War Crimes

War crimes are an issue of particular concern to the field of trauma because they embody the capacity for organized and civilized societies to deliver collective acts of inhumane and amoral violence against vulnerable individuals and groups. The concept of imposing ethical standards on behavior in war seems a stark contradiction. However, studies of animal behavior highlight how much aggression is ritualistic and embodies many prohibitions. As the scale of warfare has become increasingly mechanized and organized by central governments, in the context of more sophisticated political and legal systems, ethical arguments about the rights and wrongs of war have proliferated. These principles have tried to counterbalance the immense capacity for destruction and terror that war can inflict while being justified as legitimate.

A range of war crimes has driven much of the call for collective action; these include the use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons and ethnic cleansing. In this context, the rights of injured soldiers and prisoners of war and the protection of civilians in combat zones are also central issues. Although “rape and pillage” are accepted elements of medieval and ancient history, such acts in the carriage of war in the 21st century can evoke extraordinary condemnation and rebuke.

The United Nations is given substantial mandates to intervene in countries and conflicts where war crimes are knowingly committed. The modern phenomenon of peacekeeping operations involves the external imposition of potential force for the protection of civilians and other ethnic minorities often in failed political states. In this regard, the role of peacekeeping is to provide an ethical example about the protection of individuals and resolution of conflict by civilized means, a role somewhat distant from the typical training of military personnel in a conflict.

One of the most basic human emotions is revenge against enemies and their humiliation. Societies under threat often externalize danger and vilify perceived outsiders or minorities. These groups are particularly vulnerable in politically unstable and totalitarian systems, being exemplified by the treatment of the Jews in the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany. The Holocaust highlights how even societies that have a long tradition of jurisprudence, profound theological and philosophical understandings about morality, and protection of individuals by the statutes of government can all too readily disintegrate under the face of threat and political manipulation.