This is what international law has to say about incendiary weapons:
It is prohibited in all circumstances to make the civilian population as such, individual
civilians or civilian objects the object of attack by incendiary weapons.
It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a
concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons.
It is further prohibited to make any military objective located within a concentration of
civilians the object of attack by means of incendiary weapons other than air-delivered
incendiary weapons, except when such military objective is clearly separated from the
concentration of civilians and all feasible precautions are taken with a view to limiting the
incendiary effects to the military objective and to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing,
incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.
It is prohibited to make forests or other kinds of plant cover the object of attack by
incendiary weapons except when such natural elements are used to cover, conceal or
camouflage combatants or other military objectives, or are themselves military objectives.
This treeline is clearly not located within a concentration of civilians and it is concealing (or plausibly believed to be concealing) enemy combatants and therefore the use of incendiary weapons is unambiguously legal.
I expect Russians to cry foul over this but early on Russia was using thermobaric weapons on civilian targets and they said nothing, so we know they’re just hypocrits and monsters.
What occasions are you referring to? I know people claim that Israeli use of white phosphorous munitions is illegal, but the law is actually quite specific about what an incendiary weapon is. Incendiary effects caused by weapons that were not designed with the specific purpose of causing incendiary effects are not prohibited. (As far as I can tell, even the deliberate use of such weapons in order to cause incendiary effects is allowed.) This is extremely permissive, because no reasonable country would actually agree not to use a weapon that it considered effective. Something like the firebombing of Dresden is banned, but little else.
Incendiary weapons do not include:
(i) Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants,
tracers, smoke or signalling systems;
(ii) Munitions designed to combine penetration, blast or fragmentation effects with an
additional incendiary effect, such as armour-piercing projectiles, fragmentation shells,
explosive bombs and similar combined-effects munitions in which the incendiary
effect is not specifically designed to cause burn injury to persons, but to be used
against military objectives, such as armoured vehicles, aircraft and installations or
facilities.
The United States and the UK successfully blocked attempts to outlaw all use of incendiary weapons, and all use of incendiary weapons against personnel, and all use of incendiary weapons against forests and plant cover.
This is an area where it’s perfectly reasonable to disagree with how the US watered down this convention, to push for stricter rules on this, and to condemn the use of thermite as an anti-personnel weapon and the use of incendiary weapons on plants that are being used for cover and concealment of military objectives.
So pointing out that this might technically be legal isn’t enough for me to personally be OK with this. I think it’s morally reprehensible, and I’d prefer for Ukraine to keep the moral high ground in this war.
The moral high ground is absolutely critical in war. War is politics by other means, and being able to build consensus, marshal resources, recruit personnel, persuade allies to help, persuade adversaries to surrender or lay down their arms, persuade the allies of your adversaries not to get involved, and keep the peace after a war is over, all depend on one’s public image. There are ways to wage war without it, but most militaries that blatantly disregard morals find it difficult to actually win.
In this case? The entire military strategy of Ukraine in this war is highly dependent on preserving the moral high ground.
I understand and agree with your point, but the fact that people are worried over whether Ukraine is killing nicely enough is ridiculous to me. It’s a defensive war of survival. The moral high ground is already theirs.
I think he is referring to not making civilian casualties. Ukraine is not mass terror bombing civilians in the hope that they hit a Russian soldier somewhere.
Mustard gas is ineffective. That is the actual reason it’s outlawed: The opposing force dons gas masks, completely negating the effect, the only stuff that it still kills is collateral damage. That’s precisely what happened during WWI: It made everything nastier without actually having an impact on the strategic level.
There’s this notion among many people that the Geneva convention is about preventing cruelty or something, not at all: It’s about preventing pointless cruelty. Cruelty that does not actually serve a military objective. War is hell, that’s already a given.
The moral high ground is often the losing low ground, unfortunately. I’d say Ukraine should stick to the rules of war (as should Russia) and we should remove all restrictions we place on our donations to Ukraine - and enforce a no-fly zone over western Ukraine, at Ukraine’s invitation. There is only one way to make Russia stop and that’s force.
Russia already stays far away from Ukrainian controlled Ukraine with their planes, because Ukraine has the ability to shoot them down. We could improve that ability, but they’re still not getting close to flying over land they don’t control.
The United States and the UK successfully blocked attempts to outlaw all use of incendiary weapons
That’s because incendiary weapons are great for exterminating villages full of poor people in the colonized world - ie, the kind of wars the US and UK prefer to wage.
Why is it even morally reprehensible? If you you blow the guts out and faces off Russian soldiers by more traditional means they are just as dead and if dozens of Ukrainians die in the course of digging the Russians out of cover do you account that a superior outcome? If so how?
If a burglar strode into your home with a gun and you believed that conflict was inevitable how much risk and or suffering would you tolerate from your wife and children in order to decrease the chance of harm or suffering by the burglar? Would you accept a 3% chance of a dead kid in order to harm instead of kill the burglar? Would you take a 1% in order to decrease his suffering substantially?
My accounting is that there is no amount of risk or harm I would accept for me and mine to preserve the burglar’s life because he made his choice when he chose to harm me and mine. I wouldn’t risk a broken finger to preserve his entire life nor should I. That said should he surrender I would turn him over to the police. I should never take opportunity to hurt him let alone execute him. Should I do this I would be the villain no matter what had transpired before because I would be doing so out of emotional reaction I wouldn’t be acting any longer to preserve me or mine.
We should expect Ukrainians to take any possible advantage for in doing so they preserve innocent life. Preserving the lifes or preventing the suffering of active enemies presently actively trying to do harm is nonsensical.
If you you blow the guts out and faces off Russian soldiers by more traditional means they are just as dead
I (and all the people and organizations that have worked throughout the last century to get incendiary weapons banned as anti-personnel weapons) generally feel that the method of killing matters, and that some methods are excessively cruel or represent excessive risk of long term suffering.
The existing protocol on incendiary weapons recognizes the difference, by requiring signatory nations to go out of their way to avoid using incendiary weapons in places where civilian harm might occur. Even in contexts where a barrage of artillery near civilians might not violate the law, airborne flame throwers are forbidden. Because incendiary weapons are different, and a line is drawn there, knowing that there actually is a difference between negligently killing civilians with shrapnel versus negligently killing civilians with burning.
There are degrees of morality and ethics, even in war, and incendiary weapons intentionally targeting personnel crosses a line that I would draw.
Getting Ukrainian troops defending their homes killed in order to ensure that the rapists and murderers invading their homes don’t suffer is a moral abomination.
Azeri terrorist state bombed Stepanakert with white phosphorus and napalm with no consequences.
BTW, Russia has already used white phosphorus against civilian targets in this war, if I am not mistaken.
Israel is, of course, using those in Gaza.
I’d say legality has long lost its meaning in international relations. Not that it ever had any in this particular regard.
I’ve read that even not using expansive (those that expand, not those that cost more monies) bullets was not result of any humanism, but of the military logic that a soldier wounded by a conventional bullet stops being a combatant and becomes a logistical burden, while a soldier dead from a gruesome wound just stops being a combatant, possibly helping to motivate his comrades in arms.
Yes. This also works with epidemics. Die too quickly - less chance to infect others, being one man short makes your community poorer, which means fewer travelers, which also means less chance to infect other communities.
One reason Black Death led to so much witch hunting and jew burning and talk about divine punishment - many people were immune even when exposed to piles of bodies of infected, while those to get sick would die very fast. That’s one way a highly deadly and quickly developing disease can survive, be deadly only to some part of the population. Well, rats and water too.
Prohibited to make forests the target except when they are military objectives. Did they add that exception because they might have to fight the battle at Helm’s Deep?
Not even mentioning the severe lasting impact it had on generations to come. There are still many who are battling birth defects due to the toxins that remained after the napalm attacks.
Not that I’m doubting you, but do you have more info on the lasting toxicity of napalm? I hadn’t heard of this.
I knew that the defoliant Agent Orange had dioxin contamination that led to all those horrible birth defects and cancers. Also, the contaminating nature of depleted uranium is obvious as a heavy metal but I think we still don’t grasp the magnitude of the problem. Iraq and Afghanistan will likely be seeing awful effects in future generations.
Preface: I am no expert, this is just my understanding.
Weapons that are illegal/considered war crimes fall roughly into categories of:
A. Indiscriminate - kill soldiers and non-combatants/civilians alike (eg. Land mines, incendiary, cluster bombs, etc)
B. Cruel - especially painful ways to die or designed to cause ongoing suffering and maiming. (Eg: gas/chemical warfare, dirty bombs, etc)
A lot of weapons tick both of those boxes, and there are possibly more i am unaware of.
Apart from that, their Russian attacker does not give a flying f-ck about international law from the start either, so after quite some illegal events (rape, torturing/killing POWs, shelling and bombing hospitals and schools), there is no reason to hold back any longer. It would just enable the Russians to maim and kill more Ukrainian civilists.
The point of these laws is to protect civilians from weapons that can’t be used to target just military targets. Do you give a shit about the people in Ukraine beyond their use as cannon fodder?
This is what international law has to say about incendiary weapons:
This treeline is clearly not located within a concentration of civilians and it is concealing (or plausibly believed to be concealing) enemy combatants and therefore the use of incendiary weapons is unambiguously legal.
Interestingly Israel has violated all three of these on hundreds of occasions in Gaza.
I expect Russians to cry foul over this but early on Russia was using thermobaric weapons on civilian targets and they said nothing, so we know they’re just hypocrits and monsters.
What occasions are you referring to? I know people claim that Israeli use of white phosphorous munitions is illegal, but the law is actually quite specific about what an incendiary weapon is. Incendiary effects caused by weapons that were not designed with the specific purpose of causing incendiary effects are not prohibited. (As far as I can tell, even the deliberate use of such weapons in order to cause incendiary effects is allowed.) This is extremely permissive, because no reasonable country would actually agree not to use a weapon that it considered effective. Something like the firebombing of Dresden is banned, but little else.
They were probably talking about white phosphorus: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/lebanon-evidence-of-israels-unlawful-use-of-white-phosphorus-in-southern-lebanon-as-cross-border-hostilities-escalate/
The United States and the UK successfully blocked attempts to outlaw all use of incendiary weapons, and all use of incendiary weapons against personnel, and all use of incendiary weapons against forests and plant cover.
This is an area where it’s perfectly reasonable to disagree with how the US watered down this convention, to push for stricter rules on this, and to condemn the use of thermite as an anti-personnel weapon and the use of incendiary weapons on plants that are being used for cover and concealment of military objectives.
So pointing out that this might technically be legal isn’t enough for me to personally be OK with this. I think it’s morally reprehensible, and I’d prefer for Ukraine to keep the moral high ground in this war.
The moral high ground doesn’t work in war.
The moral high ground is absolutely critical in war. War is politics by other means, and being able to build consensus, marshal resources, recruit personnel, persuade allies to help, persuade adversaries to surrender or lay down their arms, persuade the allies of your adversaries not to get involved, and keep the peace after a war is over, all depend on one’s public image. There are ways to wage war without it, but most militaries that blatantly disregard morals find it difficult to actually win.
In this case? The entire military strategy of Ukraine in this war is highly dependent on preserving the moral high ground.
I understand and agree with your point, but the fact that people are worried over whether Ukraine is killing nicely enough is ridiculous to me. It’s a defensive war of survival. The moral high ground is already theirs.
I think he is referring to not making civilian casualties. Ukraine is not mass terror bombing civilians in the hope that they hit a Russian soldier somewhere.
Fire is a weapon of war. There is nothing immoral about employing it as such.
“Mustard gas is a weapon of war. There is nothing immoral about employing it as such.”
I honestly hope you never have to experience war.
Mustard gas is ineffective. That is the actual reason it’s outlawed: The opposing force dons gas masks, completely negating the effect, the only stuff that it still kills is collateral damage. That’s precisely what happened during WWI: It made everything nastier without actually having an impact on the strategic level.
There’s this notion among many people that the Geneva convention is about preventing cruelty or something, not at all: It’s about preventing pointless cruelty. Cruelty that does not actually serve a military objective. War is hell, that’s already a given.
They gave up pointless cruelty precisely because doing so cost them nothing.
Whereas you have no issue with people who agree with you having to experience war?
I don’t know how you got that from my comment.
I was being mildly sarcastic, not antagonistic
Sorry, that didn’t come across well via text I guess
I can’t help but feel that being mildly sarcastic in response to someone’s comment is, by its nature, somewhat antagonistic.
I accept this.
The moral high ground is often the losing low ground, unfortunately. I’d say Ukraine should stick to the rules of war (as should Russia) and we should remove all restrictions we place on our donations to Ukraine - and enforce a no-fly zone over western Ukraine, at Ukraine’s invitation. There is only one way to make Russia stop and that’s force.
Russia already stays far away from Ukrainian controlled Ukraine with their planes, because Ukraine has the ability to shoot them down. We could improve that ability, but they’re still not getting close to flying over land they don’t control.
With their planes, yes. With their drones and cruise missiles, no.
Good point.
That’s because incendiary weapons are great for exterminating villages full of poor people in the colonized world - ie, the kind of wars the US and UK prefer to wage.
Why is it even morally reprehensible? If you you blow the guts out and faces off Russian soldiers by more traditional means they are just as dead and if dozens of Ukrainians die in the course of digging the Russians out of cover do you account that a superior outcome? If so how?
If a burglar strode into your home with a gun and you believed that conflict was inevitable how much risk and or suffering would you tolerate from your wife and children in order to decrease the chance of harm or suffering by the burglar? Would you accept a 3% chance of a dead kid in order to harm instead of kill the burglar? Would you take a 1% in order to decrease his suffering substantially?
My accounting is that there is no amount of risk or harm I would accept for me and mine to preserve the burglar’s life because he made his choice when he chose to harm me and mine. I wouldn’t risk a broken finger to preserve his entire life nor should I. That said should he surrender I would turn him over to the police. I should never take opportunity to hurt him let alone execute him. Should I do this I would be the villain no matter what had transpired before because I would be doing so out of emotional reaction I wouldn’t be acting any longer to preserve me or mine.
We should expect Ukrainians to take any possible advantage for in doing so they preserve innocent life. Preserving the lifes or preventing the suffering of active enemies presently actively trying to do harm is nonsensical.
I (and all the people and organizations that have worked throughout the last century to get incendiary weapons banned as anti-personnel weapons) generally feel that the method of killing matters, and that some methods are excessively cruel or represent excessive risk of long term suffering.
The existing protocol on incendiary weapons recognizes the difference, by requiring signatory nations to go out of their way to avoid using incendiary weapons in places where civilian harm might occur. Even in contexts where a barrage of artillery near civilians might not violate the law, airborne flame throwers are forbidden. Because incendiary weapons are different, and a line is drawn there, knowing that there actually is a difference between negligently killing civilians with shrapnel versus negligently killing civilians with burning.
There are degrees of morality and ethics, even in war, and incendiary weapons intentionally targeting personnel crosses a line that I would draw.
Getting Ukrainian troops defending their homes killed in order to ensure that the rapists and murderers invading their homes don’t suffer is a moral abomination.
Azeri terrorist state bombed Stepanakert with white phosphorus and napalm with no consequences.
BTW, Russia has already used white phosphorus against civilian targets in this war, if I am not mistaken.
Israel is, of course, using those in Gaza.
I’d say legality has long lost its meaning in international relations. Not that it ever had any in this particular regard.
I’ve read that even not using expansive (those that expand, not those that cost more monies) bullets was not result of any humanism, but of the military logic that a soldier wounded by a conventional bullet stops being a combatant and becomes a logistical burden, while a soldier dead from a gruesome wound just stops being a combatant, possibly helping to motivate his comrades in arms.
Ahh, so wound them just enough is the optimal amount of mangling
Yes. This also works with epidemics. Die too quickly - less chance to infect others, being one man short makes your community poorer, which means fewer travelers, which also means less chance to infect other communities.
One reason Black Death led to so much witch hunting and jew burning and talk about divine punishment - many people were immune even when exposed to piles of bodies of infected, while those to get sick would die very fast. That’s one way a highly deadly and quickly developing disease can survive, be deadly only to some part of the population. Well, rats and water too.
Fleas not rats! Our poor rat
friendsacquaintances have had their honor besmirched for too long!Prohibited to make forests the target except when they are military objectives. Did they add that exception because they might have to fight the battle at Helm’s Deep?
Battle of Stalingrad II: Ukrainian Boogaloo
Are all of these “laws” in place because incendiary weapons are especially cruel compared to a simple shot to the dome?
It’s because of their indiscriminate nature.
The US use of napalm on cities in Korea contributed to the nearly 20% of their population that was wiped out.
Hasn’t the US also repeatedly allegedly accidentally hit targets with white phosphorus that was intended just as a marking flair?
Not even mentioning the severe lasting impact it had on generations to come. There are still many who are battling birth defects due to the toxins that remained after the napalm attacks.
Not that I’m doubting you, but do you have more info on the lasting toxicity of napalm? I hadn’t heard of this.
I knew that the defoliant Agent Orange had dioxin contamination that led to all those horrible birth defects and cancers. Also, the contaminating nature of depleted uranium is obvious as a heavy metal but I think we still don’t grasp the magnitude of the problem. Iraq and Afghanistan will likely be seeing awful effects in future generations.
Yes
Preface: I am no expert, this is just my understanding.
Weapons that are illegal/considered war crimes fall roughly into categories of:
A. Indiscriminate - kill soldiers and non-combatants/civilians alike (eg. Land mines, incendiary, cluster bombs, etc)
B. Cruel - especially painful ways to die or designed to cause ongoing suffering and maiming. (Eg: gas/chemical warfare, dirty bombs, etc)
A lot of weapons tick both of those boxes, and there are possibly more i am unaware of.
I assure you one thing: If it happened to you and you survived, you will not wish this on your worst enemy.
i have a hard time explaining this to people, they simply don’t get it-.
Apart from that, their Russian attacker does not give a flying f-ck about international law from the start either, so after quite some illegal events (rape, torturing/killing POWs, shelling and bombing hospitals and schools), there is no reason to hold back any longer. It would just enable the Russians to maim and kill more Ukrainian civilists.
The point of these laws is to protect civilians from weapons that can’t be used to target just military targets. Do you give a shit about the people in Ukraine beyond their use as cannon fodder?