1. The most concise and forceful exposition of these reasons is Stanley Hoffmann, “International Law and the Control of Force,” in The Relevance of International Law, ed. Karl Deutsch and Stanley Hoffmann (New York, 1971), pp. 34–66. Given the present state of the law, I have most often cited positivists of an earlier age, especially W. E. Hall, John Westlake, and J. M. Spaight.
2. The pioneering work of this sort is Myres S. McDougal and Florentino P. Feliciano, Law and Minimum World Public Order (New Haven, 1961).
3. For a useful study of these writers, see James Turner Johnson, Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War: Religious and Secular Concepts, 1200–1740 (Princeton, 1975).
1 Against “Realism”
1. This and subsequent quotations are from Hobbes’ Thucydides, ed. Richard Schlatter (New Brunswick, N.J., 1975), pp. 377–85 (The History of the Peloponnesian War, 5: 84–116).
2. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Thucydides, trans. W. Kendrick Pritchett (Berkeley, 1975), pp. 31–33.
3. See F. M. Cornford, Thucydides Mythistoricus (London, 1907), esp. ch. XIII.
4. The Trojan Women, trans. Gilbert Murray (London, 1905), p. 16.
5. Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. Gilbert Highet (New York, 1939), I, 402.
6. H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, second ed., rev. Sir Ernest Gowers (New York, 1965), p. 168; cf. Jaeger, I, 397.
7. Plutarch’s Lives, trans. John Dryden, rev. Arthur Hugh Clough (London, 1910), I, 303. Alcibiades also “selected for himself one of the captive Melian women. . . . ”
8. Hobbes’ Thucydides, pp. 194–204 (The History of the Peloponnesian War, 3:36–49).
9. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. IV.
10. The Charterhouse of Parma, I, chs. 3 and 4; J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World (n.p., 1955), II, ch. 15.
11. C. W. C. Oman, The Art of War in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y., 1968), p. 137.
12. Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, excerpted in William Shakespeare, The Life of Henry V (Signet Classics, New York, 1965), p. 197.
13. Henry V, 4:7, ll. 1–11.
14. David Hume, The History of England (Boston, 1854), II, 358.
15. René de Belleval, Azincourt (Paris, 1865), pp. 105–06.
16. See the summary of opinions in J. H. Wylie, The Reign of Henry the Fifth (Cambridge, England, 1919), II, 171ff.
17. For an excellent and detailed account, which suggests that Henry’s action cannot be defended, see John Keegan, The Face of Battle (New York, 1976), pp. 107–12.
2 The Crime of War
1. Clausewitz should now be read in the new translation by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, On War (Princeton, 1976). But this book appeared after my own work was finished; I have quoted Clausewitz from a graceful, though abridged version by Edward M. Collins, War, Politics, and Power (Chicago, 1962), p. 65. Cf. Howard and Paret, p. 76.
2. Press conference, January 12, 1955.
3. Clausewitz, p. 64. Cf. Howard and Paret, pp. 75–76.
4. Clausewitz, pp. 72, 204. Cf. Howard and Paret, pp. 81, 581.
5. John Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive: Four Lectures on Industry and War (New York, 1874), pp. 90–91.
6. Wilfred Owen, “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” in Collected Poems, ed. C. Day Lewis (New York, 1965), p. 44.
7. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. XXI. For a description of primitive warfare of this sort, see Robert Gardner and Karl G. Heider, Gardens of War: Life and Death in the New Guinea Stone Age (New York, 1968), ch. 6.
8. Quoted in J. F. C. Fuller, The Conduct of War, 1789–1961 (n.p., 1968), p. 16.
9. Machiavelli, History of Florence (New York, 1960), Bk. IV, ch. I, p. 164.
10. Ruskin, p. 92.
11. War and Peace, trans. Constance Garnett (New York, n.d.), Part Two, III, p. 111.
12. “A Terre,” Collected Poems, p. 64.
13. Fuller, Conduct of War, p. 35.
14. Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, “The Induction,” Works, ed. R. W. Sackville-West (London, 1859), p. 115.
15. This and the following quotations are from William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs (New York, 1875), pp. 119–20.
3 The Rules of War
1. Louis Simpson, “The Ash and the Oak,” Good News of Death and Other Poems, in Poets of Today II (New York, 1955), p. 162.
2. See for example, Fuller, Conduct of War, ch. II (“The Rebirth of Total War”).
3. Edward Rickenbacker’s Fighting the Flying Circus (New York, 1919) is a lively (and typical) account of the chivalry of the air. In 1918, Rickenbacker wrote in his flight diary: “Resolved today that . . . I will never shoot at a Hun who is at a disadvantage . . .” (p. 338). For a general account, see Frederick Oughton, The Aces (New York, 1960).
4. Quoted in Desmond Young, Rommel: The Desert Fox (New York, 1958), p. 137.
5. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New York, 1948), pp. 156–57.
6. Ronald Lewin, Rommel as Military Commander (New York, 1970), pp. 294, 311. See also Young, pp. 130–32.
7. Quoted in Robert W. Tucker, The Law of War and Neutrality at Sea (Washington, D.C. 1957), p. 6n. Tucker’s discussion of the legal issues is very useful; see also H. Lauterpacht, “The Limits of the Operation of the Law of War,” in 30 British Yearbook of International Law (1953).
8. Henry V, 4:1, ll. 132–35.
9. Francisco de Vitoria, De Indis et De Iure Belli Relationes, ed. Ernest Nys (Washington, D.C., 1917): On the Law of War, trans. John Pawley Bate, p. 176.
10. Randall Jarrell, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” in The Complete Poems (New York, 1969), p. 144.
11. See below, ch. 18. For a historical account of these issues, see C. A. Pompe, Aggressive War: An International Crime (The Hague, 1953).
12. Quincy Wright, A Study of War (Chicago, 1942), I, 8.
13. Gardner and Heider, Gardens of War, p. 139.
14. First Samuel, 17:32.
15. Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Boston, 1955), p. 92.
16. War and Peace, Part Ten, XXV, p. 725.
17. For a discussion of this agreement, see my essay “Prisoners of War: Does the Fight Continue After the Battle?” in Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).
18. Moltke in Seinen Briefen (Berlin, 1902), p. 253. The letter is addressed to J. C. Bluntschli, a noted scholar of international law.
4 Law and Order in International Society
1. Henry V, 1:2, ll. 24–28.
2. The judges distinguished “aggressive acts” from “aggressive wars,” but then used the first of these as the generic term: see Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression: Opinion and Judgment (Washington, D.C., 1947), p. 16.
3. Quoted in Michael Howard, “War as an Instrument of Policy,” in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, eds., Diplomatic Investigations (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), p. 199. Cf. On War, trans. Howard and Paret, p. 370.
4. John Westlake, Collected Papers, ed. L. Oppenheim (Cambridge, England, 1914), p. 78.
5. See Ruth Putnam, Alsace and Lorraine from Caesar to Kaiser: 58 B.C.–1871 A.D. (New York, 1915).
6. Henry Sidgwick, The Elements of Politics (London, 1891), pp. 268, 287.
7. Leviathan, ch. 30.
8. Leviathan, ch. 15.
9. For a critique of this analogy, see the two essays by Hedley Bull, “Society and Anarchy in International Relations,” and “The Grotian Conception of International Society,” in Diplomatic Investigations, chs. 2 and 3.
10. See Vitoria, On the Law of War, p. 177.
11. Lenin, Socialism and War (London, 1940), pp. 10–11.
12. Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore (New York, 1966), p. xi.
13. It is worth noting that the United Nations’ recently adopted definition of aggression closely follows the paradigm: see the Report of the Special Committee on the Question of Defining Aggression (1974), General Assembly Official Records, 29th session, supplement no. 19 (A/9619), pp. 10–13. The definition is reprinted and analyzed in Yehuda Melzer, Concepts of Just War (Leyden, 1975), pp. 26ff.
14. On the Law of War, p. 170.
15. See L. Oppenheim, International Law, vol. II, War and Neutrality (London, 1906), pp. 55ff.
16. C. A. Pompe, Aggressive War, p. 152.
17. Quoted in Pompe, p. 152.
18. Quoted in Franz Mehring, Karl Marx, trans. Edward Fitzgerald (Ann Arbor, 1962), p. 438.
19. Minutes of the General Council of the First International: 1870–1871 (Moscow, n.d.), p. 57.
20. Roger Morgan, The German Social-Democrats and the First International: 1864–1872 (Cambridge, England, 1965), p. 206.
21. “First Address of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association on the Franco-Prussian War,” in Marx and Engels, Selected Works (Moscow, 1951), I, 443.
22. “Second Address . . . ,” Selected Works, I, 449 (Marx’s italics).
23. Selected Works, I, 441.
24. See the arguments made by Churchill at the time: The Gathering Storm (New York, 1961), chs. 17 and 18; also Martin Gilbert and Richard Gott, The Appeasers (London, 1963). For a recent scholarly reappraisal somewhat more sympathetic to Chamberlain, see Keith Robbins, Munich: 1938 (London, 1968).
25. Gerald Vann, Morality and War (London, 1939).
26. Max Jakobson, The Diplomacy of the Winter War (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), p. 117.
27. Jacobson reports an admission by the Swedish prime minister that had Sweden been publicly committed to assist Finland in the autumn of 1939, the Soviet Union would probably not have attacked (p. 237).
1. D. W. Bowett, Self-Defense in International Law (New York, 1958), p. 59. My own position has been influenced by Julius Stone’s critique of the legalist argument: Aggression and World Order (Berkeley, 1968).
2. Quoted from the Annual Register, in H. Butterfield, “The Balance of Power,” Diplomatic Investigations, pp. 144–45.
3. Francis Bacon, Essays (“Of Empire”); see also his treatise Considerations Touching a War with Spain (1624), in The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding et al. (London, 1874), XIV, pp. 469–505.
4. Oxford English Dictionary, “threaten.”
5. M. D. Vattel, The Law of Nations (Northampton, Mass., 1805), Bk. III, ch. III, paras. 42–44, pp. 357–78. Cf. John Westlake, Chapters on the Principles of International Law (Cambridge, England, 1894), p. 120.
6. Jonathan Swift, The Conduct of the Allies and of the Late Ministry in Beginning and Carrying on the Present War (1711), in Prose Works, ed. Temple Scott (London, 1901), V, 116.
7. As late as the eighteenth century, Vattel still argued that a prince “has a right to demand, even by force of arms, the reparation of an insult.” Law of Nations, Bk. II, ch. IV, para. 48, p. 216.
8. Compare the argument of Hugo Grotius: “The danger . . . must be immediate and imminent in point of time. I admit, to be sure, that if the assailant seizes weapons in such a way that his intent to kill is manifest, the crime can be forestalled; for in morals as in material things a point is not to be found which does not have a certain breadth.” The Law of War and Peace, trans. Francis W. Kelsey (Indianapolis, n.d.), Bk. II, ch. I, section V, p. 173.
9. Walter Laquer, The Road to War: The Origin and Aftermath of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967–8 (Baltimore, 1969), p. 110.
10. Edward Luttwak and Dan Horowitz, The Israeli Army (New York, 1975), p. 212.
11. Luttwak and Horowitz, p. 224.
6 Interventions
1. “A Few Words on Non-Intervention” in J. S. Mill, Dissertations and Discussions (New York, 1873), III, 238–63.
2. See Irving Howe, ed., The Basic Writings of Trotsky (New York, 1963), p. 397.
3. John Norton Moore, “International Law and the United States’ Role in Vietnam: A Reply,” in R. Falk, ed., The Vietnam War and International Law (Princeton, 1968), p. 431. Moore addresses himself specifically to the argument of W. E. Hall, International Law (5th ed., Oxford, 1994), pp. 289–90, but Hall follows Mill closely.
4. For a brief survey, see Jean Sigmann, 1848: The Romantic and Democratic Revolutions in Europe, trans. L. F. Edwards (New York, 1973), ch. 10.
5. Charles Sproxton, Palmerston and the Hungarian Revolution (Cambridge, 1919), p. 48.
6. “Non-Intervention,” pp. 261–62.
7. See S. French and A. Gutman, “The Principle of National Self-determination,” in Held, Morgenbesser, and Nagel, eds., Philosophy, Morality, and International Affairs (New York, 1974), pp. 138–53.
8. This is the general position of R. J. Vincent, Nonintervention and World Order (Princeton, 1974), esp. ch. 9.
9. Sproxton, p. 109.
10. See, for example, Hall, International Law, p. 293.
11. “On the Principle of Non-Intervention” (Oxford, 1860), p. 21.
12. See Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (New York, 1961), chs. 31, 40, 48, 58; Norman J. Padelford, International Law and Diplomacy in the Spanish Civil Strife (New York, 1939) is an incredibly naïve defense of the nonintervention agreements.
13. A useful statement of this position can be found in the essay by John Norton Moore already cited; see note 3 above. For an example of the official view, see Leonard Meeker, “Vietnam and the International Law of Self-Defense” in the same volume, pp. 318–32.
14. I shall follow the account of G. M. Kahin and John W. Lewis, The United States in Vietnam (New York, 1967).
15. “On the Principle of Non-Intervention,” p. 16.
16. See Gregory Henderson, Korea: The Politics of the Vortex (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), ch. 6.
17. Kahin and Lewis, p. 146.
18. Ellery C. Stowell suggests some possible examples in Intervention in International Law (Washington, D.C., 1921), ch. II. For contemporary legal views (and newer examples), see Richard Lillich, ed., Humanitarian Intervention and the United Nations (Charlottesville, Va., 1973).
19. Quoted in Philip S. Foner, The Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism (New York, 1972), I, 111.
20. Quoted in Stowell, p. 122n.
21. See, for example, Julius W. Pratt, Expansionists of 1898 (Baltimore, 1936) and Walter La Feber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion (Ithaca, 1963); also Foner, I, ch. XIV.
22. Foner, I, ch. XIII.
23. F. E. Chadwick, The Relations of the United States and Spain: Diplomacy (New York, 1909), pp. 586–87. These lines are the epigraph to Walter Millis’ account of the war: The Martial Spirit (n.p., 1931).
24. Millis, p. 404; it should be noted that Millis also writes of the American decision to go to war: “Seldom can history have recorded a plainer case of military aggression . . .” (p. 160).
25. For a contemporary account by a British journalist, see David Loshak, Pakistan Crisis (London, 1971).
26. John Westlake, International Law, vol. I, Peace (2nd ed., Cambridge 1910), pp. 319–20.
27. Thomas M. Franck and Nigel S. Rodley, “After Bangladesh: The Law of Humanitarian Intervention by Military Force,” 67 American Journal of International Law 304 (1973).
28. Julius Stone, Aggression and World Order, pp. 99.
7 War’s Ends, and the Importance of Winning
1. “The Range in the Desert,” The Complete Poems, p. 176.
2. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (2nd rev. ed., New York, 1974), p. 339: Liddell Hart himself holds a different, and a much more sophisticated, position.
3. War, Politics and Power, p. 233; cf. the new translation of Howard and Paret, p. 595.
4. The work of Reinhold Niebuhr was the major inspiration of this group, Hans Morganthau its most systematic theorist. For works more immediately relevant to my purposes in this chapter, see George Kennan, American Diplomacy: 1900–1950 (Chicago, 1951); John W. Spanier, The Truman-MacArthur Controversy and the Korean War (Cambridge, Mass., 1959); Paul Kecskemeti, Strategic Surrender: The Politics of Victory and Defeat (New York, 1964). For a useful critique of the “realists,” see Charles Frankel, Morality and U.S. Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy Association Headline Series, no. 224 (1975).
5. Spanier, p. 5.
6. Kecskemeti, pp. 25–26.
7. On the connection between Wilson’s “world view” and his desire for a compromise peace, see N. Gordon Levin, Jr., Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America’s Response to War and Revolution (New York, 1970), pp. 43, 52ff.
8. The Hinge of Fate (New York, 1962), p. 600.
9. Kecskemeti, pp. 217, 241.
10. Hinge of Fate, p. 600; see also Churchill’s cabinet memorandum of January 14, 1944, p. 599.
11. American Diplomacy, pp. 87–88.
12. Robert Phillimore, Commentaries upon International Law (Philadelphia, 1854), I, 315.
13. Kecskemeti, p. 219.
14. See Raymond G. O’Connor, Diplomacy for Victory: FDR and Unconditional Surrender (New York, 1971).
15. Kecskemeti, p. 240.
16. For a general view of punishment as public condemnation, see “The Expressive Function of Punishment,” in Joel Feinberg, Doing and Deserving (Princeton, 1970), ch. 5.
17. Glen D. Paige, The Korean Decision (New York, 1968), pp. 218–19.
18. Strategy, p. 355.
19. Quoted in Spanier, p. 88.
20. Quoted in David Rees, Korea: The Limited War (Baltimore, 1970), p. 101.
21. Concepts of Just War, pp. 170–71.
22. Liddell Hart, Strategy, p. 338.
23. Hume, Theory of Politics, ed. Frederick Watkins (Edinburgh, 1951), pp. 190–91.
8 War’s Means and the Importance of Fighting Well
1. Elements of Politics, pp. 253–54.
2. Elements of Politics, p. 254; for a contemporary statement from a roughly similar point of view, see R. B. Brandt, “Utilitarianism and the Rules of War,” 1 Philosophy and Public Affairs 145–65 (1972).
3. Byron Farwell, The Great Anglo-Boer War (New York, 1976), p. 209.
4. The Law of Land Welfare, U.S. Department of the Army Field Manual FM 27–10 (1956), para. 3. See the discussion of this provision in Telford Taylor, Nuremberg and Vietnam (Chicago, 1970), pp. 34–36, and Marshall Cohen, “Morality and the Laws of War,” Philosophy, Morality, and International Affairs, pp. 72ff.
5. Elements of Politics, p. 264.
6. For an example of the “morality” of the feud, see Margaret Hasluck, “The Albanian Blood Feud,” in Paul Bohannan, Law and Warfare: Studies in the Anthropology of Conflict (New York, 1967), pp. 381–408.
7. The story is told in Ignazio Silone, “Reflections on the Welfare State,” 8 Dissent 189 (1961); De Sica’s film Two Women is based on an incident from this period in Italian history.
8. On the Law of War, pp. 184–85.
9. Deuteronomy 21:10–14. This passage is ignored in Susan Brownmiller’s analysis of the “true Hebraic concept . . . of rape” in Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (New York, 1975), pp. 19–23.
10. See, for example, McDougal and Feliciano, Law and Minimum World Public Order, p. 42 and passim.
9 Noncombatant Immunity and Military Necessity
1. S. L. A. Marshall, Men Against Fire (New York, 1966), chs. 5 and 6.
2. Wilfred Owen, Collected Letters, ed. Harold Owen and John Bell (London, 1967), p. 458 (14 May 1917).
3. Good-bye to All That (rev. ed., New York, 1957), p. 132.
4. The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (New York, 1968), II, 254.
5. The Fortress: A Diary of Anzio and After (Hammondsworth, 1958), p. 21.
6. Sardinian Brigade: A Memoir of World War I, trans. Marion Rawson (New York, 1970), pp. 166–71.
7. Archibald Forbes, quoted in J. M. Spaight, War Rights on Land (London, 1911), p. 104.
8. Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field, General Orders 100, April, 1863 (Washington, 1898), Article 69.
9. M. Greenspan, The Modern Law of Land Warfare (Berkeley, 1959), pp. 313–14.
10. G. E. M. Anscombe, Mr. Truman’s Degree (privately printed, 1958), p. 7; see also “War and Murder” in Nuclear Weapons and Christian Conscience, ed. Walter Stein (London, 1963).
11. See Sir Frederick Smith, The Destruction of Merchant Ships under International Law (London, 1917) and Tucker, Law of War and Neutrality at Sea.
12. H. A. Smith, Law and Custom of the Sea (London, 1950), p. 123.
13. Tucker, p. 72.
14. Tucker, p. 67.
15. Doenitz, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days, trans. K. H. Stevens (London, 1959), p. 261.
16. The Destruction of Convoy PQ 17 (New York, n.d.), p. 157; for other examples, see pp. 145, 192–93.
17. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression: Opinion and Judgment, p. 140.
18. Doenitz, Memoirs, p. 259.
19. Old Soldiers Never Die (New York, 1966), p. 198.
20. Kenneth Dougherty, General Ethics: An Introduction to the Basic Principles of the Moral Life According to St. Thomas Aquinas (Peekskill, N.Y., 1959), p. 64.
21. Dougherty, pp. 65–66; cf. John C. Ford, S. J. “The Morality of Obliteration Bombing,” in War and Morality, ed. Richard Wasserstrom (Belmont, Calif., 1970). I cannot make any effort here to review the philosophical controversies over double effect. Dougherty provides a (very simple) text book description, Ford a careful (and courageous) application.
22. For a philosophical version of the argument that it cannot make a difference whether the killing of innocent people is direct or indirect, see Jonathan Bennett, “Whatever the Consequences,” Ethics, ed. Judith Jarvis Thomson and Gerald Dworkin (New York, 1968).
23. Reginald Thompson, Cry Korea (London, 1951), pp. 54, 142–43.
24. I have been helped in thinking about these questions by Charles Fried’s discussion of “Imposing Risks on Others,” An Anatomy of Values: Problems of Personal and Social Choice (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), ch. XI.
25. Quoted from the published text of Marcel Ophuls’ documentary film, The Sorrow and the Pity (New York, 1972), p. 131.
26. Thomas Gallagher, Assault in Norway (New York, 1975), pp. 19–20, 50.
10 War Against Civilians: Sieges and Blockades
1. The Works of Josephus, trans. Tho. Lodge (London, 1620): The Wars of the Jews, Bk. VI, ch. XIV, p. 721.
2. See, for example, Elena Skrjabina’s remarkable memoir, Siege and Survival: The Odyssey of a Leningrader (Carbonville, Ill., 1971).
3. Charles Chaney Hyde, International Law (2nd rev. ed., Boston, 1945), III, 1802.
4. The Works, p. 722.
5. M. H. Keen, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (London, 1965), p. 128, for an account of aristocratic obligations in such cases.
6. The Art of War, trans. Ellis Fameworth, rev. with an intro. by Neal Wood (Indianapolis, 1965), p. 193.
7. Spaight’s discussion is the best: War Rights, pp. 174ff.
8. The Works, p. 718.
9. I shall follow the account of Leon Goure, The Siege of Leningrad (Stanford, 1962).
10. Goure, p. 141; Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (Washington, D.C., 1950), XI, 563.
11. The citation is from Hyde, International Law, III, 1802–03.
12. Spaight, pp. 174ff.
13. Spaight, pp. 177–78.
14. Hall, International Law, p. 398.
15. The Code of Maimonides: Book Fourteen: The Book of Judges, trans. Abraham M. Hershman (New Haven, 1949), p. 222; Grotius, Law of War and Peace, Bk. III, ch. XI, section xiv, pp. 739–40.
16. See Skrjabina, Siege and Survival, “Leningrad.”
17. Deuteronomy 20:20.
18. Hobbes’ Thucydides, pp. 123–24 (2:19–20); War Commentaries of Caesar, trans. Rex Warner (New York, 1960), pp. 70, 96 (Gallic Wars 3:3, 5:1).
19. A. C. Bell, A History of the Blockade of Germany (London, 1937), pp. 213–14.
20. Spaight, p. 138.
21. Hall, International Law, p. 656.
22. B. H. Liddell Hart, The Real War: 1914–1918 (Boston, 1964), p. 473.
23. The studies were carried out by German statisticians, but the results are accepted by Bell. He is a little reluctant, however, to regard these results as a sign of the “success” of the British blockade: see p. 673.
24. Bell, p. 117. Cf. the same argument made by a French historian, Louis Guichard, The Naval Blockade: 1914–1918, trans. Christopher R. Turner (New York, 1930), p. 304.
11 Guerrilla War
1. The Sorrow and the Pity, pp. 113–14.
2. For a useful survey of the legal situation, see Gerhard von Glahn, The Occupation of Enemy Territory (Minneapolis, 1957).
3. See, for example, W. F. Ford, “Resistance Movements and International Law,” 7–8 International Review of the Red Cross (1967–68) and G. I. A. D. Draper, “The Status of Combatants and the Question of Guerrilla War,” 45 British Yearbook of International Law (1971).
4. Quoted in Draper, p. 188.
5. Quoted in Douglas Pike, Viet Cong (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 242.
6. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Military Writings (Peking, 1966), p. 343.
7. Dickey Chapelle, “How Castro Won,” in The Guerrilla—And How to Fight Him: Selections from the Marine Corps Gazette, ed. T. N. Greene (New York, 1965), p. 223.
8. Draper, p. 203.
9. See Michael Calvert, Chindits: Long Range Penetration (New York, 1973).
10. Draper, pp. 202–04.
11. Guerrilla Parties Considered with Reference to the Laws and Usages of War (New York, 1862). Lieber wrote this pamphlet at the request of General Halleck.
12. Jeffrey Race, War Comes to Long An (Berkeley, 1972), pp. 196–97.
13. See The Guerrilla—And How to Fight Him; John McCuen, The Art of Counter-Revolutionary War (London, 1966); Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, and Peacekeeping (Harrisburg, 1971).
14. Seven Pillars of Wisdom (New York, 1936), Bk. III, ch. 33, p. 196.
15. For a graphic description of soldiers going beyond these limits, see Victor Kolpacoff’s novel of the Vietnam War, The Prisoners of Quai Dong (New York, 1967).
16. Race, p. 233.
17. Jonathan Schell, The Military Half (New York, 1968), pp. 14ff.
18. For an account of forcible deportation, see Jonathan Schell, The Village of Ben Suc (New York, 1967).
19. The Military Half, p. 151.
20. Orville and Jonathan Schell, letter to The New York Times, Nov. 26, 1969; quoted in Noam Chomsky, At War with Asia (New York, 1970), pp. 292–93.
21. See the description of the camps that the British set up for Boer farmers: Farwell, Anglo-Boer War, chs. 40, 41.
22. Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency (New York, 1966), p. 125.
23. Don Oberdorfer, Tet (New York, 1972), p. 202.
24. Schell, The Military Half, pp. 96, 159.
25. Kitson, p. 138.
26. Street Without Joy (New York, 1972), ch. 7.
27. See the account of Regis Debray, Che’s Guerrilla War, trans. Rosemary Sheed (Hammondsworth, 1975).
12 Terrorism
1. But Liddell Hart, the foremost strategist of the “indirect approach,” has consistently opposed terrorist tactics: see, for example, Strategy, pp. 349–50 (on terror bombing).
2. Rear Admiral L. H. K. Hamilton, quoted in Irving, Destruction of Convoy PQ 17, p. 44.
3. Politics, trans. Ernest Barker (Oxford, 1948), p. 288 (1314a).
4. The Just Assassins, in Caligula and Three Other Plays, trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York, 1958), p. 258. The actual historical incident is described in Roland Gaucher, The Terrorists: From Tsarist Russia to the OAS (London, 1965), pp. 49, 50n.
5. J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: A History of the IRA (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), pp. 161–62.
6. Gerold Frank, The Deed (New York, 1963), pp. 248–49.
7. James E. Bond, The Rules of Riot: Internal Conflict and the Law of War (Princeton, 1974), pp. 89–90.
8. Pike, Viet Cong, p. 248.
9. Race, War Comes to Long An, p. 83, which suggests that it was precisely the best public health officers, teachers, and so on who were attacked—because they constituted a possible anti-communist leadership.
10. Pike, p. 250.
11. Pike, p. 251.
12. The argument, I suppose, goes back to Machiavelli, though most of his descriptions of the necessary violence of founders and reformers have to do with the killing of particular people, members of the old ruling class: see The Prince, ch. VIII and Discourses, I:9 for examples.
13. The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York, n.d.), pp. 18–19.
14. Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, ed. Piernico Solinas (New York, 1973), pp. 79–80.
13 Reprisals
1. G. Lowes Dickinson, War: Its Nature, Cause, and Cure (London, 1923), p. 15.
2. H. Brocher, “Les principes naturels du droit de la guerre,” 5 Revue de droit international et de legislation comparée 349 (1873).
3. Robert B. Asprey, War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History (New York, 1975), I, 478.
4. Frits Kalshoven, Belligerent Reprisals (Leyden, 1971), pp. 193–200.
5. Kalshoven, pp. 78ff.
6. See, for example, the essays of H. J. McCloskey and T. L. S. Sprigge in Contemporary Utilitarianism, ed. Michael D. Bayles (Garden City, N.Y., 1968).
7. Spaight, War Rights, p. 120.
8. Spaight, p. 462.
9. McDougal and Feliciano, Law and Minimum World Public Order, p. 682.
10. See Robert Katz, Death in Rome (New York, 1967) for an account of one of the most brutal Nazi reprisals.
11. Spaight, p. 463n.
12. Greenspan is typical: “Only in exceedingly grave cases should there be resort to reprisals.” Modern Law of Land Warfare, p. 411.
13. Lieber, Instructions, Article 27 (emphasis added).
14. Kalshoven, pp. 263ff.
15. McDougal and Feliciano, p. 684.
16. Churchill, The Grand Alliance (New York, 1962), p. 359. A distinction similar to the one I am defending here is suggested by Westlake: “. . . the laws of war are too deeply rooted in humanity and morality to be discussed on the footing of contract alone, except it may be some parts of no great importance which convention might have settled otherwise than it has.” International Law, II, 126.
17. See Kalshoven on “non-belligerent reprisals,” pp. 287ff.
18. Luttwak and Horowitz, The Israeli Army, p. 110.
19. For accounts and evaluations of the raid, see Richard Falk, “The Beirut Raid and the International Law of Reprisal,” 63 American Journal of International Law (1969) and Yehuda Blum, “The Beirut Raid and the International Double Standard: A Reply to Professor Falk,” 64 A.J.I.L. (1970).
20. See the general condemnation voted by the Security Council on April 9, 1964, cited in Sydney D. Bailey, Prohibitions and Restraints in War (London, 1972), p. 55.
21. Hans Kelson, Principles of International Law, 2nd ed., rev. Robert W. Tucker (New York, 1967), p. 87.
14 Winning and Fighting Well
1. The Chinese Classics, trans. and ed. James Legge, vol. V: The Ch’un Ts’ew with The Tso Chuen (Oxford, 1893), p. 183.
2. Military Writings, p. 240.
3. Quoted in Arthur Waley, Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China (Garden City, New York, n.d.), p. 131.
4. Military Writings, pp. 81, 223–24.
5. Basic Tactics (New York, 1966), p. 98.
6. The Chinese Classics, V, 183.
7. The Need for Roots, trans. Arthur Wills (Boston, 1955), p. 159.
8. A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), p. 379. Compare Vitoria: “. . . whatever is done in right of war receives the construction most favorable to the claims of those engaged in a just war.” On the Law of War, p. 180.
9. This seems to be G. E. M. Anscombe’s position in the two essays already cited: Mr. Truman’s Degree and “War and Murder.”
10. For a discussion of what it means to “override” a moral principle, see Robert Nozick, “Moral Complications and Moral Structures,” 13 Natural Law Forum 34–35 and notes (1968).
1. Philip C. Jessup, Neutrality: Its History, Economics, and Law (New York, 1936), IV, 80 (emphasis added).
2. W. E. Hall, The Rights and Duties of Neutrals (London, 1874) is the best account of the laws of neutrality.
3. Westlake, International Law, II, 162.
4. The speech is reprinted in The Theory and Practice of Neutrality in the Twentieth Century, ed. Roderick Ogley (New York, 1970), p. 83.
5. Theory and Practice of Neutrality, p. 74.
6. Liddell Hart, The Real War, pp. 46–47.
7. For an example of the American response, see James M. Beck, The Evidence in the Case: A Discussion of the Moral Responsibility for the War of 1914 (New York, 1915), esp. ch. IX.
8. Socialism and War, p. 15.
9. Nils Oervik, The Decline of Neutrality: 1914–1941 (Oslo, 1953), p. 241.
10. Oervik, p. 223.
11. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (New York, 1961), Bk. II, ch. 9.
12. Assignment to Catastrophe (New York, 1954), I, 71–72.
13. Time Unguarded: The Ironside Diaries 1937–1940, ed. Roderick Macleod and Denis Kelly (New York, 1962), p. 211.
14. Ironside Diaries, p. 185.
15. Ironside Diaries, p. 216.
16. History of the Second World War (New York, 1971), p. 53.
17. Ironside Diaries, p. 238.
18. The Gathering Storm, p. 488.
19. Oervik, p. 237.
20. For an account of the campaign, see J. L. Moulton, A Study of Warfare in Three Dimensions: The Norwegian Campaign of 1940 (Athens, Ohio, 1967).
21. History of the Second World War, p. 59. Cf. General Ironside’s entry for February 14, 1940: “Winston is now pressing for his laying of mines in neutral Norwegian waters as the only means of forcing the Germans to violate Scandinavia and so give us a chance of getting into Narvik.” The Ironside Diaries, p. 222.
16 Supreme Emergency
1. Quoted in George Quester, Deterrence Before Hiroshima (New York, 1966), p. 67.
2. See J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle (New York, 1967), ch. 5: “Images of the Enemy.”
3. But the claim that one can never kill an innocent person abstracts from questions of coercion and consent: see the examples cited in chapter 10.
4. See Quester, Deterrence and F. M. Sallagar, The Road to Total War: Escalation in World War II (Rand Corporation Report, 1969); also the official history by Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany (London, 1961).
5. Noble Frankland, Bomber Offensive: The Devastation of Europe (New York, 1970), p. 41.
6. The Story of the Cherwell minute is told, most unsympathetically, in C. P. Snow, Science and Government (New York, 1962).
7. Quester, pp. 117–18.
8. Quoted in Quester, p. 141.
9. Quoted in Angus Calder, The People’s War: 1939–1945 (New York, 1969), p. 491.
10. Calder, p. 229; the same poll is cited by Vera Brittain, a courageous opponent of British bombing policy: Humiliation with Honor (New York, 1943), p. 91.
11. “. . . it was not [Cherwell’s] ruthlessness that worried us most, it was his calculations.” Snow, Science and Government, p. 48. Cf. P. M. S. Blackett’s post-war critique of the bombing, worked out in narrowly strategic terms: Fear, War, and the Bomb (New York, 1949), ch. 2.
12. Sallagar, p. 127.
13. Sallagar, p. 128.
14. Frankland, Bomber Offensive, pp. 38–39.
15. Frankland, Bomber Offensive, p. 134.
16. Sir Arthur Harris, Bomber Offensive (London, 1947), p. 74.
17. Calder, p. 229.
18. The Hinge of Fate, p. 770.
19. For a detailed account of this attack, see David Irving, The Destruction of Dresden (New York, 1963).
20. Quoted in Quester, p. 156.
21. Memoirs of a Revolutionist (New York, 1957), p. 178.
22. Robert C. Batchelder, The Irreversible Decision: 1939–1950 (New York, 1965), p. 38. Batchelder’s is the best historical account of the decision to drop the bomb, and the only one that treats the moral issues in a systematic way.
23. A. Russell Buchanan, The United States and World War II (New York, 1964), I, 75.
24. “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” Harper’s Magazine (February 1947), repr. in The Atomic Bomb: The Great Decision, ed. Paul R. Baker (New York, 1968), p. 21.
25. Speaking Frankly (New York, 1947), p. 261.
26. Atomic Quest (New York, 1956), p. 247.
27. Mr. Citizen (New York, 1960), p. 267. I owe this group of quotations to Gerald McElroy.
28. Batchelder, p. 159.
29. Batchelder, p. 149.
30. Triumph and Tragedy (New York, 1962), p. 639.
31. “The Decision to Use the Bomb,” p. 21.
32. Speaking Frankly, p. 264.
33. The case would be even worse if the bomb were used for political rather than military reasons (with the Russians rather than the Japanese in mind): on this point, see the careful analysis of Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York, 1975).
17 Nuclear Deterrence
1. “The Decision to Use the Bomb,” in The Atomic Bomb, ed. Baker, p. 21.
2. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Everyman’s Library, London, 1910), p. 75.
3. See, for example, Nuclear Weapons and Christian Conscience, ed. Stein; Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience, ed. John C. Bennett (New York, 1962); The Moral Dilemma of Nuclear Weapons, ed. William Clancy (New York, 1961); Morality and Modern Warfare, ed. William J. Nagle (Baltimore, 1960).
4. “Moral Urgencies in the Nuclear Context,” in Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience, p. 101.
5. The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (New York, 1968), p. 171.
6. “Explorations into the Unilateral Disarmament Position,” in Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience, p. 130.
7. See the novel Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler (New York, 1962) for a possible scenario.
8. Paul Ramsey, “A Political Ethics Context for Strategic Thinking,” in Strategic Thinking and Its Moral Implications, ed. Morton A. Kaplan (Chicago, 1973), pp. 134–35.
9. George Urban, “A Conversation with George F. Kennan,” 47 Encounter 3:37 (September 1976).
10. For a review and critique of this literature, see Philip Green, Deadly Logic: The Theory of Nuclear Deterrence (Columbus, Ohio, 1966).
11. Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York, 1957), p. 180.
12. On War, trans. Terence Kilmartin (New York, 1968), p. 138.
13. See the article “Warfare, Conduct of” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (15th ed., Chicago, 1975), Macropaedia, Vol. 19, p. 509.
14. On War, p. 138.
15. Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (New York, 1973), p. 404 (author’s emphasis).
16. The bulk of Ramsey’s articles, papers, and pamphlets are collected in his book The Just War; see also his earlier work War and the Christian Conscience: How Shall Modern War Be Justly Conducted? (Durham, 1961).
17. “War and Murder,” p. 57.
18. The Just War, p. 252; see also p. 320.
19. The Just War, p. 303.
20. War and Politics, p. 404.
21. The Just War, p. 253 (author’s emphasis); see also p. 328.
22. “Warfare,” p. 568.
23. The Just War, p. 254; see also pp. 333ff.
24. The Just War, p. 364. Ramsey is paraphrasing Anscombe’s critique of pacifism: see “War and Murder,” p. 56.
18 The Crime of Aggression: Political Leaders and Citizens
1. Joseph W. Bishop, Jr., “The Question of War Crimes,” 54 Commentary 6:85 (December 1972).
2. See the suggestion of Sanford Levinson, “Responsibility for Crimes of War,” 2 Philosophy and Public Affairs 270ff. (1973).
3. For a useful account of this doctrine, tracing it back to the jurisprudence of John Austin, see Stanley Paulson, “Classical Legal Positivism at Nuremberg,” 4 Philosophy and Public Affairs 132–58 (1975).
4. Quoted in Noam Chomsky, At War with Asia, p. 310.
5. Stanley Kunitz, “Foreign Affairs,” in Selected Poems: 1928–1959 (Boston, 1958), p. 23.
6. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, vol. 11 (1950), pp. 488–89; see the discussion in Levinson, pp. 253ff., and in Greenspan, Modern Law of Land Warfare, pp. 449–50.
7. Trials of War Criminals, vol. 14 (n.d.), p. 383; see Levinson, p. 263.
8. Trials of War Criminals, vol. 14, p. 472; see Levinson, p. 264.
9. For a discussion of the Vietnam cases, see Edward Weisband and Thomas M. Franck, Resignation in Protest (New York, 1976).
10. Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good, trans. Charles Fullman (New York, 1969).
11. Trials of War Criminals, vol. 14, p. 346.
12. King John 4:2, ll. 231–41.
13. For the contemporary law of reparations, see Greenspan, pp. 309–10, 592–93.
14. The Warriors, pp. 196–97.
15. The Warriors, p. 198.
16. The Warriors, p. 199.
17. In thinking about these issues, I have been greatly helped by the essays in Joel Feinberg’s Doing and Deserving.
18. The Warriors, p. 199.
19. See Richard A. Falk, “The Circle of Responsibility,” in Crimes of War, ed. Falk, G. Kolko, and R. J. Lifton (New York, 1971), p. 230: “The circle of responsibility is drawn around all who have or should have knowledge of the illegal and immoral character of the war.”
20. American Power and the New Mandarins (New York, 1969).
19 War Crimes: Soldiers and Their Officers
1. The Seventh Day: Soldiers Talk About the Six Day War (London, 1970), p. 126.
2. I owe this point to Dan Little.
3. Guy Chapman, A Passionate Prodigality (New York, 1966), pp. 99–100.
4. Richard Wasserstrom, “The Responsibility of the Individual for War Crimes,” in Philosophy, Morality, and International Affairs, p. 62.
5. The Thin Red Line (New York, 1964), pp. 271–78.
6. On the difficulties of surrender in the midst of a modern battle, see John Keegan, The Face of Battle, p. 322.
7. See the discussion of this point by Samuel David Resnick, Moral Responsibility and Democratic Theory, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Harvard University, 1972).
8. Seymour Hersh, My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and its Aftermath (New York, 1970); see also David Cooper, “Responsibility and the ‘System,’” in Individual and Collective Responsibility: The Massacre at My Lai, ed. Peter French (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), pp. 83–100.
9. Hersh, p. 42.
10. The Warriors, p. 181.
11. The Measures Taken, in The Jewish Wife and Other Short Plays, trans. Eric Bentley (New York, 1965), p. 82.
12. The best account of the present legal situation is Yoram Dinstein, The Defense of Obedience to Superior Orders in International Law (Leiden, 1965).
13. McDougal and Feliciano, Law and Minimum World Public Order, p. 690.
14. Quoted in Kurt Baier’s analysis of the Calley trial, “Guilt and Responsibility,” Individual and Collective Responsibility, p. 42.
15. See Wasserstrom, “The Responsibility of the Individual.”
16. Quoted in Telford Taylor, Nuremberg and Vietnam, p. 49.
17. The Warriors, pp. 185–86.
18. The Warriors, p. 189.
19. McDougal and Feliciano, pp. 693–94 and notes.
20. Nuremberg and Vietnam, p. 55n.
21. Jean Le Meur, “The Story of a Responsible Act,” in Political Man and Social Man, ed. Robert Paul Wolff (New York, 1964), p. 204.
22. Quoted in A. J. Barker, Yamashita (New York, 1973), pp. 157–58.
23. Omar N. Bradley, A Soldier’s Story (New York, 1964), pp. 343–44.
24. For the relevant law, see Greenspan, Modern Law of Land Warfare, pp. 332ff.
25. See Fried, Anatomy of Values, pp. 194–99.
26. I shall follow the account of A. Frank Reel, The Case of General Yamashita (Chicago, 1949).
27. Reel, p. 280: the appendix of this book reprints the Supreme Court decision.
28. On strict liability, see Feinberg, Doing and Deserving, pp. 223ff.
29. Hersh, p. 11.
30. “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” 2 Philosophy and Public Affairs (1973), pp. 160–80.
31. Frankland, Bomber Offensive, p. 159.
32. Calder, The People’s War, p. 565; Irving, Destruction of Dresden, pp. 250–57.
33. Soldiers: An Obituary for Geneva, trans. Robert David MacDonald (New York, 1968), p. 192.
34. The Discourses, Bk. I, ch. XVIII.
35. 1 Philosophy and Public Affairs (1972), p. 143.
Afterword: Nonviolence and the Theory of War
1. Exploring Nonviolent Alternatives (Boston, 1971), p. 93; cf. Anders Boserup and Andrew Mack, War Without Weapons: Non-Violence in National Defense (New York, 1975), p. 135.
2. Sharp, p. 52.
3. But an enemy state might threaten to bomb rather than invade; on this possibility, see Adam Roberts, “Civilian Defense Strategy,” in Civilian Resistance as a National Defense, ed. Roberts (Hammondsworth, 1969), pp. 268–72.
4. Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters, vol. 4, p. 469.
5. Louis Fischer, Gandhi and Stalin, quoted in Orwell’s “Reflections,” p. 468.
6. “Lessons from Resistance Movements—Guerrilla and Non-Violent,” in Civilian Resistance, p. 240.
7. For a brief account of Czech resistance, see Boserup and Mack, pp. 102–16.
8. Sharp, p. 66; but he believes that the degree and extent of suffering will be “vastly smaller” than in regular warfare (p. 65).