Table Of ContentThe Laws of War
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The
Constraints
Laws
on Warfare in
of
the Western
WOM War
Edited by
Michael Howard,
George J. Andreopoulos, and
Mark R. Shulman
Yale University Press
New Haven and London
Published with the assistance of the Frederick W. Hilles Publications Fund of Yale University.
Copyright © 1994 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except
by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Howard, M. (Michael)
The laws of war : constraints on warfare in the Western world / edited by Michael Howard,
George J. Andreopoulos, and Mark R. Shulman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 13: 978-0-300-07062-0
I. War (International law) I. Andreopoulos, George J. II. Shulman, Mark R. III. Title.
1x452i.H77 1994
341.6—dcio 94-18818
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Preface vii
MICHAEL HOWARD,
GEORGE J. ANDREOPOULOS,
AND MARK R. SHULMAN
1 Constraints on Warfare i
MICHAEL HOWARD
2 Classical Greek Times 12
JOSIAH OBER
3 The Age of Chivalry 27
ROBERT C. STACEY
4 Early Modern Europe 40
GEOFFREY PARKER
5 Colonial America 59
HAROLD E. SELESKY
6 The Age of Napoleon 86
GUNTHER ROTHENBERG
7 Maritime Conflict 98
JOHN B. HATTENDORF
8 Land Warfare: From Hague to Nuremberg 116
ADAM ROBERTS
9 Air Power 140
TAMI DAVIS BIDDLE
10 Nuclear War Planning 160
DAVID ALAN ROSENBERG
11 The Age of National Liberation Movements 191
GEORGE J. ANDREOPOULOS
12 The Laws of War: Some Concluding Reflections 214
PAUL KENNEDY AND GEORGE J. ANDREOPOULOS
Notes 227
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments 281
List of Contributors 283
Suggested Readings 285
Index 291
vi
Preface
TJie Laws of War examines the formal constraints and
unwritten conventions on the conduct of war from clas-
sical antiquity to our own time. In this context, the essays consider the relations of
such practices to the common culture of the time and how they were affected by the
development of weapons technology. Each era has had its own peculiarities, but com-
mon to all, especially in land war, were such issues as belligerent rights, the treatment
of prisoners and civilians, the observations of truces and immunities, the accept-
ability or otherwise of particular weapons and weapon systems, the distinction be-
tween the treatment of "civilized" and "uncivilized" combatants, codes of honor,
and war crimes in general. Although this volume deals primarily with issues of jus
in hello rather than///.v ad helium, the latter are included when critical junctures in
the evolution of perceptions of the "just war" are discussed.
This book also has a contemporary dimension that has become increasingly rel-
evant since it first appeared in print. As intra-state conflicts proliferate, the need to
contain their worst excesses and cope with their effects remains one of the interna-
tional community's most pressing tasks. Recent cases of internecine warfare in Iraq,
Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Liberia have demonstrated
both the unsustainable nature of the traditional distinction between international and
noninternational conflicts and the complexity of the resulting humanitarian emer-
gencies. According to the International Red Cross, most of the casualties in these
conflicts are civilian, especially women, children, and the aged. Most disturbing is
the trend toward deliberate targeting of civilians; the ensuing displacement and
deprivations of noncombatants constitute key war aims of the combatants rather than
unintended consequences of these conflicts. It is this realization that has led to the
establishment of international tribunals to prosecute those responsible for serious
violations of international humanitarian law committed in Rwanda and the territories
of the former Yugoslav!a. Whether these experiments in international criminal juris-
diction achieve their aims remains to be seen. What is beyond doubt, however, is
the international community's reaffirmation that accountability for serious violations
vii
PREFACE
of the laws and customs of war is an indispensable part of the postconflict peace-
building process.
In the concluding chapter, we highlight key elements of the preceding case stud-
ies and offer reflections on the challenges that face the quest for humanitarian norms
in warfare on the eve of the twenty-first century.
MICHAEL HOWARD
GEORGE J. ANDREOPOULOS
MARK R. SHULMAN
Michael Howard I
Constraints on Warfare
The subject of this volume is the limitations that Western
societies have imposed on themselves in their conduct of
war: not just the laws of war as expressed in such positive enactments as the Hague
and Geneva Conventions, but rather what has sometimes been termed the "cultural
regulation of violence"; what was, in the old-fashioned phrase, "done" and "not
done" in war; constraints of which formal laws were only expressions, or which did
not necessarily coincide with formal laws at all. Our contributors describe these
constraints as they applied in classical antiquity, in the High Middle Ages when war in
Western Europe was specifically constrained by codes of chivalry and the dictates of
Christendom, in the Europe of the Renaissance and Napoleonic eras, and in the
frontier wars in North America. They discuss their application to war at sea, and the
attempts of international lawyers to control the increasing destructiveness of warfare
in the first half of the twentieth century. Finally they consider the two peculiar
phenomena of the second half of this century: planning for nuclear war, and national
liberation struggles in which one of the participants was not an organized state but
was treated by at least part of the international community as if it were.
Constraints of our own have unfortunately compelled us to confine our study to
the Western world. We would certainly have learned much from comparing Western
practices with those of China or Islam or such African cultures as those of the Ashanti
or the Zulus. But within the limits we have set ourselves we hope to learn something
about the way in which not only warfare but moral standards have evolved in the West;
to determine whether there has been a constant improvement in civilized standards,
and if not, why not. We can learn a great deal about a people's culture and the manner
in which it develops by observing how they fight.
There is a crude assumption that in war societies act as if all is fair, that all normal
moral constraints are suspended, and that they consider themselves entitled to do any
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