Nope, these rules have been established for quite some time and laid down specifically for situations of war. In civil "settings" human rights treaties are the norm.

and while you're at it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_1907

The end doesn't justify the means. The criminal intent was to target civilians instead of military targets.

which updated the terms of the two 1929 treaties, and added two new conventions.

Why don't you look up the date of the Geneva Conventions, read them, and come back to me?

Again it's debatable whether Churchill can be labelled a war criminal. — Punshhh

Not to me it is. You must be either English or American to have confusing morals about purposefully targeting civilians.

As I said, we fought for the right reasons but still committed war crimes.

Well, hopefully that just signals they take these threats seriously and will surgically strike wherever terrorists are working on WMDs without any intention to abuse their capabilities for cheap geopolitical gain. :rofl:


:cry:

The Americans committed war crimes too, that's true. But that doesn't alleviate British guilt.

So the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg are funny to you? Good to know where you stand I suppose.

That's why bombers flew relatively low and were dependent on intelligence as well. They did better than many "modern" air forces considering the means they had at their disposal. Anyway, the details don't matter so much as long as everybody understands Churchill was a war criminal too.

Where's the contradiction? There's a difference between targeting a legitimate target and accepting collateral damage and purposefully targeting civilians.

As did and does every country. Which is why precision bombing is a thing instead of carpet bombing.

It's well documented why Bomber Command did what they did and what they expected it to be the consequences. No need to read minds.

There's a few important lessons to learn from the Battle of Britain, reading moral equivalence in this isn't one and that's really not my intention. It's a rather specific and small part of WWII that obviously doesn't translate to the Holocaust at all.

The points I think to learn is that we weren't heroes, or if we were, more anti-heroes. I don't forgive Churchill for wilfully targeting innocents; I do prefer Churchill over Hitler though.

Second is that targeting civilians hasn't been effective in breaking moral. If you're going to do it, it apparently takes a nuke. But that's problematic for other reasons so really : don't target civilians.

Which bit is a fairy tale, the destruction I pointed out, or the myths about Hitler? — Punshhh

That Germany ever carpet bombed in the UK indiscriminately before the British did - and I'm now even certain they did so in retaliation after Churchill did. The Germans totally bombed the shit out of industrial centres (like Sheffield) and plenty of collateral damage but they didn't target civilians. Even the second great fire of London avoided residential areas, which was a standing order from Hitler (directive 17). Terrorist bombings (eg targeting civilians) were prohibited based on the view of international law at the time in Germany.

This. Plus everything I write is better than the best music out there as it answers to my particular taste and mood at the time. You may hate it but it's pretty close to perfect to me.

It's common knowledge among historians that the British like to believe that fairy tale. Just read the link reviewing the book.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/27/bombing-war-europe-richard-overy-review

I'm pretty sure I got this part right. Hitler hoped for a truce so didn't want to attack civilian targets. There were civilian deaths of course but as collateral damage and I think only a few bombing runs went (purposefully?) wrong. The Blitz still targeted docks and war effort manufacturing. It was Churchill who went for the jugular.

One wonders how he knows I'm a ginger... :rofl:

You're right. I think the reason I misremembered is because Hitler was still careful not bomb civilian targets in the UK at first, hoping for an alliance, and Churchill being the first to carpet bomb indiscriminately in Germany.

I don't need to defend my ego as it's already impervious to troll attacks. It's been fun. Tata.

I just told you not to act like a moron and you just do it again? Do you have reading comprehension problems? Maybe autistic, illiterate or non-native speaker? Or are you just trolling?

Someone painted a caricature. A Westerner living in Russia clarifies why its a caricature and provides some much needed facts and colour. I add a dash more. And your take away is that Putin is being "lauded"?

Don't act like a moron and put words in people's mouths that have nothing to do with what they said. Nobody is lauding Putin and it doesn't help to draw a caricature. If you don't know who he is and where he's coming from and why his approval rating has been what it was then you won't know how to deal with Russian interference, breaches of air space by Russians, their bellicosity or cyber warfare. Know your enemy.

some economic improvement — jamalrob

Year over year 7% in the early 2000s + law and order. Weird thing is almost nobody expected him to last. That he controls the MSM and "tutored" half the political class helps too.

sincerely believes that what he's doing is best for Russia and is dedicated to the Russian state, which he sees as a continuous and almost unbroken line of strong rulers going back centuries — jamalrob

This is expressed quite clearly in his/Russia's goal to be or maintain its position as a global superpower.

Would you say that international law is rooted in something basic about human nature? That we're socializing mammals, hardwired to need one another? — frank

I doubt it. Too abstract and we'll probably end up committing the naturalistic fallacy if we'd try to ground it in human nature. I think in the end morality is mostly grounded in empathy, which is why the more abstract a situation becomes the more people disagree on the right course of action.

That's a time period well before they started to really think about the concept of a just war so it's difficult to say it applies.

But imagine if Iraq had invaded Kuwait but for decades before that many other countries had regularly invaded ME countries and the reason they'd given was "we want their resources". That would make "taking a country's resources" a valid ground for war. Do you think a coalition would've been formed to oust Iraq from Kuwait if that was a regularly touted justification? Probably not.

I think the Allies committed war crimes regularly. Carpet bombing was a UK invention. That's one. Purposefully targetting civilian centers another. Fire bombing cities (made mostly of wood). Nuking cities. So a just war in my view needs to be both waged for the right reasons (which WWII was where the Allies were concerned) but also with respect to the means employed. So I wouldn't qualify it as a just war but a war for just reasons.

The point was just shorthand that the example you provided is fictitious. The budget is never zero. There's always a budget of labour available for starters - there's a bunch of homeless lying around doing nothing after all. And yes, if enough people are homeless they should just take homes from others. Seems fair enough if a society fails to care for all its members.

So your point is that Hitler was intent on following international law, and to that end, he made sure everything he did was legal? — frank

Where did I say that? Read this again:

No country is going to say "because I can" because you don't want to create the precedent among a group of peers where the power relations shift over time that you can always do whatever you want because might makes right. At some point whether it's 10 years away or a 100, you're going to be on the receiving end if you don't watch out. As a consequence, even when a country breaches international law they tend to reinforce it at the same time. — Benkei

And while rare, the international community does sometimes act to use force and it does so based on established principles of international law either customary law or the UN Charter.

Meanwhile, you shouldn't forget that inviolability of embassy personnel is just international law or the prohibition on the death penalty for juvenile offenders (see Michael Domingues v. United States). The universal jurisdiction courts have established to persecute torturers. These are a few examples of ius cogens.

Propaganda probably. — frank

That doesn't make sense. That's for the home team and definitely something dictators don't need to worry about. Try again.

Right. By that token there are no customs and traditions. Not really, really.

Every modern ruler, including Hitler, just makes it up as they go along because... shits and giggles. Germany attacked the Netherlands because England and France were going to attack the German Ruhr Area. Hitler has a legal defence for every invasion. Explain to me why the gorillas are bothering?

You can easily create a budget by taking from other people. Or taxation.

Do customs and traditions?

So yes, I think it does. It is not for nothing that every time some country breaches international law they do so couched in reasons why what they're doing is actually legal. So Russia liberated ethnic Russians in Crimea and protected their right to self-determination thereby reinforcing the idea that humanitarian intervention to protect self-determination should either a) be excused despite being illegal, b) is part of customary international law or c) should be codified in the UN Charter.

No country is going to say "because I can" because you don't want to create the precedent among a group of peers where the power relations shift over time that you can always do whatever you want because might makes right. At some point whether it's 10 years away or a 100, you're going to be on the receiving end if you don't watch out. As a consequence, even when a country breaches international law they tend to reinforce it at the same time.

Thanks for asking.

I'll start by saying that I'm only aware of one clean humanitarian intervention ever, since the idea has come into play and that was the intervention by the French, approved by the UN Security Council (UNSC), in April 2011. But this one was even legal, because approved by the UNSC.

Legally speaking there's only a right to defend one's self from the threat or use of force or to protect another from that. A threat has to be imminent and clear, not something that might happen or still far off. For any other reasons, including humanitarian intervention, approval from the UNSC is required. That's the legal answer.

We all know the UNSC is a political body and that its permanent members will block resolutions if they concern political allies. The UNSC can therefore fail to intervene where intervention would be appropriate. This has given rise to a body of work with respect to humanitarian intervention in literature and humanitarian intervention in practice. The latter is crap, the former has a lot to say for it depending on what you read (I don't recommend Hippyhead or Paul Edward's posts obviously).

A humanitarian intervention is broadly the use or threat of force against a State in order to protect non-State groups or people from some type of substantial breach of their human rights. There's a movement to get this codified as part of the UN Charter (The Responsibility to Protect) - and therefore shouldn't be confused as a roadmap for individual states to intervene without UNSC approval - others base themselves on customary international law, or consider it illegal. If they consider it illegal then there are those who say sovereignty trumps human rights and those that believe it can be illegal to intervene but that this may be excused because it protects a higher cause.

I'm personally inspried by the just war doctrine to qualify sovereignty. I'm reaching back to some old work again to explain my thoughts on the subject of "right authority", which equally applies to sovereignty:

It is the care of the common weal that is entrusted to those in authority and it is therefore their business to watch over the common weal of a community. And as it is lawful for them to use the sword, as Aquinas put it, in defending this common weal against internal disturbances so too is it their business to wage war in defending the common weal against external enemies.

Quoting Augustine he says: “The natural order conducive to peace among mortals demands that the power to declare and counsel war should lie in the hands of those who hold the supreme authority.” It is important to stress the requirement of supreme authority. It would seem that any authority that can turn to a higher authority for arbitration is not allowed to declare war. However, the possibility that seeking redress might fail because the highest authority is ineffectual in enforcing its decisions begs the question whether a lower authority is then allowed to declare war. It appears to me that the ability to enforce decisions is inherent to Aquinas’ idea of authority, since he does not consider this problem. What, then, is an acceptable way of defining authority?

It is suggested for the purposes of my analysis that an authority is a body, which is entrusted with the care of the common weal and has been given the power to use force in accordance with the consensus of the relevant community that transferred its ability to use force to the authority.

“In accordance with” denotes the fact that nobody subjugates himself body and soul to a sovereign or State, for there exist statutes that confer definite powers to an authority to administer and provide an order of coexistence in which everyone can do as he wishes as long as he remains within the system that is created for everyone’s secure and safe interaction and interdependence. It is undeniable that the object when instituting such authority is to subject the exercise of power to a rule of law.

The relevance of a community relates to the extent it has the ability to use force against other communities and impose its will on those other communities and its ability to transfer the use of force. A supreme authority is therefore never part of any community. In a democracy the relevant community is the electorate, who are a part of a larger nation. In a medieval kingdom it were the king’s vassals, but the kingdom consisted of peasants and workmen as well. Although the described process seems democratic it is of course possible that the relevant community is a powerful minority within a greater whole. This is sociological legitimisation of authority and as such it is unconcerned with the objective good of the authority.

Illegitimate authority is then authority that has lost its legitimacy because of the development of one or more new relevant communities that vie for enforcement of their will with the established relevant community. This will mean that at that time there is no relevant community that can transfer power for no one community has at that time the ability to impose its will on others or prevent others from wilful exercise of force within their community. Once the fog of such civil war lifts sufficiently to enable some understanding of the new balance of power, it is entirely possible that several new authorities are created dependent on the progress and/or the outcome of a war. The authority can also be illegitimate because of a lack of consensus within the relevant community in the sense that not enough subjects of the relevant community recognise the authority. In either case, there is a fundamental absence of legitimacy for the authority does not represent the relevant community or a community’s majority. The authority might well continue to exist and exercise power, but it has lost its legitimacy.

I would suggest another term for an authority to which no powers or only partial powers have been transferred. I consider this to be imperfect authority. For example, such authority can have religious, scientific or traditional authority but it has no instruments or too little instruments to enforce its rules. Imperfect authority can also be the result of the development of new problems to which the authority has not been adequately equipped to deal with. It is then the business of the relevant community to create new instruments for the authority to handle such problems, as it is their business to decide to which rules of law the authority’s powers are subject.

Considering that it is easier to control that which is close at hand, there must be a convincing reason why the parts that make up the relevant community are willing to transfer their ability to use force. When we consider the use of force necessary to be able to impose one’s will on others, two processes become apparent. If one person imposes his will on others, these others will have lost their freedom insofar as this person chooses to exercise force to impose his will. These others are then faced with two options, either acquiesce to these circumstances, which do not necessarily have to be bad circumstances, or oppose them in a combined effort, assuming that each separately does not have enough strength.

Instead of having one’s freedom dependent on the way the person in “power” exercises force, a level of freedom is guaranteed by transferring (a part of) the ability to use force to a common authority able to protect the community against the wilful exercise of force by an outside third. On the other hand, acquiescence will create an authority, which is not necessarily illegitimate.

The other process is similar to that of conflict settlement. In conflict settlements disputes are sometimes brought before an objective third party. This third party, however, can also be created from the ranks of the disputing parties. In this process, it is the authority itself that enables the relevant community to reach consensus and diminish strife. Both (or more) parties protect themselves against each other’s wilful exercise of force, which is now transferred to the authority and bound by the rules these same parties instituted when forming this authority. The purpose, for which authority is instituted, is therefore the protection of the community against the wilful exercise of force.

The protection against wilful exercise of force must then inter alia be the authority’s primary duty. If the authority fails in its primary duty, it fails in its care of the common weal. The relevant community that instituted it automatically assumes this duty as there is no other community – not considering the development of one or more new relevant communities – that has the ability to provide this protection or any community necessarily willing to do so. Also, it can be argued that the relevant community that instituted the authority is primarily responsible for the authority’s functioning for it is this community that subjected the authority’s exercise of power to rules of law. If the authority lacks the powers to fulfil its primary duty and this is caused by its imperfection then the relevant community is responsible. Either way, if the authority fails in its primary duty then it loses its singular right to exercise force. As long as the authority has the powers to fulfil its primary duty and effectively does so it retains this right in principle. This is what I will say of authority, its legitimacy and its ability and right to exercise force. — Moi

Can a sovereign nation lose its sovereignty? I think it can and I believe there is where the gap lies in which humanitarian interventions should be allowed. But it takes quite a bit before it does so. And that's because, if we're talking about oppression this is a vague concept. Are the Chinese oppressed? How about Hong Kong citizens? Or for the communist minded among us, how about the poor in most capitalist societies?Torture might happen (Guantanemo) but it may not be systematic or at a large enough scale. How about not being able to appeal court cases? Strictly speaking a breach of due process and therefore a gross breach of human rights but does it warrant intervention? So which human rights abuses and how bad should it be before we should even start considering to act? This is not something with an easy answer from a moral point of view. From a political one it is too easy, leading to abuse. Whatever the answer, it's clear that we should judge on a case by case basis.

Problematic too is to find an alternative authority within the relevant community to take the place of the illegitimate authority in a manner that not only makes it legitimate but also effective. It won't do to simply occupy and impose a new system on people. So even if we are talking about an illegitimate authority any intervention must ensure it reaches the goal of establishing a new authority as well. If it's absent, your have no business intervening unless we're talking about genocide.

Aside from such considerations of course the intervening party should have the right intention and the situation his use of force introduces should be an improvement over what it tries to stop and the war itself should be less bad than the situation itself. An intervening party should also use force only as a last resort, especially because we are here not speaking of imminent threats or actual use of force at scales we understand to be conventional war. And finally, the action needs to be proportional.

That's more or less my take on it.

Oh look, someone disagrees with you and the discussion is immediately pointless. Why don't you just leave if we're all so clueless? Maybe start a website with Paul or something.

Without calculations I'd go with betting twice in two lotteries because there's a chance of winning 20 GBP if you win in both but only a maximum of winning 10 GBP if you bet in only one lottery.

So you're looking for an echo chamber where everybody virtue signals how much they hate Kim Jong-Un? Maybe just deal with the arguments instead of coming up with weird excuses not to deal with them? Just like this issue you have about nuclear weapons and how everybody is clueless (except the grand hippy head of course). But of course I'm the one with the moral superiority complex for pointing out that it doesn't matter whether a candidate talks about nuclear weapons because you live in a plutocracy and nobody in the US political classes gives a shit about what US citizens think.

It's not about what I vote for. It's about whether policies that a majority of people support get implemented or not or whether policies that benefit a majority of people are implemented; hedged with respect for minority rights and such.

There are plenty of European democracies that manage to do this to an adequate degree. I suppose it's a win if there's at least not an inverse correlation between the number of people wanting a specific policy and the likelihood of that policy being enacted as law.

From my point of view, this seems like it will only strengthen Biden's liberal imperialist agenda. Am I wrong? Was the neoconservative flavour of Biden's rhetoric just a reflection of his need to oppose everything Trump was seen to stand for, in this case realism and isolationism in international relations? Or will we really see the US aggressively attempting to reassert its role as world policeman? Is that even a bad thing? — jamalrob

I had to think about this. A part of this also has to do with the face of war in these times. If we're talking about Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or Syria then I think the first two are now low intensity conflicts (LICs) and the latter fluctuate between war and LICs with many non-state actors involved.

We see that since Obama, US presidents are capable of initiating LICs or involving themselves in existing LICs (for Trump see Yemen and Iran) without any congressional oversight. Presumably, Biden will use this option as well and will have the support of the neocons and thereby won't be challenged when doing so despite the War Powers Resolution. In a way, this seems to be answering to the fact that enemies tend to be non-state actors more regularly than State actors.

My guess is, increase of LICs in relation to the fight against terrorism and geopolitical theatres that require some measure of control because of real politik considerations.

I don't expect more convential wars because I'm not convinced that US military capabilities or budget can be stretched to support another (decades?) long occupation or at least, I don't think there's political appetite for it. Another reason I'd expect de-escalation with Iran.

Erm, isn't that all politics- anywhere? Lol. It's not funny it's really rather tragic but yeah. — Outlander

Not really no. Dutch politics, while certainly not perfect, is pretty vibrant. Last time they tried to sell out to corporations on taxes all hell broke lose. There's of course a direction in which the Netherlands is moving, which isn't pretty but there are active counterveiling political forces that don't result in rich people/corporation get what they want all the time. But in any case, the example was given because the possibility of Saddam starting a war was just another ex post facto justification warmongers like to bandy about.

Another dodge.