I'm all for "Be excellent to each other", but in war, the first and foremost consideration is whether the strategy is effective. I'm not a big Clausewitz scholar, but I can't imagine that he or any other general would accept a strategy that prioritises the well-being of the opposing side to the point of their own side admitting defeat.
As I see it, the only way that we can have "Rules of War" is by proving that a war can be won while maintaining them. Otherwise (and unless you have a magic wand to make humans non-aggressive), these rules are worse than useless, because they limit the more ethical side, while making them lose to the less ethical.
Friend, I have respect to where you are coming from, and ask you to please think a little longer term.
You don't prioritize the well-being of the other side, but you do want to avoid radicalizing them. The more reasons they have to surrender, the more likely they are to surrender, thus ending the conflict sooner AND keeping the end conditions one they are comfortable living under.
If instead they feel they are in a fight to the death, then you have a much tougher battle on your hand because they will fight to the death. You'll still win (maybe) but it's going to cost you in personelle and time and money.
Next aspect. Moral of your troops. Everyone wants to be a hero, very few people join the military because they want to kill. And those that are in it to kill tend to be toxic leaders which is really bad for the rest of the team.
"Rules of war"/"rules of engagement" are methods that allow your troops to maintain their humanity and sense of purpose under horrific situations. You give up that and you are now undercutting the fighting power of your own forces.
The military did not come up with these ideas to make themselves weak. They came up with them and enforced them because they are the source of strength.
But that's the question - how do you fight honorably and win? How many examples can you offer (from any time in history), where the winning side conducted the campaign in a "gentlemanly fashion" (or however you want to call it), won, and got the respect of the losing side and lasting peace?
To address your concern-- if two people are fighting and one thinks "I won't hit below the belt" that person is at a tactical disadvantage. Even worse if they think the other side has also agreed to that rule.
So in that sense you are absolutely correct.
But I invite you to think bigger. If one side lays siege to another side's city, and offers terms of surrender, the city needs to believe that the terms will be honored otherwise they don't surrender.
Which is a large part of European history during the period from the middle ages up until Napoleon figured out how to use artillery, i.e. hundreds of years of examples where "fighting honorably" was the winning strategy.
Notice that Germany and Japan are now strong allies.
Also notice that many people think the cause of WWII was that the WWI surrender forced unsustainable terms on Germany thus fueling the resentment that lead to WWII.
> Also notice that many people think the cause of WWII was that the WWI surrender forced unsustainable terms on Germany thus fueling the resentment that lead to WWII.
And many historians dispute it. Partly because those terms were standard for the time and better then what Germans themselves planned to enact after they win.
And partly because the German population never believed they lost the war. They believed they would winning absent "stab in the back". That is why the allies insisted on actually conquering Germany with no in between solution. The victory had to be absolute.
I wouldn't quite say that the former Confederate states fully respected the Union's victory as saying something good about the North [0], and in some ways still don't, but otherwise it is a good example.
if you can't count on your troops to be disciplined enough to follow your rules of engagement, how can you count on their discipline to follow your other orders? If you cannot show them that you are also disciplined, how do you expect them to maintain their respect for you as a leader?
If you don't have honor, what are you fighting for? Troop moral is what wins wars.
what's worse than death? Not having anything worth living for.
very very few people find honor in being the most evil person. And those few who do make very bad leaders; you either avoid having them in your armed forces or you limit their impact.
If one of your squadmates is an "I'll do anything to win" person, how can you trust them not to ditch you if that is their best survival option? Prisoner's dilema situations are common in battle
I encourage you to visit a US military cemetery. You will sometimes see shrines to the military virtues. Courage, honor, pride, family, discipline all rank pretty high.
In WWII the Allies didn't take any steps to avoid radicalizing the other side. We implemented starvation blockades and fire bombed cities, killing millions of enemy civilians. They surrendered unconditionally because they were utterly destroyed and had no more capability it resist.
I think the lesson is that you can never be sure that you will meet your military objectives—failure is always a possibility—and the blowback from that failure will be more limited if you appear to have conducted your war with adequate respect for noncombatants.
Failing to conquer a nation (or depose its government, or secure some land, or defend a border, or whatever your objective is) may be shrugged off by your own nation, and you may even be able to normalize relations after some time. But if you abuse the noncombatant population, you often create bitter enemies, generational hatred, and global pressures on your society from third party observers. In the worst case this eventually escalates to mutual threats of genocide and total war.
Even if a nation wins a conflict through sheer brutality, they may lose the occupation, or the reconstruction, or good relations with important partners, or all of the above. And they may create an enemy who will one day return with a vengeance.
From my reading of history, there's no straightforward correspondence between the ethics of the winning side and its ability to have good relations with the losing side. As a clear anti-example, in later stages of WW2, the allied forces were very willing to engage in attacks on population centers to achieve a decisive victory faster (particularly: Dresden, Hamburg, Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and the resulting relationships between the allied countries and Germany and Japan could not have been more positive even if the most optimistic poet in 1944 were to written lyric poetry about the best possible future.
To be clear, I'm not advocating for cruelty, but I'm wondering if going back to an approach of "surrender or we'll kill you all" would save more lives than the current situation of "do everything you can to avoid doing too much harm at any one time", which ends up prolonging conflicts indefinitely.
> resulting relationships between the allied countries and Germany and Japan could not have been more positive
I think there may have been a "lesser evil" aspect to that. The Allies had good relationships with West Germany almost immediately after the war because they were saving the defeated Germans from the USSR. Japan reconciled with the USSR but there are still tensions between Japan, Korea, and China over the war.
In both cases the aggressors were the first to engage in atrocities, and their atrocities were much more severe than those inflicted upon them. So both seem like a unique case. Additionally, both were part of a global conflict, which is uncommon. In a global conflict there aren’t many bystanders who can effectively implement sanctions or apply diplomatic pressure.
> I'm wondering if going back to an approach of "surrender or we'll kill you all" would save more lives than the current situation
This is just as likely to provoke a “fight to the death” response from the defender which is often enough to prevent you from achieving your objectives. There are very few large conflicts where the objective is simply “eliminate the defenders”.
As I see it, the only way that we can have "Rules of War" is by proving that a war can be won while maintaining them. Otherwise (and unless you have a magic wand to make humans non-aggressive), these rules are worse than useless, because they limit the more ethical side, while making them lose to the less ethical.