I’m not sure where or when I came under the illusion that America and the world had become more civilized and reasonable than in centuries past. Maybe it was optimism inspired by the imperfect attempts at preventing world wars through the League of Nations and United Nations. The Geneva Protocol of 1925 also made an attempt at making war more “civilized” by banning chemical and biological weapons for those who signed. (The U.S. didn’t sign until 1975, and military experts note that poison gas wasn’t as easily used or controlled as bombs, etc., which were much more effective at mass killing, so military leaders agreed to its ban.)
There are also “rules of war” based on International Humanitarian Law (IHL), including the Geneva Conventions, which ban targeting of civilians, including women and children. It also requires humane treatment of prisoners, prohibiting torture.
None of these customs, agreements, or organizations have proven to be a deterrent for the brutalities involved in 20th and 21st century wars. Trials for “war crimes” provide a smoke screen for the virtuous winners of wars to paint the losers as far more barbaric than themselves, violators of international norms that are only selectively applied. The prohibition of genocide during war and peace has not prevented instances in Africa, Asia, or Eastern Europe in just the last 50 years (https://genocideeducation.org/resources/modern-era-genocides/).
I’ll never forget the day in March 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq because we supposedly feared that Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction” or WMD (with which the U.S. and others are abundantly supplied). I just couldn’t believe our military would start a war without being attacked. The U.S. under George W. Bush invaded a weaker country in the Middle East because we were afraid of what they might do. After the charade of WMD was exposed, as was the false connection between Iraq and the 2001 attacks by Al Qaeda, and the brutalities of torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, our shaky leg to stand on as a world leader in some sort of moral world order (always questionable) collapsed.
Today, although Vladimir Putin controls the information within his country and presents ludicrous claims about Nazis and persecution of Russians in Ukraine, his real motives are clear to the rest of the world: increased power and wealth in a dream of a modern Russian empire. It is also true that he may have seen Ukraine as a staging area for future NATO military expansion. Some suggest that one justification for his invasion is that he was afraid of what NATO might do.
The sentiment that “all is fair in love and war” goes back to the late 1500s. The rules of war are as meaningless to Putin as they might have been to Genghis Khan, Vlad the Impaler, or Union General Sherman in his Civil War “March to the Sea.” The use of the A-bomb in WWII is still debated as possibly saving lives compared to a protracted invasion of Japan.
People have been killing each other ever since we lived in caves, using everything from rocks and clubs to the most sophisticated “smart bombs” and unmanned drones. For every generation, new weapons make killing easier and more efficient. In America today, civilians in many states have access to some of the most deadly weapons ever produced. Laws protect those who “stand their ground” because they “reasonably believe” lethal force is necessary “to prevent death or great bodily harm.”
The weapons have “improved” over the years, but it’s our human impulses that truly need improvement. We have been in a never-ending arms race that continually, and predictably, results in the destruction of generations of young people and entire societies. There is something wrong with a world that accepts war as a given, but tries to make it somehow “humane” or “civilized” with cosmetic rules that aren’t followed. Attacking another country out of fear of what they might do wasn’t justified in the past, and isn’t in the present. War as a solution is just as barbaric today as it was for our earliest ancestors. Does our modern fear or greed make using only the “accepted” means of war any better than using a club or a spear? Our world is just as barbaric today as it was thousands of years ago, but somehow we imagine that we are a more advanced civilization. Tell that to the people of Ukraine who have nowhere to hide and few weapons of self-defense.
Allen Woods is a freelance writer, author of the Revolutionary-era crime novel “The Sword and Scabbard,” and Greenfield resident. His column appears regularly on Saturdays. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.