Aside from always finding any sort of law stating the rights and wrongs of 'destroying states and killing people' as kinda insane isn't war laws like the Geneva convention kinda useless?
The Geneva convention doesn't allow executing or torturing prisoners among a host of other things. They all sound good and nice and all but aren't they really pointless?
I mean: a state which is about to lose a defensive war would do anything they need in order to win the war since losing the war would mean the end of the state. Now this puts the attacking force at a disadvantage. If the attacking force is powerful enough to continue fighting the war for as long as necessary wouldn't not being allowed to use somewhat inhumane tactics prolong the war and the amount of suffering on both sides?
If a losing side would do whatever they needed to win a war then aren't war laws just detrimental to the stronger side and harmful to long-term postwar progress, stability, etc?
For instance, many of the places the U.S. is 'bogged down' were once well controlled by the Mongol Empire. They didn't hold Iraq, Russia, China, Korea, Afghanistan and a bunch of other places by being nice, they did it with sheer brutality and it all worked well. I'm not suggesting the U.S. sack Baghdad like the Mongols did but rather than fight a polite war the Mongols did whatever they needed to win and hold areas and they were extremely well at it. Had the Mongols followed the war law as are the ones commonly followed by Western states they would have never been able to take or hold so much land. Ultimately, despite their methods, The Mongol Empire was beneficial to the areas they controlled.
I admit, I was never in the military but I have to agree with Leon Trotsky's thoughts on morality during civil war.
The Geneva convention doesn't allow executing or torturing prisoners among a host of other things. They all sound good and nice and all but aren't they really pointless?
I mean: a state which is about to lose a defensive war would do anything they need in order to win the war since losing the war would mean the end of the state. Now this puts the attacking force at a disadvantage. If the attacking force is powerful enough to continue fighting the war for as long as necessary wouldn't not being allowed to use somewhat inhumane tactics prolong the war and the amount of suffering on both sides?
If a losing side would do whatever they needed to win a war then aren't war laws just detrimental to the stronger side and harmful to long-term postwar progress, stability, etc?
For instance, many of the places the U.S. is 'bogged down' were once well controlled by the Mongol Empire. They didn't hold Iraq, Russia, China, Korea, Afghanistan and a bunch of other places by being nice, they did it with sheer brutality and it all worked well. I'm not suggesting the U.S. sack Baghdad like the Mongols did but rather than fight a polite war the Mongols did whatever they needed to win and hold areas and they were extremely well at it. Had the Mongols followed the war law as are the ones commonly followed by Western states they would have never been able to take or hold so much land. Ultimately, despite their methods, The Mongol Empire was beneficial to the areas they controlled.
I admit, I was never in the military but I have to agree with Leon Trotsky's thoughts on morality during civil war.
So since war laws are ignored, given the right circumstances, what's the point of having such laws or engineering policy towards following these laws?To the very same category pertains still another of V. Serge’s discoveries, namely, that the degeneration of the Bolsheviks dates from the moment when the Cheka was given the right of deciding behind closed doors the fate of people. Serge plays with the concept of revolution, writes poems about it, but is incapable of understanding it as it is.
Public trials are possible only in conditions of a stable régime. Civil war is a condition of the extreme instability of society and the state. Just as it is impossible to publish in newspapers the plans of the general staff, so is it impossible to reveal in public trials the conditions and circumstances of conspiracies, for the latter are intimately linked with the course of the civil war. Secret trials, beyond a doubt, greatly increase the possibility of mistakes. This merely signifies, and we concede it readily, that the circumstances of civil war are hardly favorable for the exercize of impartial justice. And what more than that?
We propose that V. Serge be appointed as chairman of a commission composed of, say, Marceau Pivert, Souvarine, Waldo Frank, Max Eastman, Magdeleine Paz and others to draft a moral code for civil warfare. Its general character is clear in advance. Both sides pledge not to take hostages. Public trials remain in force. For their proper functioning, complete freedom of the press is preserved throughout the civil war. Bombardment of cities, being detrimental to public justice, freedom of the press, and the inviolability of the individual, is strictly prohibited. For similar and sundry other reasons the use of artillery is outlawed. And inasmuch as rifles, hand grenades and even bayonets unquestionably exercise a baleful influence upon human beings as well as upon democracy in general, the use of weapons, fire-arms or side-arms, in the civil war is strictly forbidden.
Marvelous code! Magnificent monument to the rhetoric of Victor Serge and Magdeleine Paz! However, so long as this code remains unaccepted as a rule of conduct by all the oppressors and the oppressed, the warring classes will seek to gain victory by every means, while petty-bourgeois moralists will continue as heretofore to wander in confusion between the two camps. Subjectively, they sympathize with the oppressed no one doubts that. Objectively, they remain captives of the morality of the ruling class and seek to impose it upon the oppressed instead of helping them elaborate the morality of insurrection.
