options of the powerless ignores that powerful people are often themselves constrained by these norms, sometimes hugely.
Instead, my core answer here is surprisingly simple: A “war crime” is, in its oldest and clearest form, the category of acts that destroy the means by which wars can be ended early. The prohibitions track not the moral worst things people do in war, but the acts that, if generalized, would turn every future war into a total war.
I don’t think my theory here is very novel. Indeed, as I’ll discuss, this theory is literally thousands of years old and likely arose independently in many places. I will try, however, to make my post the best modern articulation of these ancient ideas.
Lack of military necessity is pitched in the “official” definitions as an aspect of one subcategory but it strikes me as almost the whole thing. Certainly from a game theory perspective, ”dont do anything cruel unless its important for winning” is easy to coordinate on, as it should prevent war crime law adherence from being a prisoner’s dilemma, iterated or otherwise.
It’s also: don’t do actions which force the other side into being unnecessarily cruel (e.g. false surrender, hiding among civilians, dressing up as medics)
Just to spell out the obvious, I think the two biggest things to consider for norms-shaping include
a. the costs of this norm. In this case, lack of military necessity means the direct costs of the norm can’t be very high, at least if we think of states as rational-ish actors. There are also coordination costs to consider, as you say.
b. the benefits of this norm. Where abstract notions of just war is one answer, what the Gods want is another similar answer, to curb the worst excesses of war is a third answer, and the answer I favor in terms of both explanatory power and normative force is to allow wars to end earlier, which the literature calls the “duration-multiplier argument”. I believe my answer might actually be the oldest.
Have you read Schelling’s “Arms and Influence” (IIRC, chapter 1)? He argues that norms against killing civilians made a lot of sense for the couple of hundred years leading up to World War 2, but then stopped being as stable, hence strategic bombing.
That sounds so weird to me. Weren’t there many many civilians being killed in wars before World War 2? I’m thinking for example of the Ottoman genocide of Armenians and of the Thirty Years War. (I haven’t read Schelling.)
Ordered a paper copy, will try to read/skim it over the weekend. Thanks!
Nope, only Strategy of Conflict (and over a decade ago)! I should check it out.
I think this mostly tracks with how many military professionals talk about this stuff. It’s beneficial for all sides to have rights of surrender in the special case of surrender, even though it’s beneficial for all sides to be clever generally in war. So, we absolutely ban the act of falsely surrendering under a white flag (to, e.g., enable an ambush) as the war crime of perfidy, even though we allow many other “ruses de guerre” that involve deceit in other contexts.
This makes sense. A subset of “my” theory[1] is that this is the oldest/original theory of taboo actions during war and arose independently in many places (which explains why the norms keep coming back even after violations; divine punishment alone can’t explain it, the Gods are famously fickle). A challenge to this hypothesis is that in some ways its own rarity in discussions is self-refuting.
The fact that military professionals talk about stuff in this way comforts me.
again, obviously the core is not original to me, and probably not the constituent parts either. Just want to lay it together well.
I think the prohibitions of land mines is not there because it prevents wars from being ended early. It’s that even after the war is ended the land mines still pose problems. There are still areas in Germany where humans don’t go because of land mines that were put there in the second World War.
Chemical weapons that cripple a lot of people who stay crippled even after the war is over also get banned. A lot of norms around war crimes are about reducing the amount of collateral damage.
I think limitations on certain classes of weapons are the sort of fake law of war which many countries haven’t signed on, those that do is because they anyways don’t use them, and when there’s a need get immediately discarded.
Meanwhile there’s a stronger core of laws which most countries for much of history have mostly kept to. That’s the more interesting aspect to talk about.
There are actions of war that are not done because there’s a need to do them. You don’t rape a city after you conquered it because you have a need for it. A lot of the more modern law of war is about preventing unneeded collateral damage.
Some recent threads that I found enlightening on this general topic: https://x.com/simonsarris/status/2041644570828501316
How do prohibitions on torture of POWs destroy the infrastructure by which wars can be ended?
I think that phrasing is slightly bad. Will edit! The main case here is that torturing POWs makes surrender less appealing.
A better answer than what you write to be the common answer is, imho an obvious candidate when thinking about it 10 sec: severe atrocities that do not actually bring you much advantage in the war at all. So it’s ‘wasteful harm’ as opposed to ‘well targetted harm’. Surely in practice, as none uses that definition very strictly, sometimes we call this or that warcrime that doesn’t fit perfectly, and the other way round. But I think the gist of a natural definition would be mostly that.
Not convinced about “wars not being early-endable anymore”—it seems like an interesting idea but neither specifically fit intuition about “warcrime” nor common usage of the term.
This sounds interesting. I’d love to read your post.
chemical weapons were used in battle in ww1 but not in ww2. Why do you think that is?
https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/
This article explains it for me: the main reason is effectiveness. Chemical weapons don’t work well against specialized protections.
The article does an excellent job for 2020 but has become a bit dated in regards to the static warfare due to the recent Drone Revolution, the author briefly addresses that in comments
My guess is operational effectiveness rather than related to my theory (can’t explain everything), but I haven’t studied WWII much!