In an ethical war, whom can you fight?

Whom can you fight?

Whom can you fight?

The practical question is this: "Is it immoral to kill civilians in war?"

An issue of growing importance

This question has become more important during the last 100 years because a century ago most people killed in wars were professionals.

• At the beginning of the twentieth century only 10%-15% of those who died in war were civilians.
• In World War 2 more than 50% of those who died were civilians.
• By the end of the century over 75% of those killed in war were civilians.

The general rule

The general rule is that only those people fighting you are legitimate targets of attack. Those who are not fighting should not be attacked as this would violate their human rights.

The Geneva Convention lays down that civilians are not to be subject to attack. This includes direct attacks on civilians and indiscriminate attacks against areas in which civilians are present.

This can be developed into two principles:

• it is unjust to attack non-combatants
• it is unjust to attack indiscriminately, as non-combatants may be killed

Who is, and who is not a combatant?

While there is general agreement that only combatants are legitimate targets, the issue of who actually is a combatant is much less clear.

Definitely combatants

• members of military forces
• members of guerrilla forces (even though not in uniform)
• anyone who takes up arms in the conflict, other than in direct self-defence

Definitely non-combatants

• all citizens of neutral countries
  • unless they do something incompatible with their neutral status - like fighting for one of the armies involved in the conflict as a mercenary soldier
• the old and the sick
• children
  • but children were historically used as combatants, e.g. the "powder monkeys" in warships in the days of sail
  • child soldiers are becoming more common in terrorist conflicts and third world armies
  • International conventions specify that countries should not allow children under 15 to participate in hostilities or to be recruited into the armed forces.

Probably non-combatants

• soldiers who have been wounded or who have surrendered
  • this hasn't always been so - armies used to make a point of butchering enemy wounded or those who surrendered
  • although soldiers who surrender shouldn't be killed, it's quite legitimate to make them prisoners so that they can't attack you again
• military personnel clearly identified as having specifically non-combatant roles such as medical staff and chaplains
  • such personnel are often injured or killed because their job takes them into the most dangerous parts of the battle

Probably non-combatants, but...

• Civilians whose work keeps the country alive - farmers, miners, transport workers, and so on should not be treated as combatants, even though their work also supports those who are involved in waging war.

May well be regarded as combatants

• civilians who are helping the war effort - these are people working to supply the troops and to provide them with weapons or helping in other ways. They aren't combatants in the sense of bearing arms, but they are an essential part of the war machine and constitute a threat to the other side.

Some philosophers say that there are no non-combatants in war, and that every citizen of an enemy state is a legitimate target.

Implications for weapons of mass destruction

The principle of not targetting non-combatants is the reason most people think the use of mass bombing or nuclear weapons is unethical. There is still a great deal of controversy about the morality of the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the fire bombing of Dresden and Berlin.

When civilians do get hurt

In modern warfare it's difficult to ensure that only soldiers get hurt, for despite the effectiveness of precision weapons civilians are often hurt and killed.

The "doctrine of double effect" is sometimes put forward as a defense.

For example if an army base in the middle of a city is bombed and a few civilians living nearby are killed as well, nothing unethical has been done, because the army base was a legitimate target and the death of civilians was not the intention of the bombing (even though their death could be predicted).

The doctrine of double effect can't be used to defend the use of weapons of mass destruction, such as non-precision nuclear weapons, area bombing, or chemical or biological weapons used against a population in general, since these are so indiscriminate in effect that civilian casualties can't be regarded as a secondary result.

Civilians

Are all civilians a legitimate target?

Some people answer the question: "Is it immoral to kill civilians in war?" with an unequivocal "no". They say that all the citizens of the enemy country should be regarded as combatants.

As modern wars are fought by the resources of a whole country, they argue, it doesn't make sense to distinguish the citizens who contribute directly to the war effort from those who don't. The whole nation is at war, and every citizen is a combatant.

A supporting argument was that if the whole nation was supporting the war effort, then every member of that nation was responsible for the acts carried out by that country's armed forces and could be regarded as a combatant.

These ideas became popular from the writings of Giulio Douhet, an Italian General in the early part of the twentieth century, who was one of the first strategists to understand the true potential of air power.

Douhet thought that all future wars would be total wars and that there should be no distinction between combatants and non-combatants: when a nation is at war, everyone is involved.

Douhet argued that the best way to win a war was to crush the enemy by attacking its weakest points: its cities and civilians. This should be done by air:

During World War 2 the RAF used a mass bombing strategy over Germany for a period, but their aim was not Drouhet's of so distressing the civilian population that they rebelled against their leaders, but to cause so much fear and distress that morale collapsed, and the war effort with it.

Military personnel

Implications for military personnel

If a country wishes to wage war ethically it has the responsibility to impose certain obligations on its soldiers:

• Soldiers must be instructed to avoid injuring civilians whenever possible
  • and this means that soldiers must be prepared to put their own lives at risk in order to limit civilian casualties
• Soldiers must be taught the rules of war, and the reasons behind them
• Orders must be unambiguously given so as to comply with the rules of war
  • For example, a USA training programme points out that an order to 'get rid of the prisoners' might be intended to mean 'send the prisoners out of the battle zone', but could be interpreted as 'kill the prisoners'
• The rules of war must be enforced; this involves:
  • training soldiers in the rules of war so that they become an automatic part of their attitudes and thinking
  • punishing for breaches of the rules of war