CIVILIAN OBJECTS

This doctoral thesis, now published as a monograph, provides a thorough analysis of one of the most crucial concepts of the modern law of armed conflicts (LOAC), namely military objectives. The concept is crucial because the targeting of such objectives is directly linked to the principle of distinction, which in turn is a cardinal tenet of LOAC. It requires that the belligerents must always make the distinction between civilian objects and persons on the one hand, and military objectives (persons and objects) on the other, and attack only the latter to the exclusion of the former (Article 48 of the Additional Protocol I of 1977 (AP I)). Thus, the concept of military objectives is cast amidst the protection of civilians during the conduct of hostilities (whereas Geneva Convention IV of 1949 concerns their protection outside the context of combat action). It stands to reason that this protection is an essential part of the modern law of armed conflicts. Moreover, it is only superficially surprising that AP I was the first treaty to generally define military objectives. In the nineteenth century, the civilian hardly appeared in the LOAC. It was at that time simply taken for granted that civilians were outside the reach of military action; they would not participate in it and concomitantly would be spared from attacks. The social environment of the past was such that military action and civilian presence were reasonably distinct: the battlefield was the pitch for military action, other areas were bluntly aloof from such action. The twentieth century completely changed these parameters. Air power allowed a belligerent to wreak heavy havoc into all the lands of the adverse party. Industrialization and modernization of the army made civilian objectives relevant from a military standpoint, in particular industrial plants. Finally, the difference between civilians and military personnel was blurred, since civilians participated in a variety of forms to military operations (guerilla warfare is but one of the most emblematic forms of such participation). All these factors, among others, explain that the majority of victims in modern armed conflicts are civilians, not rarely up to a proportion of 90 per cent.1 The question of military objectives remains also highly relevant when viewed from another perspective. It is a concept often applied in modern military campaigns, where air power is of the essence. However, it gives rise to uncertainties at least on two accounts. First, the definition is open-ended and contextual; it must be operationalized in single cases and this gives rise to legal uncertainty. Indeed, Article 52, § 2, AP I, the cardinal provision in this regard, provides only for criteria which have to be applied by the belligerent to single sets of facts in order to determine if an object is a military objective. Second, there are marked differences of interpretation between the US and the continental European conceptions of military objectives, especially in certain areas of targeting such as ‘economic targets’ (i.e. targets chosen for their economic value to the war-sustaining effort). Notwithstanding the relevance of the concept of military objectives, there is hardly a wealth of monographic treatment of the subject matter. Indeed, no monograph in the English language was directly and exclusively devoted to that notion before the present publication. This new monograph is thus more than welcome.

MILITARY OBJECTIVES

This chapter explores the rule of distinctions, which governs the conduct of hostilities in international humanitarian law (IHL). It clarifies that the rule particularly targets objects under the two 1977 Additional Protocols, other IHL treaties, and customary law. The 1977 Additional Protocol explicitly focuses on the overarching obligation to distinguish between civilian objects and military objectives in the conduct of hostilities. The chapter also recognises how certain objects have no military function by their nature, but the virtue of their location makes an effective contribution to military action. Moreover, any civilian object could become a military objective as a consequence of its use for military functions. The chapter then highlights the special protection to hospitals and cultural property.

Customary international law 619. The importance of the environment is universally acknowledged. As the ICJ articulated the idea in its Advisory Opinion on Nuclear Weapons : the environment is not an abstraction but represents the living space, the quality of life and the very health of human beings, including generations unborn. Attacks in wartime against military objectives (as defined supra 275) often jolt the environment. The prime example is an attack against oil facilities (on their nature as military objectives, see supra 330). An air strike against an oil refinery may give rise to toxic air pollution. When an oil storage facility is demolished, the oil may seep into the ground and poison water resources. When an oil tanker is sunk at sea, the resultant oil spill may be devastating to marine life. 620. The Advisory Opinion on Nuclear Weapons went on to say: States must take environmental considerations into account when assessing what is necessary and proportionate in the pursuit of legitimate military objectives. Respect for the environment is one of the elements that go to assessing whether an action is in conformity with the principles of necessity and proportionality. The principle of proportionality has been discussed supra 408 et seq . It follows from the Court's dictum that, in keeping with the principle of proportionality, ‘an attack on a military objective must be desisted from if the effect on the environment outweighs the value of the military objective’. 621. The legal position under present-day customary LOIAC is that, when any attack is launched, ‘due regard’ must be given to the protection of the environment. Since, broadly speaking, the environment as such is a civilian object (see infra 641), even if an attack is planned in an area with little or no civilian population, it may have to be abandoned should the harm to the environment be expected to be ‘excessive’ in relation to the military advantage anticipated (see supra 408). Conversely, (i) it is very difficult to measure on a purely speculative basis the expected damage to the environment from a conventional attack; and, anyhow, (ii) ‘if the target is sufficiently important, a greater degree of risk to the environment may be justified’.

This article explores the international legal mechanisms designed to shield civilian objects from harm during armed hostilities, focusing on international humanitarian law (IHL) provisions. The research scrutinizes core tenets – distinction, proportionality, and precaution – as they appear in the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols, paying close attention to how these norms function in today’s urban combat environments. By examining recent policy developments such as the 2022 Political Declaration addressing explosive weapons use in populated areas, Security Council Resolution 2573, and documented breaches in current conflicts, this work highlights persistent discrepancies between legal prescriptions and their real-world application. The methodological approach combines doctrinal legal examination with analysis of customary IHL norms, drawing on the ICRC’s comprehensive study encompassing 161 rules. Research outcomes reveal that despite a solid legal foundation for protecting civilian objects, persistent difficulties emerge in enforcement, accountability, and responsiveness to evolving warfare technologies. Concluding recommendations emphasize the need for strengthened compliance through better national-level implementation, enhanced civilian casualty documentation systems, and more robust international accountability mechanisms. The analysis further demonstrates that contemporary hostilities increasingly blur the operational boundaries between civilian and military spheres, particularly through the widespread use of dual- use infrastructure, cyber capabilities, and remotely operated weapons systems. Urban density, the intermingling of civilian objects with military objectives, and the reliance on networked command-and- control architectures complicate the practical application of distinction and precaution, often producing cumulative patterns of harm that are difficult to attribute to discrete attacks. This structural complexity necessitates a re-examination of how legal and operational frameworks assess proportionality in environments where effects are temporally diffuse and spatially dispersed. It also underscores the need for enhanced accountability mechanisms capable of tracing indirect and systemic impacts on civilian populations beyond the immediate kinetic event. Finally, it highlights the growing importance of integrating technological, legal, and humanitarian perspectives to ensure that civilian protection remains a central normative constraint in the conduct of modern warfare.

The ICTY has been the first international judicial body since WW II to investigate and adjudicate attacks violating the principle of distinction. The reason why the ICTY OTP first and the ICTY Chambers later have resorted to art. 3 ICTYS is the crime of wanton destruction not justified by military necessity does not allow for the prosecution of civilian deaths and injuries resulting from unlawful military operations whenever they are justified by military necessity. It is important to remark that attacks against civilian objects, or attacks against military objectives which are expected to incidentally cause excessive civilian damage, are not criminalized in the RS in relation to all kinds of armed conflict. A different matter is the possible inclusion of indiscriminate attacks in the crime of directing attacks against the civilian population or civilian persons and in the crime of directing attacks against civilian objects.Keywords: civilian persons; ICTY; indiscriminate attacks

INDISCRIMINATE ATTACK

Up to now, the Chinese government has only made very general comments on the application of international humanitarian law to cyberspace. There are indeed Chinese academic papers concerning this issue, but the discussion of the principle of distinction is limited both in length and in academic depth. Compared with the West, research by Chinese scholars on this topic is still in a relatively preliminary stage. At present, there is no specific deconstruction or clarification of the application of the principle of distinction in cyberspace in Chinese academia. As the first paper written by Chinese scholars specifically devoted to this question, this piece provides a different perspective by injecting the positions of Chinese officials and the views of Chinese scholars. The authors aim to clarify whether the existing rules are still completely applicable in the cyber context, and if needed, to find out what kind of improvements and clarifications can be made. Weighing in on these debates, we argue that despite the potential technical challenges and uncertainties, the principle of distinction should be applied to cyberspace. It should also be carefully re-examined and clarified from the standpoint of preventing over-militarization and maximizing the protection of the interests of civilians. For human targets, the elements of combatant status identified in customary international law and relevant treaties are not well suited to the digital battlefield. Nevertheless, cyber combatants are still obligated to distinguish themselves from civilians. In applying the principle of distinction, we argue that it makes more sense to focus on substantive elements over formal elements such as carrying arms openly or having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance. In interpreting “direct participation in hostilities”, the threshold of harm requires an objective likelihood instead of mere subjective intention; the belligerent nexus should be confirmed, and the causal link should be proximate. Applying the “cyber kill chain” model by analogy helps us to grasp the whole process of direct participation in hostilities during cyber warfare. For non-human targets, all military objectives must cumulatively fulfil both the “effective contribution” and “definite military advantage” criteria, which are equally indispensable. The same requirements apply to dual-use objects. Furthermore, certain data should fall within the ambit of civilian objects.

International Humanitarian Law and Prisoners of War

Military necessity is a legal concept used in international humanitarian law (IHL) as part of the legal justification for attacks on legitimate military targets that may cause harm, even worse conditions affecting civilians and civilian objects. Thus, the principle of military necessity means that military forces in planning their military operations are allowed to take into account the practical needs of the military situation at a certain moment and the necessity to win the war. This study aims to limit the application of military necessity principles by focusing on the Lieber Code focused as an appropriate limitation called the "greatest theoretical contribution to the modern law of war" so as prevent war victims. This qualitative research used a descriptive approach to collect data systematically, factually, and quickly according to the situation when the research is carried out. The results of this study showed that the Lieber Code does not limit all military necessities but only to some necessary elements for obtaining military objectives. Therefore, military necessity is not an exception to the law of armed conflict but rather explicitly states the restrictions that have been regulated in the law of armed conflict.

Putting Lethal Force on the Table: How Drones Change the Alternative Space of War and Counterterrorism

The requirement of proportionality in the conduct of war, as distinct from the resort to war, now in force in conventional and customary international law treats disproportionate attacks as one species of indiscriminate attacks, that is, as a particular way of violating the prohibition on attacks on civilians expressed by the principle of discrimination. Current law, as a result of a substantively meaningless diplomatic maneuver during the negotiations over the Geneva Protocol I (1977), always uses the term “excessive” instead of “disproportionate,” but the terminological switch has no non‐political significance whatsoever. Thus, what most people would simply call a disproportionate attack is, strictly speaking, indiscriminate in that it may be expected to cause excessive civilian harm. In Protocol I indiscriminate attacks are prohibited and next defined in general terms: “Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are … of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without discrimination” (Art. 51(4)). Then, one important sufficient condition of an indiscriminate attack is stated: “Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate: … an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated” (Art. 51(5) (b)). Thus, an attack is indiscriminate in the sense of disproportionate if the losses of civilian life, injuries to civilians, or damage to civilian objects are predictably “excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” Importantly, the strongest military power, the United States, has officially and expressly recognized this fundamental treaty article concerning proportionality, Article 51, as expressive of customary international law, even though the United States has never ratified Protocol I as a whole (Matheson 1987: 426).

In the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, military conflicts have often been characterised by profound asymmetry between the armed forces of the belligerent parties. There have been relatively few open hostilities between the highly industrialised states of Europe and North America since the end of the Second World War. When these states do go to war nowadays, they tend not to go to war with each other; instead, their opponents are typically either (i) economically less-developed states with relatively modest military capacities—as in the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, or the 1982 British war with Argentina—or (ii) even more modestly equipped sub-state military insurgencies—as in the US-led counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan since 2002. In conflicts like these, the military forces of highly industrialised states hold a twofold advantage. First, they have more war-fighting resources: warfighters, weapons, munitions, ships, planes, tanks, and communications/intelligence infrastructure. Second, these states also enjoy an advantage with respect to the technological capacities of the equipment at their disposal; the militaries of modern industrial states don’t just have more war-fighting resources than their less-developed military opponents, they have decidedly better resources as well. A number of contemporary authors have argued that there are distinctive problems in the ethics of warfare which arise because of these ‘military-technological divides’ (Dunlap 1999; Kahn 2002; Boot 2006). According to these authors, profound disparities in war-fighting capabilities can make it especially difficult for warring parties—on either side of the divides—to pursue their military objectives in an ethically defensible manner.KeywordsMilitary ConflictLethal ForceMutual RiskLethal ViolenceMilitary HardwareThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

У статті розкривається сутність основного закону війни. Показано, що основний закон війни визначає залежність ходу і результату війни від політичних цілей і від співвідношення сил воюючих сторін. Використовуючи сучасні підходи у військовій методології основний закон війни розглянуто як модель, адекватну реальному ходу війни, що охоплює широкий спектр чинників обстановки і не втрачає при цьому своєї конструктивності. Такий підхід дозволяє осмислити основний закон війни у контексті нових форм ведення війни у сучасних умовах.

在中國大陸國務院發表的｢2010年中國的國防｣白皮書中，提及要讓「國防交通動員建設紮實有序」 ，強調「鐵道運輸」是保障軍事作戰的重要能量之一，並且將交通戰備建設融入到國家交通體系建設中，甚至置重點在於提高戰略通道保障能力、戰略投送及保障能力和交通搶運搶修能力。 早在西元1948年時，當時的中共中央軍委制定的《鐵路軍運暫行條例》中便指陳：「軍事運輸為鐵路的第一等任務，在軍運計劃上，鐵道部無條件地執行中國人民革命軍事委員會之命令，保證軍運之安全、迅速與便利」，因此從中共自建政以來，一直將鐵道建設視於國防建設的一環。 中國人民解放軍的軍事戰略強調「積極防禦」，其中陸軍部隊的軍種戰略，已由早年的「區域防衛」型戰略，向「全域機動」型的地面部隊轉變，除了積極研建可進行快速投送部隊之軍規制式載台之外，更以時速可高達200公里以上的高速鐵路做為解放軍兵力機動快速投送的選項；中國大陸境內的鐵路與高速鐵路平時可用於旅客交通運輸，促進國內經濟發展，達成國家戰略目標，戰時可轉為軍交運輸，用於軍事戰略之目的，因此透過高速鐵路的建設，不僅可奠定中國大陸境內的交通運輸基礎建設，在軍是運用上亦可彌補解放軍部隊遠程兵力投送輸具之不足，符合中共的「寓軍於民」、「平戰一體」之國防建設理念。 建政以來中共在舊有鐵路基礎上，不斷以「提速」來增加列車運轉的速度，最後更汲取日本及歐洲高速鐵路經驗，決定另外修建「客運專線」以發展高速鐵路，迄今已擁有全世界規模最大、里程數最長、營運時速最快的高速鐵路網，本文自解放軍「積極防禦」的軍事戰略理論中探討中共是否可能藉由高速鐵路網路的建成，以達成軍隊「全域機動」的軍事目的。