I wanted to call Oona Hathaway’s piece at Foreign Affairs, “War Unbound”, to your attention. It’s basically a lament for the abandoning of international law, using Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and Russia’s war against Ukraine as examples:
International humanitarian law, also known as the law of war or the law of armed conflict, is supposed to spare civilians from the worst calamities of conflict. The aim of this body of law has always been clear: civilians not involved in the fighting deserve to be protected from harm and to enjoy unimpeded access to humanitarian aid. But in the Israel-Hamas war, the law has failed. Hamas continues to hold hostages and has used schools, hospitals, and other civilian buildings to shield its infrastructure, while Israel has waged an all-out war in densely populated areas and slowed the flow of desperately needed aid to a trickle. The result has been utter devastation for civilians in Gaza.
The conflict in Gaza is an extreme example of the breakdown of the law of war, but it is not an isolated one. It is the latest in a long series of wars in the years since 9/11, from the U.S.-led “war on terror” to the Syrian civil war to Russia’s war in Ukraine, that have chipped away at protections for civilians. From this grim record, it might be tempting to conclude that the humanitarian protections that governments worked so hard to enshrine in law after World War II hold little meaning today. Yet even a hobbled system of international humanitarian law has made conflict more humane. Indeed, for all the frequent transgressions, the existence of these legal protections has provided continuous pressure on belligerents to limit civilian casualties, provide safe zones for noncombatants, and allow for humanitarian access—knowing they will face international consequences when they do not.
None of my ensuing comments should be taken as taking one side or the other in either of those conflicts.
I would suggest to Ms. Hathaway that she read Ernest Gellner’s book, Plough, Sword, and Book. “International law” as exemplified by, say, the Geneva Accords, is a fine illustration of cultural bias. Like it or not those accords were arrived at by Western Europeans when Western European countries ruled most of the world.
To most of the rest of the world including (to use Samuel Huntington’s taxonomy) the Orthodox world, the Islamic world, and the Sinic or Confucian world, distinguishing between the military and civilians is meaningless noise. We only think that distinction has a meaning because there is a millennia-old basis for it in our Western culture. That is not the case for other cultures.
Contrary to its portrayal by many in the West, Israel’s is not a Western culture any more than the Palestinians’ is. Indeed, they are more alike in their practices than different. What’s amazing is that the Israelis have been as restrained as they have. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians are part of the Orthodox world.
If we are to be really serious about international law we must a) follow it ourselves (the U. S.’s reluctance to obey international law is the meat for another post) and b) reassert Western dominance over the rest of the world. I don’t believe we can be successful in such an effort. In other words we should get used to a world in which there is no international law or, possibly, no international standards of conduct for nations at all because that is likely to be the world we will be living in.