Geneva Convention equivalent

[jatay3]

I didn't mean that. I just posted it to show how things can have changed in the view of the war. What is seen today as an illegal combatent (so breaking the laws of war) is seen in OTU as a normal thing in war.

That is an interesting aspect. Until recently rebels automatically had at least the strong potential of being seen as unlawful combatants simply for being rebels even if they obeyed the customs of war in other respects(which is why prisoners from both the Contenental Army and the CSA were looked at ambiguously). In an aristocratic society such as the Imperium it seems odd that they would have more tolerance not less. However it is strongly implied that the Imperial Rules of War does not have such prejudice about Planetary civil wars and treats rebels as lawful combatants.

 

[McPerth]

Well, this comment of mine you quoted here was about the consideration of the mercenaries, not about that of the rebels.

In Traveller cannon there are some instances that hint rebels are not seen as legal combatents, and any rule of war there was is broken when dealing with a rebellion. The Black war is an extreme case, but the sterilization of the equatorial part of Ilelesh as an example is another good example, as Hans has already pointed in this same thread.

One important fact to point in this thread (as OP) is that is not about Imperial Rules of War, that have a force behind them to enforce them, but about accords like the Convention, with no force behind them and that due to this become in fact gentlemen accords, as also pointed before in this same thread.

 

[Peter Newman]

One of the sample PCs in either Beltstrike or Tarsus was captured by the Zhodani early in the 5FW and exchanged fast enough to be involved in the last fighting of the war, so it seems that the Zhodani and the Imperium have prisoner exchanges while war is still going on. Hans

Beltstrike. "Joan Eshunnak, ex-Scout

Service with Scout Squadron 53. Captured at Battle of Thanbar; exchanged. Later served at Lanth and Rhylanor as a boat gunner attached to Marine landing force."

The Spinward Marches Campaign says that Sword Worlds forces were driven off of Lanth on 096-1109, the Battle of Rhylanor was on 231-1109, the Armistice was declared 099-1110, and effective 120-1110.

I did not see a cite for the 'Battle of Thanbar' or its date but the maps suggest that Thanbar was taken by the Zhodani 40th fleet after 180-1108 but before 001-1109. It looks as if she was a POW for well less than a year. OTOH it also notes that 'The Imperial Navy maintains a courier route with the Imperial frontier at Frenzie (1116) via Thanbar (0717). It seems as if the route would have been a Zhodani target so maybe the 'Battle of Thanbar' was earlier. It could be that the Zhodani drove the Imperiuals off in the 'Battle of Thanbar' much earlier but did not capture the planet until later. Even it was taken in the first week of the war she would have been a POW for no more than a year and a half.

It's interesting that exchanged prisoners were still allowed to fight by the terms of their exchange. Maybe the Imperium is dubious about their ability to keep psionic Zhodani as prisoners and reluctant to execute them so they readily exchange them and the Zhodani reciprocate?

 

[Peter Newman]

As shown in this quote, I'm afraid this nukes subject is the only one clear in Imperial Rules of War

Thats not clear at all. It does not distinguish between nuclear weapons and nuclear devices. You can forbid 'weapons' but not forbid 'devices' in the same way that you can forbid 'bombs' but not 'explosives'. As written there is no proof that Imperial citizens and corporations can not own nuclear devices, as long as they are used as tools (excavation, civil engineering, mining, etc.)

Admittedly this isn't vey ecologically friendly but when you've got tens of thousands of planets and nuclear dampers to help clean up maybe this isn't as important.

 

[BlackBat242]

I live ~45 straight-line miles WSW of this spot (note that Interstate 70 runs beside the Colorado river through that area):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Rulison

Project Rulison, named after the rural community of Rulison, Colorado, was a 40-kiloton nuclear test project in the United States on September 10, 1969, about 8 miles SE of the town of Grand Valley, Colorado (now named Parachute, Colorado) near western Colorado's Grand Valley in Garfield County. The location of "Surface Ground Zero" is 39°24′19.0″N 107°56′54.7″W. It was part of the Operation Mandrel weapons test series under the name Mandrel Rulison, as well as the Operation Plowshare project which explored peaceful engineering uses of nuclear explosions. The peaceful aim of Project Rulison was to determine if natural gas could be easily liberated from underground regions.

After the successful test in which approximately 10 times the amount of natural gas was liberated as compared to traditional methods, fear of radiation made the natural gas, which contained a small and continually decreasing percentage of radionuclides, unmarketable.[1] The Department of Energy began a clean up of the site in the 1970s which was completed in 1998. A buffer zone put in place by the state of Colorado still exists around the site. A January 2005 report by the DOE stated that radioactivity levels were normal at the surface and in groundwater, though a later report due in 2007 is expected to more fully explore if there is subsurface contamination and whether or not radioactivity is still spreading outward from the blast site itself.

This was the second of three natural-gas-reservoir stimulation test in the Plowshare program. The other two were Project Gasbuggy and Project Rio Blanco.

A placard, erected in 1976, now marks the site where the blast took place. It is accessible via a gravel road, Garfield County Route 338.

Source: PROJECT RULISON: POST-SHOT PLANS AND EVALUATIONS, december 1969, fig. B, NVO--61; PNE-R--13
Author: United States Atomic Energy Commission / Nevada Operations Office

Operation Plowshare:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare

Project Plowshare was the overall United States term for the development of techniques to use nuclear explosives for peaceful construction purposes.
.....
Proposed uses included widening the Panama Canal, constructing a new sea-level waterway through Nicaragua nicknamed the Pan-Atomic Canal, cutting paths through mountainous areas for highways, and connecting inland river systems. Other proposals involved blasting underground caverns for water, natural gas, and petroleum storage. Serious consideration was also given to using these explosives for various mining operations. One proposal suggested using nuclear blasts to connect underground aquifers in Arizona. Another plan involved surface blasting on the western slope of California's Sacramento Valley for a water transport project.[1]

Project Carryall,[2] proposed in 1963 by the Atomic Energy Commission, the California Division of Highways (now Caltrans), and the Santa Fe Railway, would have used 22 nuclear explosions to excavate a massive roadcut through the Bristol Mountains in the Mojave Desert, to accommodate construction of Interstate 40 and a new rail line.[1] At the end of the program, a major objective was to develop nuclear explosives, and blast techniques, for stimulating the flow of natural gas in "tight" underground reservoir formations.

.....

One of the first plowshare nuclear blast cratering proposals that came close to being carried out was Project Chariot, which would have used several hydrogen bombs to create an artificial harbor at Cape Thompson, Alaska. It was never carried out due to concerns for the native populations and the fact that there was little potential use for the harbor to justify its risk and expense.

Plans to use five thermonuclear explosions to create an artificial harbor at Cape Thompson, Alaska, for Project Chariot in 1958. It was eventually cancelled amid controversy and protest. The outer-outline represents the "full scale" plan, which would require detonations totalling 2.4 megatons. The inner outline is a scaled down version, of 460 kilotons. It would be eventually scaled down to 280 kilotons.

Source: Scanned from Dan O'Neill, The Firecracker Boys (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994).
License: Identified as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory image.

In an Imperium with nuclear dampers and the ability to quickly clean up "peripheral contamination" through gravitic and other technologies, and with mining occurring on uninhabitable worlds and asteroids, I'd expect such uses to actually be fairly common!

 

[McPerth]

Thats not clear at all. It does not distinguish between nuclear weapons and nuclear devices. You can forbid 'weapons' but not forbid 'devices' in the same way that you can forbid 'bombs' but not 'explosives'. As written there is no proof that Imperial citizens and corporations can not own nuclear devices, as long as they are used as tools (excavation, civil engineering, mining, etc.)

Admittedly this isn't vey ecologically friendly but when you've got tens of thousands of planets and nuclear dampers to help clean up maybe this isn't as important.

I guess this will depend on the world you're on. In the naval merc in Amarax I told about (sorry, I didn't yet found the Challenge where it appeared, so o more precise details) the megacorp was afraid of imperial intervention because it had smuggled nuclear ships (not even true weapons) on a TL 6 planet.

Its quite possible that megacorps (and others) hay have nuclear explosive devices for such pourposes you tell, but I guess they'd better don't loss any that ends used as a weapon. More or less like if a terrorist attack is done with some dinamite that is under your custody.

 

[rancke]

I guess this will depend on the world you're on. In the naval merc in Amarax I told about (sorry, I didn't yet found the Challenge where it appeared, so o more precise details) the megacorp was afraid of imperial intervention because it had smuggled nuclear ships (not even true weapons) on a TL 6 planet.

That could be a different Imperial rule at work. The one that says that if an offworld group is bearing the brunt of the effort of a local conflict (I'm paraphrasing), it is inappropriate influence. Basically an offworld organization is allowed to protect its investments, but actually taking control of an gorvernment on another world is going too far.

I've always assumed that the boilerplate in membership treaties include an undertaking on the part of the Imperium to protect the member world against offworlders (neighbors and interstellar companies alike).


Hans

 

[jatay3]

Well, this comment of mine you quoted here was about the consideration of the mercenaries, not about that of the rebels.

In Traveller cannon there are some instances that hint rebels are not seen as legal combatents, and any rule of war there was is broken when dealing with a rebellion. The Black war is an extreme case, but the sterilization of the equatorial part of Ilelesh as an example is another good example, as Hans has already pointed in this same thread.

One important fact to point in this thread (as OP) is that is not about Imperial Rules of War, that have a force behind them to enforce them, but about accords like the Convention, with no force behind them and that due to this become in fact gentlemen accords, as also pointed before in this same thread.

I see. Well yeah, there doesn't seem to be any law against mercs in this time. Personally I always thought it a rather curious rule in our time, as it is not clear that they make more of a mess then other types of soldiers. I suppose someone had the idea that they were more likely then regulars to be hired specifically as death squads because they can take cover behind annonymity more easily. Or just thought that it was a distasteful profession in and of itself. Or whatever. In any case mercs tend to be accepted as lawful combatants in Traveller as they are not in twenty-first century Earth.

 

[jatay3]

One important fact to point in this thread (as OP) is that is not about Imperial Rules of War, that have a force behind them to enforce them, but about accords like the Convention, with no force behind them and that due to this become in fact gentlemen accords, as also pointed before in this same thread.

There could also be rather then a system of treaties, simply a tacit aggreement as to what was "not done". The Geneva Convention was to some degree a formalization of the nineteenth century military code of honor.

 

[McPerth]

There could also be rather then a system of treaties, simply a tacit aggreement as to what was "not done". The Geneva Convention was to some degree a formalization of the nineteenth century military code of honor.

But not all nations understood honor the same way. The Convention was a formalization of the Western rules of war, as the military code of honor dictated them in 19th century.

I guess the fact that it was a time where few wars were fought (or at least we're aware of) where no western troops (mostly Europeans) were involved, and non-European powers try to follow European examples (e.g. Japan) in many ways was what allowed the Convention to become wider in its acceptation (but not always in its dictates, as we've already said...), even if it was according to their own sense of military code of honor.

 

[jatay3]

But not all nations understood honor the same way. The Convention was a formalization of the Western rules of war, as the military code of honor dictated them in 19th century.

I guess the fact that it was a time where few wars were fought (or at least we're aware of) where no western troops (mostly Europeans) were involved, and non-European powers try to follow European examples (e.g. Japan) in many ways was what allowed the Convention to become wider in its acceptation (but not always in its dictates, as we've already said...), even if it was according to their own sense of military code of honor.

In the eighteenth century, if not the nineteenth, everyone knew they were hired enforcers for royal mafioso and thus took it less seriously then it would be in later and earlier wars. The ninteenth century had more ideological elements, but much of the ninteenth century code of honor was affected by the eighteenth.

 

[Carlobrand]

But not all nations understood honor the same way. The Convention was a formalization of the Western rules of war, as the military code of honor dictated them in 19th century.

I guess the fact that it was a time where few wars were fought (or at least we're aware of) where no western troops (mostly Europeans) were involved, and non-European powers try to follow European examples (e.g. Japan) in many ways was what allowed the Convention to become wider in its acceptation (but not always in its dictates, as we've already said...), even if it was according to their own sense of military code of honor.

Considering the way King Leopold treated the subjects of his personal colony in the Congo, and the way Europeans and their heirs in the Americas dealt with those they considered weak or inferior, I'm not entirely sure honor was the driving motivation.

Late 19th century wars include the Philippine-American war, or Philippine Insurrection, a decidedly dirty little guerrilla war notable for a few rather serious breaches of the usual protocols of civilized warfare on the part of both the "European" power involved (the U.S.) and the Filipino guerrillas. Makes me think of Efate and shudder. Of course, we probably should have expected that after defeating Spain and then not liberating them, considering how hard they'd been fighting Spain to that point.

Meanwhile, while the European powers (and Japan) were busily considering anything that wasn't white to be eligible for their "civilizing" attention, South America sheltered under the Monroe Doctrine and instead engaged in their own wars: an 1851 war between the Argentine Confederation and an alliance led by the Empire of Brazil, civil wars in Venezuela, Colombia (a couple of times, at least), Uruguay and Chile, a really nasty war between Paraguay and an alliance of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, and a war between Chile and a Bolivia-Peru alliance.

The late 1880's - early 1890's also saw a number of conflicts in Africa resulting from a rather ambitious local warlord, Rabih az-Zubayr, trying to take over other local powers in what is now Chad.

 

[jatay3]

And there does seem to be an equiv for those kind of wars in Traveller. That was not what the OP was about.

 

[Carlobrand]

And there does seem to be an equiv for those kind of wars in Traveller. That was not what the OP was about.

Really? The Zhodani-backed Ine Givar guerrillas of Efate, the plight of the chirpers, mercs hired to support or oppose local warlords or acting on behalf of megacorporations meddling in internal planetary affairs for their own profit, the revolution on Dinom - there's no equivalent? Goodness, I must have been playing a different game.

The OP was about whether there was some sort of Geneva Convention equivalent in Traveller. This has led, on the lines of evaluating the Convention and its applicability to the Traveller setting, to discussions about the background of the Geneva Convention among other subtopics. Comments to that end included McPerth's observation that the Convention was a formalization of Western rules of war and your statement that eighteenth century soldiery considered themselves, "hired enforcers for royal mafioso and thus took it less seriously then it would be in later and earlier wars," (something the Revolutionary era Americans facing British troops, and the British officers that led those troops, might not have agreed with) and that this attitude influenced nineteenth century military codes of behavior. But my observation of late 19th century conflicts that departed from those codes is off-topic?

Well, perhaps I should clarify the issue topically in a manner that can be more easily grasped. The Geneva Conventions were as much a matter of practicality as honor or humanitarianism. Whatever the attitudes of the people that advocated for them, the people that actually signed to them and agreed to implement them did so as much to obtain protection for their own nationals as to formalize notions of honorable and humanitarian conduct; they resisted measures that would interfere with their ability to prosecute wars; and they had no particular problem putting aside notions of honor when it suited their interests - which actually gave greater impetus to formalize rules in order to control such behavior.

The first Convention dealt with protections for medical services and the treatment of sick and wounded combatants. The second Convention extended those to armed forces at sea, including the shipwrecked. The third spoke to treatment of prisoners of war. The fourth spoke to protections for civilians and noncombatants.

With regard to Traveller:

There are the great powers - the Imperium, the Zhodani, the Solomani, and so forth. (Less clear if the K'Kree would be willing to accept such restrictions since they afford protections to species that the K'Kree might otherwise consider to be proper candidates for genocide.) There are the lesser powers - the Sword Worlders, Vargr states, and I don't know what else on the other side of the Imperium. And there are a host of individual systems and small polities.

There most likely exist signed conventions that serve the interests of the great powers - conventions that dictate the handling of POWs, that confer certain protections on non-combatants, and so forth. (Perhaps there are even conventions that limit the use of nuclear weapons, perhaps prohibiting their use on civilian population centers and requiring the user to conduct clean-ups afterward.) A fair number of lesser powers would most likely sign on for their own ends, though it's difficult to enforce such conventions on folk like the Vargr - likely to be more after-the-fact trials of failed Vargr commanders than before-the-fact enforcement on that front.

As to the lesser polities: while the Imperium might hold its own troops to certain standards, and while it might pursue war crimes trials against principal actors of smaller polities who offend sensibilities - acting on the "I have the power to do it, you're just gonna have to live with it" principal of justice - the question of whether any given polity actually knows of or respects such conventions is an entirely different matter. Certainly a world ruled by some extremist religion could not be counted on to honor conventions it did not sign to if it felt religious duty required other behavior.

As to mercs and megacorporations, the real question is going to be, what can they get away with?

 

[McPerth]

As to mercs and megacorporations, the real question is going to be, what can they get away with?

I guess precisely those are the most interested in keeping those agreements in force (and the mercs even more than the Megacorporations), as they are the ones with the most to lose if they are broken.

The repatriation bond for the mercs hints (IMHO) that there are some rules about the treatment for the POWs or losers of a war, and , of course, as you say, those are easier to implement where the Imperium may enforce its rules. As I said, laws are nearly meaningless if they have no enforcer force behind them (as the Aslan would say, nothing behind its words but the tongue*), becoming mostly gentlemen agreements.

So, assuming the Imperium, more or less, enforces its Imperial Rules of War, when I asked I meant mainly about inter power relations (imperium with the Aslan, Solomani, Zhodani, etc. I agree the Vargr present a special case here).

IMHO, I see the all them (Aslan, Solomani and Zhodani) well able to accept those rules. The Aslan because its sense of honor (at least while the war is fought under acceptable rules), the Solomani due to tradition and their view of themselves as civilizators of the mankind, and the Zhodani because their sense of rightness, probably seeing war crimes as mad behavior.

* taken from MT Solomani and Aslan, page 80, Aslan roleplaying example 2, and it means there are no teeth behind the words.

 

[jatay3]

I guess precisely those are the most interested in keeping those agreements in force (and the mercs even more than the Megacorporations), as they are the ones with the most to lose if they are broken.

The repatriation bond for the mercs hints (IMHO) that there are some rules about the treatment for the POWs or losers of a war, and , of course, as you say, those are easier to implement where the Imperium may enforce its rules. As I said, laws are nearly meaningless if they have no enforcer force behind them (as the Aslan would say, nothing behind its words but the tongue*), becoming mostly gentlemen agreements.

So, assuming the Imperium, more or less, enforces its Imperial Rules of War, when I asked I meant mainly about inter power relations (imperium with the Aslan, Solomani, Zhodani, etc. I agree the Vargr present a special case here).

IMHO, I see the all them (Aslan, Solomani and Zhodani) well able to accept those rules. The Aslan because its sense of honor (at least while the war is fought under acceptable rules), the Solomani due to tradition and their view of themselves as civilizators of the mankind, and the Zhodani because their sense of rightness, probably seeing war crimes as mad behavior.

* taken from MT Solomani and Aslan, page 80, Aslan roleplaying example 2, and it means there are no teeth behind the words.

The questions is not just the ideology which the given soldiers adhere to but the potential results of defeat. There was strategic bombing in world war two, not in the austro-prussian war and the fact that the later war had no planes available.

If the stakes are high enough you can bet that there will be plenty of violations of the rules of war. There was at least one planet in Behind the Claw that was nuked by the Imperium.

And what exactly is the Star Trigger for?

 

[rancke]

If the stakes are high enough you can bet that there will be plenty of violations of the rules of war. There was at least one planet in Behind the Claw that was nuked by the Imperium.

I don't recall that. There was one that had had a civil war involving nuclear weapons (a non-aligned world, incidentally), but which one was nuked by the Imperium?

And what exactly is the Star Trigger for?

Deterrence.

Anyway, the question isn't whether there have been violations of the conventions of war (that really goes without saying, sapients being what they are), but whether there are any conventions, formal or informal, to violate in the first place.


Hans

 

[Carlobrand]

I don't recall that. There was one that had had a civil war involving nuclear weapons (a non-aligned world, incidentally), but which one was nuked by the Imperium?



Deterrence.

Anyway, the question isn't whether there have been violations of the conventions of war (that really goes without saying, sapients being what they are), but whether there are any conventions, formal or informal, to violate in the first place.


Hans

Probably. There are hints of it, as have been mentioned earlier, and there's strong motivation for it in some quarters - Aslan dealing with humans who don't seem to think a rule is a rule unless it's in writing, Zhodani and Imperials seeking protection for their respective combatants and so forth, and a general willingness to accept certain restrictions on your side in order to achieve certain restrictions on the other side - motivated in part by the desire to minimize destruction of civilian infrastructure so the post-war recovery isn't as severe, not to mention the desire to keep your own civilians from actively opposing your ambitions.

The fact that there isn't a buffer zone of dead worlds between Imperial and Zhodani space, or Imperial and Solomani space, suggests that some agreed limitations exist. Otherwise, war has a tendency to descend to the lowest common denominator once the shooting starts. Submarine warfare on civilian transport was considered outrageous during WW-I but was universally practiced in WW-II; same with aerial bombardment of civilian population centers.

Nuclear devices make for one seriously low common denominator, and strategic industry has always been seen as a useful target if you could reach it, stripping the enemy of his ability to make war and reducing the will of his population to support a war. Yet, we see that starports and their construction capacity seem to survive wars largely intact, and there are few canon instances of civilian population centers suffering nuclear attack in Imperium-verses-external-opponent conflicts. This hints at formal conventions that address protections for civilian infrastructure - declaring high ports to be demilitarized and neutral in exchange for their not being subject to attack, for example.

It would be an interesting exercise to craft such conventions, taking into account the possibilities of future tech and the advantages of combat from space.

 

[mike wightman]

It could just be the lack of real data about previous Frontier wars, but I have always thought of the Frontier wars 1-5 as rather "civilised" conflicts compared with the civil wars fought within the Imperium itself. Prisoner exchanges, no nuking civilians from orbit etc.

I'm sort of counting the Solomani Rim war as an Imperial civil war, since they were once part of the same polity.

 

[McPerth]

It could just be the lack of real data about previous Frontier wars, but I have always thought of the Frontier wars 1-5 as rather "civilised" conflicts compared with the civil wars fought within the Imperium itself. Prisoner exchanges, no nuking civilians from orbit etc.

Civil wars use to be more salvage than foreign wars, and any rules of war that could exist don't use to be applied against such 'traitors', they are only for civilized enemies, not for traitors.

I'm sort of counting the Solomani Rim war as an Imperial civil war, since they were once part of the same polity.

In all cases of independence wars one side (the unionists) consideres them as civil wars, as they are the same political entity, while the secessionist side consideres it as a war among two nations, as they are not the same nation, just an ocuppied one trying to trow away the yoke of the polical/military subjugation by the other. Historically, the view of the winner uses to be how they are seen.

In this way, the Solomani War is difficult to be seen as a Civil War, as the Solomani Confederation was an autonomous enough political entity as to be counted as a separe one (aside that they obtained secession, so, in a sense, partially winning the war).