The General

Recent writings on war and violence by philosophers have understandably concentrated a lot of attention upon those provisions of the jus in bello that concern the immunity of noncombatants from direct attack and targeting. I say this is understandable because the history of so many twentieth-century wars tells of the staggering loss of non-combatant life, limb, health, and property, very much of it attributable to the tactic of aerial bombardment. It is one highly commendable achievement of the International Red Cross movement and the United Nations to have made the immunity of noncombatants an important element in the Geneva Conventions via its Protocols, so that where international law was once silent about the victimisation of noncombatants, it can no longer be so. The success of the movement to write these provisions into international law provides some evidence against the claim, discussed in Chapter 1, that just war theory is utterly ineffectual.