Warfare – the Conduct of Hostilities

Abstract This chapter recounts how the law of armed conflict is seen as broken into what was known as Hague law and Geneva law. The Hague law covered the means and methods of warfare or the conduct of hostilities, while the Geneva law was said to be for the protection of the victims of war. It reviews claims that the laws of war entitle an individual to kill members of the enemy's armed forces as an exercise of the law of war authority or justified as a lawful act of war. The chapter challenges the assumption that international law or the 'law of war' authorizes in broad terms lethal force as a matter of first resort against an identified enemy. It highlights how the battlefield killing of a state’s soldiers in international armed conflict war by the armed forces of another state cannot be tried as murder as those who engage in such killings enjoy combatant immunity before the courts of the other state. Captured soldiers are interned as prisoners of war. In non-international armed conflict the situation is more complex as it is not always clear who can be targeted and who loses their protection as a civilian by directly partipating in hostilities. The chapter considers that the principle of necessity operates as a further restraint on violence. The Chapter ends with a description of which weapons are prohibited in times of armed conflict and explains that shortening a war can not justify massive aeriel bombardment of civilian areas or the use weapons of mass destruction.