[Poll] Laws of war vs Real life

[Wiki 1558]

Hi there.

 

As the DLC "Laws of war" is about to be released (although already available in dev-branch), I'm just curious about your opinion.

 

As for now, many countries have signed the Geneva convention and (try to) respect the laws of war.

 

However, as stated even in the DLC, these are just theory. Things can definitely change IRL.

 

As for what we know today, (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc...) many conflicts are not 1 army vs 1 army / 1 country vs 1 country.

Nowadays, we have more and more 1 army vs insurgents - which is quite diffcult to handle.

Hence, the laws of war may not fit the current state of warfare - it was adapted once, but very difficult to actually adapt to modern conflicts.

 

So, do you think:

 

1) the laws of war as we know do fit in the reality of today's warfare?

2) it is sometimes acceptable not to follow them?

3) a modern army can actually win an asymetrical war/conflict by following the laws of war when the enemy doesn't?

 

Just as an example:

- what to do when the enemy is using a school or a hospital as stronghold with sniper and mortar nests?

- can you consider the death of civilian acceptable to ensure the safety/success of a mission (for example, to ensure they don't raise the alarm)?

 

Note: I made this poll non-public so people can't know the opinion of others - so do not hesitate to vote!

[krycek 349]

Apart from some western countries that don't have as primary objectives "murder everyone/civs?what are those?" no one gives a shit about laws of war or Geneva convention.

It's always best to do everything possible to avoid reaching that war because once you're past that point you can't add gentleman rules to something that brings the worst in us since we were cavemen and our main hobby was to break each others heads with stones and clubs. Recent history showed this time and time again and I don't mean WW2, but Balkan wars, Middle East conflicts, the two chechen wars etc.

 

Two opposing parties(apart from the exceptions mentioned earlier) will always try to destroy the other in the worst possible way be it torture,indiscriminate mass murders,rapes and so on because accountability is very hard to do. So to answer your questions :

 

1) depends on the parties involved, the rules aren't bad but the enforcing part is the one that makes them useless in most conflicts. For example the recent use of cluster munitions by Russia-Syria. It's nice the UN condemned them but the result it's equal to zero. Just some useless words.The question is how could you make Russia accountable besides starting WW3.

2) not sure anyone that wasn't in a conflict can respond to this in a sincere way, giving a response while I type from my cozy chair it's easy to give a white knight response. I did thought about it sometimes, for example if one's family would be tortured/raped/killed not sure he would stay Zen instead of going into revenge mode with the opposing party be it soldiers or civs if he would be able to inflict damage.

That's the problem with war that creates the vicious cycle, the ones who die are always someone's daughter/son/parents/wife/brother/sister.

3)was readying about the Mosul siege that ended, many insurgents used human shields or civ houses as sniper nests and you can see the result,massive destruction by artillery and airstrikes and this was just a battle.

[Wiki 1558]

Ok, thanks for your point of view :-)

[spooky lynx 73]

Since early 90's laws of war are brought in only when are suitable. For example mentioned use of cluster bombs. Condemned in case of Syrian war but ignored in case of war in nearby Yemen when used by US (UN office host) ally Saudi Arabia. Etc. In general the whole politics degraded without second strength pole like USSR. In 80's every case of invasion was condemned be it Grenada, Afghanistan or Panama. Now if UN office host country or its allies invade another weaker one, no one gives a damn. The same goes to laws of war. Every kind of weapon or munitions is okay when used in the name of democracy and freedom. The same goes to civilian casualties and infrastructure destruction. Noone wanted to stand for Mosul.

 

[Wiki 1558]

Thanks for your point of view :-)

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

No current nation abides by the "laws of war", and they never have. War has vastly changed from the asymmetric conflicts of the past due to the power of weaponry used. Conventional forces are only used against weaker nations without nuclear capabilities or substantial deterrent via. some other form. Today's battle field is almost based on misinformation, and propaganda, a combination of soft power influence with smoke and mirror tactics which has proven to be extremely effevtive, extremely deadly, and punishing to those who don't pick up on it fast enough, often more times than not, they do not. At the end of the day, the laws are something to abide by and when heavily broken, cannot be enforced, because telling someone to so something and forcing them are two different things. In theory, you could enforce an international law with force, but it would only result in more conflict and broken laws.

 

In essence, the only way for War to be entirely legitimate, which all laws being followed, would be for the conflict 100% defensive from the aggressor. But again, this can easily be foiled due to soft power, misinformation, propaganda campaigns in varies forms and platforms as well as even cyber warfare. Soon, AI warfare will be added the list, granted the world refuses to heed by Musk's great command to regulate use of AI and prevent it from being used for war... course it's too late for that, it's already being done by various states, and the power to be held by harnessing overwhelming capabilities, or rather the lust to, is far too powerful.

 

I digress... the "Laws of War", IRL... unfortunately is only a form of misinformation warfare in itself, and mainly just for the consumption of civilians, and not those who hold the power and know what they're doing. 

[Wiki 1558]

Well, the results are quite interesting.