And close on the heels of every outbreak, whether in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, Africa, or Central America, have come reports of war crimes, the latest of which at this writing concern the alleged beating death of a young Somali at the hands of Canadian peacekeeping troops.
In 1971, Paul Ramsey wrote that, "The possibility any war may escalate into all-out nuclear war makes insurgency wars, in many areas of the world, an increasingly feasible choice." But the end of the Cold War and concomitant relaxation of whatever constraints, however illusory, had been exerted on conventional warfare by the threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction only seems to have "made the world safer" for the proliferation of insurgency warfare.
It is, I think, mere wishful thinking to tell ourselves that these horrors only seem more prevalent and heinous than ever before because modern communications now beam them directly into our homes, making them impossible to ignore.
#Guerrilla warfare definition reson trial
But recent events in Central America and Africa, as well as Bosnia, and the botch made by an Italian military tribunal of what may be the last trial of a high ranking Nazi war criminal, have made it disturbingly clear how frequently and blatantly the Law of War is disregarded. Centuries of work by moral philosophers, and military, theological and legal scholars have produced what must strike any reasonable person as equable, if not altogether comprehensive, international standards for the ethical treatment of innocents in time of war. Genocide and war crimes are nothing new under the sun, as a cursory perusal of the Book of Esther, or the instructions given the Hebrews in Leviticus as to how they were to conduct themselves vis a vis the inhabitants of the promised lands they were about to take possession of, will confirm. The war crimes trials now going on in the former Yugoslavia have reopened the question of the causes of atrocity raised after the realities of the Nazi death camps were brought home to the rest of the world 50 years ago. Orono ME 04469-5711 "Nowadays there's no such animal as a noncombatant" Guerrilla Warfare - JSCOPE XIX GUERRILLA WARFARE WHEN TAKING CARE OF YOUR MEN LEADS TO WAR CRIMES by Davida Kellogg
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