• Welcome to the new COTI server. We've moved the Citizens to a new server. Please let us know in the COTI Website issue forum if you find any problems.
  • We, the systems administration staff, apologize for this unexpected outage of the boards. We have resolved the root cause of the problem and there should be no further disruptions.

Laws of War

secretagent wrote:

"The website below collects material from the laws of war over the last few centuries. I have found it interesting and a good source of material to create my own homegrown Imperial law of war and military justice."


Mr. Agent,

A wonderful link, sir. Thank you for sharing it with us.

And now putting on my 'Cyncial Old Poop Who Has Read Far Too Much History' hat, there is only ONE law in war; Win.

Win and you write the history and laws. Everything else is window dressing.


Sincerely,
Larsen
 
Originally posted by Larsen E. Whipsnade:
And now putting on my 'Cyncial Old Poop Who Has Read Far Too Much History' hat, there is only ONE law in war; Win.

Win and you write the history and laws. Everything else is window dressing.
Just as there have been battles won and wars lost, there have been wars one and peaces lost. It isn't just essential to win the war, it is essential to win it and follow it up with something that yields a lasting and stable peace. That's far trickier than just winning a war.

And to the Secret Agent, a most excellent link!
 
Rules of warfare have been introduced in the Traveller universe. I have forgotten which sourcebooks had the detail. I think it was in the MT books - appropriate because of the conflicts in that era of play would warrent them.

What interested me were the Aslan rules of warfare. The Aslan waged war under two different conditions - Ritual and True Warfare. Ritual Warfare concentrated upon protecting resources - factories, civillians, starports, etc.. True Warfare meant nothing was sacred; this kind of warfare was particularly nasty.

As others have said, that is a good site. It is a no-brainer to impliment some of those rules in any Traveller campaign.
 
Ben W Bell wrote:

"The only law of war may be to win, but in war there are no winners, only survivors."


Mr. Bell,

I was wondering when someone would trot out that delightfully sentimental and wholly illogical piece of claptrap. It's been a popular philosophical nostrum for close to forty years now, but being popular doesn't make it the truth. An idea that pixies make the flowers grow may be popular however far it may be from reality.

A writer who I occasionally admire placed something similar to that quote in one of his more disturbing novels and had a charecter respond to it. Paraphrased, his response went something like; "No winners? We'll set up a debate and staff it from the annals of history, making sure to include the city fathers of Carthage, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, and the Confederate States of America."

War is part of the human condition no matter what late 20th Century Western society opinions on the topic may be. Our Victorian ancestors similar attitude towards sex didn't make that 'distasteful' part of the human condition any less important either. As far back as anyone with an open mind cares to look, war has been with us. 'Hooray for Cave 83 and the hell with everyone else' is much more than a joke on a Brooks & Reiner '2000 Year Old Man' recording. War is part of what makes us human.

Jericho had walls meters thick at a period in prehistory when her inhabitants reaped wild grains and hunted antelopes because they had not yet developed formal agriculture. A group of settled hunter-gatherers must have had some reason to build such mighty walls. An untold number of prehistoric villages in Europe have been found to have been built on pilings in lakes for similar defensive purposes. Despite the howls of their 'descendents' and the other 'Indians lived at peace with one another and nature' apologists, the Anasazi ruins, artifacts, and remains in the American southwest all but scream out the word 'warfare'. There are defensive buildings, shattered human bones, stone weapons rather than hunting implements, and unmistakeable signs of regular and widely practiced cannibalism.(1) Worldwide, the remains of prehistoric humans nearly all show signs of violence, human on human violence - if you're willing to admit it and face the truth.

The Iron Age corpse found in the Alps between Italy and Austria carried an axe and bow and arrows, items originally thought to be either tools or hunting implements. It was only after forensic specialists with open minds; those not mentally shackled by the peculiar Western conceit of the 'noble savage', examined the corpse that the Ice Man was found to carry numerous scars inflicted by his fellow man and to have been actually murdered. The Ice Man was not some lone trader lost in a storm. He was chased high into the mountains and had a fatal wound inflicted upon him there by other men(2).

Studies of his equipment point to an origin in hundreds of kilometers north of where his corpse was found. Was he a sole trader, somehow fantastically wealthy enough to afford metal implements, and killed by the villagers he was visiting? Or was he a member of a raiding force, lavishly equipped by his society in the standards of the day, and lost during an cross-Alps attack? Apply Occam's Razor to the question without our late 20th Century preconceptions, if you dare.

Getting back on thread, the Yale University link is superb and belongs in everyones' list of links.

If the various adventures that mention them are any guide, the Imperial Rules of War are vague, randomly applied, and spottily enforced. They also betray an ethos utterly foreign to our late 20th Century Western mindset. In TTA, we see almost casual use of nuclear weapons. We also learn about the Imperial custom of trade war; you can be considered a combatant merely on the basis of who signs your paycheck or who you happen to be doing business with.

In both cases; nucs and trade wars, as long as you line up support for your actions with the local Powers That Be and don't kill TOO many people, you may do as you will. Killing crewmen to force the surrender of a rivals merchant vessel is okay, killing them after they surrendered is not - or could be if there weren't a lot and you have better 'pull' than they do.

Even the use of what we euphemistically call 'weapons of mass destruction'(3) can occur despite what the soi disant Imperial Rules of War may have to say on the matter. In the Keith/JTAS adventure 'Aces and Eights' an *Imperial* ground forces unit is destroyed in a biological and chemical attack, leaving the troops only enough time to secret the recently arrived payroll. The author of the attack is now the government of the world where the attack took place, yet there is no sky full of bombarding IN dreadnaughts or legions of marines and jump troopers raining down to enforce any jot or tittle of the 'Imperial Rules of War'.

At the end of the day, the Imperial Rules of War boil down to the One True Law of War; Win so you can write the laws.

Finally, I most strongly agree with Kaladorn's admonishment about winning the peace after winning the war. A successful peace is the final act of a successful war. Just as you can win every battle and lose the war; you can triumph in the actual fighting and still lose because the peace you crafted failed.

A quote from Ben Franklin seems appropriate to end with; "There was never a bad peace or a good war." And that from a man who was a leader of the American Revolution.


Sincerely,
Larsen

1 - The defenders of the Anasazi have finally begun to give into the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence confronting them. They are dealing with the topic in a very human way; by shifting the blame! Now their argument is that the local indigenes are still the peaceful, tree hugging, noble savages they've always been and that an exiled group of Aztecs brought all the bad stuff; weapons, war, cannabalism, north with them.

2 - My use of the word 'men' refers to humanity and not merely one sex. All the feminist nonsense regarding men and violence deliberately ignores the realities of *human* violence. Remember, for millennia the worst thing that could happen to you as a soldier was to be captured and handed over to your enemy's women.

3 - Just as the Victorians used artfully deceptive phrases and put pants on piano legs to avoid the slightest hint of sexuality, we create weasel words to hide from the reality of war. We say 'weapons of mass destruction' or even the spoken acronym, 'Double-You Em Dees', to childishly avoid saying 'nuclear bombs', 'man-made plagues', or 'poison gas'. I wonder might happen if we actually began using the old words, the *real* words, again. Might we take them more seriously and begin to do something about them? 'Poison Gas' carries far more weight than WMDs.
 
The laws of war are like almost all other international rules of law...enforced by "polite consent" and "gentleman's agreement."

Even if you don't use any of this in your campaign I hope you all found it enjoyable and interesting. I may have to start sending donations to the Y word again.

The 1907 Hague convetions are nice and vague and short enough to be easily imported into a TU.
 
3 - Just as the Victorians used artfully deceptive phrases and put pants on piano legs to avoid the slightest hint of sexuality, we create weasel words to hide from the reality of war. We say 'weapons of mass destruction' or even the spoken acronym, 'Double-You Em Dees', to childishly avoid saying 'nuclear bombs', 'man-made plagues', or 'poison gas'. I wonder might happen if we actually began using the old words, the *real* words. Might we take them more seriously and begin to do something about them? 'Poison Gas' carries far more weight than WMDs.
================================================
LEW, I agree fully that euphemism hides many things that people would probably be much better off facing as cold realities. Perhaps if we did we would not act so stupidly as a species.
 
Ah, but the rules/laws of war are usually agreed to and followed only by powers that feel that they have the upper hand or have something to lose. Powers that don't feel that they have anything to lose or see themselves as the underdogs or weaker (physically or morally), often don't have a problem ignoring the "rules of war".

For example, didn't the British complain that some revolutionary colonists' irregular units wern't playing fair by not standing up and firing against British Army regulars in regular uniform lines but instead choose to wear brown clothing and snipe from cover?

On a side note, I'm tired of WMD's too, but the term is a bit easier to say than "nuclear, biological, chemical, and nerve agent weapons".

Ron
 
Ah, but the rules/laws of war are usually agreed to and followed only by powers that feel that they have the upper hand or have something to lose. Powers that don't feel that they have anything to lose or see themselves as the underdogs or weaker (physically or morally), often don't have a problem ignoring the "rules of war".
==============================================
Yes, an excellent point. And one of the reasonsthe crossbow was initially banned form use in med. Europe by the Pope. It had a nasty habit of rendering knights useless against some poor slob with a crossbow ....

For example, didn't the British complain that some revolutionary colonists' irregular units wern't playing fair by not standing up and firing against British Army regulars in regular uniform lines but instead choose to wear brown clothing and snipe from cover?
=================================================
Not sure that that was a rule of the laws of war so much as custom and practice of the day. Not that there is much difference.
 
A very interesting discussion, in all.

It seems to me the Imperium has an 'in theory' and an 'in practice'. In theory, it is a bunch of high-minded idealists doing their best to protect the bulk of human interests and being fair and just and civilized. In practice, it is a bunch of hereditary nobles with personal financial and political interests fighting over their interests and only protecting the general good of man where it is politically of financially expedient.

The Imperial Military, in theory, is the sword arm of the Emperor and by having a dedicated core of officers and NCOs who are loyal to the Imperium or to the Emperor, is supposed to represent a check on the nobility. In practice, the military is so riddled with nobles and people who tend to have their own national or planetary interests (closer to home than Core and the Iridium Throne) that the military only sometimes fills the role of defender of the people and the Imperium that everyone likes to think they do.

I found two interesting thing visiting the links:

1) The rules on POWs were interesting. Especially the sections on parole and violation of same.

2) The rules on what happens if a side is joined by non-signatory parties was interesting as well. Apparently this clause is key to ensuring people apply the same standards to their allies as to themselves.

In MTU, the Imperial Rules of War will be such that they:

1. Gaurantee Imperial Military primacy
2. Protect Trade and hence Taxation on Trade
3. Encourage Stability and Slow Growth

In fact, more broadly, that would be all Imperial Policy. But the military and the rules of war would be crafted with this in mind. Yes, they would provide a stable, mostly-safe environment and occasionally meddle in planetary affairs, but only where it satisfied the above points. They aren't interested in stopping all conflict (a wise stance, as it is a hopeless ideal), but they won't brook anyone trying to usurp the level of Imperial Power. They'll look at most decisions in a light that is military, political, diplomatic and economic (or at least those who are at the higher levels and craft the ROEs, campaigns, and declarations of hostilities will).

I think it is just the kind of multi-dimensional depth that makes the Empire interesting and the universe seem 'real' - because motivations aren't simple, people rarely have single motivations and often have conflicted goals (officers who want to protect the people as they took an oath, but who also know who pays their salary, as one example).
 
I was wondering when someone would trot out that delightfully sentimental and wholly illogical piece of claptrap.
Geez Larsen, that's a bit heavy handed, isn't it? :eek:

I survived a war (in fact i've seen combat in four different theatres). To me, I couldn't give a foetid dingoe's kidney if we won or lost... the most important thing was to be able to get back to my family. So, for me anyway, surviving was what it's all about. My personal opinion, anyway..... no offence ;)
 
Rotters wrote:

"Geez Larsen, that's a bit heavy handed, isn't it?"


Rotters,

Not hardly and definitely not in the face of wishful thinking and willful ignorance. Large sections of Western society seem to think that if they ignore war, if they simply recite rote phrases ("It's bad for children, trees, and other living things"), if they keep their head under the sand deep enough and long enough, war will simply go away. Does that sound like an effective way to tackle any problem to you?

Strangely enough, the folks who are most likely to chant that mealy minded mush about war, who are most likely to try and wish it away, are the same folks who try and work to solve the other social ills afflicting humanity. They'll tackle racism, classism, and any 'ism' you got - except militarism. They choose to ignore war, refuse to face the actual realities of war, reduce war to the level of cant and euphemisms, just like the Victorians did with sex and with the same lack of results.

Please don't think I mean to glorify war, I don't. I mean to BURY it. To solve our species problem with war, we first need to face that problem squarely. A first good step would be to refuse to recite all the usual pap and pablum that disguise the true nature of war in layer after layer of soothing, and ultimately meaningless, words.

"I survived a war (in fact i've seen combat in four different theatres). To me, I couldn't give a foetid dingoe's kidney if we won or lost... the most important thing was to be able to get back to my family. So, for me anyway, surviving was what it's all about. My personal opinion, anyway..... no offence ;) "

Please believe me there is none taken. Being in the middle of it as you were, being at the sharp end, you know how wasteful, degrading, and wretched war is. You've faced it, came through it. Would you reduce it to level of comfortable cant; 'No winners, only survivors' or 'Two villages fighting can only score one'? Can what you saw and experienced be so blithely dismissed? Or should war be squarely faced and tackled? At the end of the day, which is more honest and which is wishful thinking?

I've been fortunate enough not to have been a combatant. I've also been unfortunate enough to have seen war and it's immediate aftermath. I worked under the 'midnight sky at noon' in Kuwait after the '91 ceasefire, ink black plumes of almost liquid smoke lining the horizon. The volcanic vent 'black smokers' found in the mid-oceanic rifts look so much like them. As we surveyed the damaged industrial plants war left behind, more than once our noses told of some poor bastard who died alone and unseen and whose presence hadn't even been suspected because the blowing sands had covered him up.

Thanks to Soweto necklaces, gasoline no longer reminds me of lazy summers mowing lawns and, thanks to the Highway of Death, Chanel No. 5 no longer reminds me of smiling women in cocktail dresses gliding across dance floors. That scent will be forever linked with the smells of burnt pork and shit; the true and final odor of humanity. Strolling by the perfume counter in a department store is no longer very pleasent.

I've paid the irregular road tolls demanded by teenagers with Kalashnikovs in Nigeria and have seen the droves of Tutsi refugee women in Uganda each with her right arm off at the elbow. They used machetes for that.

I've seen the hordes of preteen slave soldiers recently disarmed, deloused, and removed from the Sudan. I've seen the results of Paul Simon's delightfully silly song lyrics too, the 'bomb in the baby carriage triggered by the radio'.

But of course, none of that is talked about in polite society. Please Mr. Whipsnade, you're making a scene, war hurts children. Yes, it does. I know because I've seen the children. Now what are we going to do about it?

Reciting 'No winners' and 'War hurts children' in some brain dead, knee jerk reaction everytime someone brings up the topic may be soothing to you, but it did nothing for the thousands of women sent to rape camps in the Balkans simply because they were Muslim. However good and superior it makes you feel, it still doesn't do anything to solve the problem. All it does is perpetuate society's preference for willful ignorance. As for me, I'd rather make a scene.

In 2003, we cluck our tongues and shake our heads about the Victorians and sex. All those lives lost to childbirth and veneral diseases. Simple problems really requiring just as simple solutions, but those silly Victorians just couldn't talk about it. They wrapped it all up in euphemism and whispered that such things weren't talked about in polite society.

We so righteously look down our nose at the Victorians because of being so silly over such an little problem. Perhaps future generations will look down their noses at us after they have had the moral courage to face up to humanity's innate love of violence and solve that little problem. Here's hoping.


Sincerely,
Larsen
 
Originally posted by Ron Vutpakdi:
Ah, but the rules/laws of war are usually agreed to and followed only by powers that feel that they have the upper hand or have something to lose.
The other side of rules of war is that they are usually only applied to "worthy" opponents.

For example, the British rarely if ever applied such rules to Native Americans, Africans, Indians, the Irish, or any other "unworthy" opponents. Nor did/does the US in similar cases.

In the Australian case, it is still regularly argued that there was never a war against the indigenous population.

In my personal opinion, it is useful to separate individual, sporadic acts of violence from warfare as such. The first has occurred in all human societies, and no doubt in pre/near-human groups as well. The latter requires a certain level of social organisation. That means that it can be eliminated (made very rare), although the first probably can't be.

I'm no fan of pacifism. Its effect, ultimately, is conservative. What it boils down to is that resistance to oppression can only be expressed in certain approved ways, and is otherwise illegitimate. Of course, it also criticises the repression of the powerful, but such repression will continue anyway. Its effect is therefore one-sided. I start getting a bit Malcolm X at this point, and start defending resistance to injustice as being properly waged "by any means necessary" (and only such means as are necessary).

I get annoyed by pacifism and nonsensical platitudes being portrayed as the opinion of the Left. Of course, that portrayal ultimately comes from sections of the liberal left. But these sections coexist with "cruise-missile Leftists", who are essentially soft cop conservatives, as well as those who share my view.

But this is a silly off-topic rant. What does it mean for the Imperium?

Well, first of all, it means that the Imperial Rules of War will be applied in a hypocritical manner. If a force that is seen to be acting in the interests of the Imperium, that is, the interests of the local elites, breaches the Rules of War, they have a better chance of getting away with it than a group that is acting against their interests.

If we add agents provocateur into the mix, we can actually find the Imperium actively encouraging breaches of its "rules".

Blowing the whistle on this is dangerous, and thus a legitimate activity for a PC group.

What, you didn't think that this stuff wasn't directly connectable to designing scenarios?


Hopefully I won't be responding to any flames against my opinions...

Alan Bradley
 
As far back as anyone with an open mind cares to look, war has been with us. 'Hooray for Cave 83 and the hell with everyone else' is much more than a joke on a Brooks & Reiner '2000 Year Old Man' recording. War is part of what makes us human.
well, factually, most people live their entire lives without doing anything significantly violent.
 
I don't see why a proactive desire for peace is always so derided as "Hippy Crap". While it is true in a generalized way that Hippy Politics are often half-baked misinformation lauded as truth, I can safely say that I support the notion of NOT having any of my children run over by a tank or for them to step on a land mine. Violence may indeed be human nature or whatever, but it really serves no viable purpose now, when you get down to it. I am first to admit that I find it fascinating as a topic of historical rumination, but that's where it should stay, as a testament to the folly of the Human Mind. If war was so natural and necessary, then why do governments spend so much time and money to snowjob people in to going to them?

Apart from alien invasion (my only "justifiable" reason for war) It really serves no purpose but to destroy. Which is fine I guess... if youre a nihilist. I think its sort of Hippy Envy at work... War is bad for Trees and Children, just as a world without trees Or children is bad for War (because everyone is dead) I think the problem is, people don't want hippies to be right...

I have yet to see a Serial Killer or Mass Murderer use "Its Human Nature!" as a defense for a violent act. I guess the only Law of War is that there is no Law.

omega.gif
 
Ok decide if this thread is about the Laws of War as they apply to Traveller or the old generalized debate about 'War'. One stays in The Lone Star the other goes into Random Static.

Hunter
 
Larsen. Don't get me wrong, I'm not necessarily anti-war. I am quite pro-military, but have issues with the use of the military by it's political masters. I have no problems with countries invading other countries for the resources if they want them, just as long as they are honest about it. Anyway, this is a discussion for Random Static not Lone Star.

As people have said the rules are more guidelines, if the Imperium decides a war between systems has gotten out of hand and is starting to hamper free trade through the area, I'm sure a few Naval Squadrons and Army Divisions would see themselves routed to the area to restore trade (which is after all, ideally, what the Imperium exists for).
 
Gentlemen,

My apologies to all. I've managed to single handedly 'rant-ize' this thread enough for it nearly to be moved.

I'll step out and let the cooler and wiser heads discuss the topic. Why my head suddenly was no longer cooler or wiser I have no idea! My pills, my pills, where are my pills...

Again, my apologies.

Sincerely,
Larsen
 
Back
Top