The photos are all much the same, and there seem to be a lot of them. Rows of — predominantly male – troops. Unsmiling faces aligned in the same direction. Firearms locked into symmetrical rows. The same haircuts. The same uniforms. Minor differences are to be found in the sewn-on country flags and maybe the type of firearm. The military. I look at these images and am filled with an overwhelming sense of dismal futility. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one who has this feeling. There’s news of more military investment coming from all quarters now. New munitions factories are opening in parts of Europe. There’s even a sense that some feel it’s a productive and unifying endeavour to rally around investing in tanks and armaments.  

I wonder dully what my paternal grandfather would make of it. He, and many others of his generation, probably thought that in fighting for the duration of WW2 they were effectively guaranteeing it wouldn’t happen again: that others wouldn’t have to; that all of the mess and chaos would somehow be worth it. Even if their own lives were never going to be the same again, it would stop with them. It was a sacrifice, they thought, to ensure that Europe would be free; that the world would learn and move on and never resort to this madness again. On returning home in 1945, my grandfather’s conviction that “Europe is rotten” was firmly held. The family would move away, as many did at the time, for a new start a world away.

The other side of the family lived under occupation. Without knowing the details, I would guess the experience shaped outlook and thinking in fundamental ways. The sense that persecution could be anywhere – that neighbours might disappear, ‘they’ might come for you, and even if ‘they’ didn’t – you’d better be on your guard because there was no guaranteeing anything. Threat was the norm. Food was to be rationed. And anything that might be of some use should be kept, just in case. Even tulip bulbs might take on a new life. My family’s experience was by no means unique. One could say they were fortunate – certainly a lot more fortunate than many others.

‘The Military’, then. Back in June I received an email bearing these two words in its ominous subject line. The preamble of the attached newsletter starts like this:

“International humanitarian law (IHL) represents a balancing of priorities that have often been seen as being in tension: military necessity, on the one hand, and considerations of humanity, on the other. Inherent in this balancing act is the idea that military necessity and humanitarian imperatives are equally valid priorities that can be accommodated under the same legal framework to achieve related goals, allowing the military to fight effectively while avoiding needless suffering and destruction.”  

–IRRC Vol. 107, No.928: The Military

As is typical of academic language – “a balancing of priorities that have often been seen as being in tension” – it is careful to tread very lightly and hedge its bets at every turn. It does not say, as some might, that trying to balance ‘military necessity’ (whatever that might be) and ‘humanity’ while ‘avoiding needless suffering and destruction’ and ‘allowing the military to fight effectively’ represents a complete clutter-fuck of competing priorities that are difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile. And as is typical of legal language, the terms tend to be slippery. Slippery, and superficially persuasive. What sounds good on paper may be quite different on the ground. I learned this early on through terms like ‘reasonable force’ and ‘restraint’. What is ‘reasonable’ and what constitutes ‘restraint’ is very much up to individual interpretation. To a lawyer sitting in their office with a view to the ducks floating on the pond outside, ‘reasonable force’ and ‘restraint’ are likely to be something inherently reasonable, moderate and well-intentioned. I’m guessing they might add something like ‘as a last resort’ or ‘as a preventative of greater harm’ if pressed to define the terms. To someone working in a detention centre, it could simply mean something they use in order to get their job done in a reasonable length of time. And if that means a bit of common assault or manhandling to get the job done, then to them that’s ‘reasonable force’ and ‘restraint’.

When we look at conflict, the reality might not be all that different. If a cranky little dictator decides he wants to expand his empire just that little bit further south, then there’s ‘military necessity’ as far as he’s concerned. Oh, but it’s illegal to resort to force in such a way, the lawyers and scholars might say. Jus ad bellum or jus in bello — the Latin terms, as well as the distinctions between imperial ambitions of territorial expansion or legitimate self-defence, don’t seem to matter a great deal in practice. And what’s more, reality doesn’t wait for the law. It bowls ahead and flattens a few more towns before anyone can say ‘IHL’. I suspect there are those who might say that even in the midst of these flagrant violations, the fact there is this ‘body of law’ means that there is a mechanism for accountability. Ha. The world could be waiting a very long time for every civilian death to be accounted for, for the destruction of every civilian building to be noted and remedied, for all the atrocities and violations to be painstakingly documented in courts of law, and for every victim to be fairly compensated as is their ‘right’. Again, experience would suggest that finite resources, limited political will and competing priorities will dictate that only the worst and most egregious cases are heard. As for the rest, well. Maybe they can take comfort in the fact that even though there’s no justice for them, there’s still this beautiful theoretical possibility and it’s called ‘IHL’.

It seems there is still this idea – and it may be closer to a delusion now — that somehow something like IHL and other paper-based rules and treaties are this gentlemanly thing that exists out there, in spite of the flagrant violations in all directions. Some would argue that it is still better than nothing, and maybe they hope that the doctrine of being a ‘proper gentleman’ in conducting warfare will one day prevail. This is despite plenty of evidence to the contrary suggesting that the likes of Putin and Netanyahu have no interest in being proper gentlemen, and are unlikely to suddenly be born-again in that regard. Maybe there is a sense that if the average soldier can be taught to respect and internalise IHL, then that’s something to be celebrated, never mind what the leader of his or her country might have in mind regarding total domination or wanton destruction.       

I do not wish to go into the contents of that newsletter I received back in June. Suffice to say that after the initial preamble, the articles within largely seemed to glide effortlessly past the elephant in the room, broadly the elephant outlined above, to focus on various aspects of military development and practice. At a time like this, these feel like little more than distractions and diversions from the very large elephant that is currently lumbering about, looking at the next thing it might charge into. The newsletter describes its content as “topics of interest to both the humanitarian and military communities”, as if somehow these are two cosy little camps with their respective members gathering about the campfire to share interesting stories, both of them with equally valid, reasonable and worthy causes.

I think we need to be clear. Arguably there is no such thing as ‘military necessity’. Rather than blithely skipping ahead and looking at all these seemingly interesting side issues and the ramifications of various technological developments, maybe it’s necessary to take a step back and look at what exactly the options are. Parading the troops about, investing in arms, building munitions factories and focusing on gathering tanks and drones is one option. It is not the only option. And it is not necessary in the same way that humanitarian considerations are necessary. Without the basics of life, people die. Without an almost automatic recourse to violence and preparing for it, we have the possibility to think through what other options might be available. We can remember the Second World War, and rather than concluding that the answer is still the same as it ever was, we could think about what large-scale alternatives might actually look like. Impossible? Surely no more so than trying to reconcile the deadly consequences of resorting to war.

Image and Title Credit: AI