CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

minority and all parties have to be satisfied that they have more to gain from peace than
from continuation of the conflict. In such circumstances the peace is likely to be fragile,
and beyond the means of the state apparatus to enforce. This will result in the
requirement for an outside power to underwrite the peace process, more often than not
with military force. We must expect, then, a continued requirement for military
intervention to ensure the spread of peace and security.
As with European wars before their 17 th Century statization, most of the violence of
new wars is inflicted not on the military forces of the opposing side, but on the civilian
population. Kaldor calculates that whereas ‘(a)t the beginning of the twentieth century,
85-90 per cent of casualties in war were military * . … … … (b)y the late 1990s, the
proportions of a hundred years ago (had) been almost exactly reversed, so that
nowadays approximately 80 per cent of all casualties in wars are civilian.’ 32 Again, as
with pre-Westphalian Europe, this is not a matter of a significant number of unfortunate
accidental consequences of war, but a matter of deliberate targeting. Whether the result
of a policy of ‘cleansing’ or eradication, or in order to force support for one side or
other, the civilian population has become the primary target in new wars. As General
Sir Rupert Smith says: ‘The battlefield is increasingly conducted amongst ‘the people’.
‘The people’ are now part of the battlefield, or ‘the people’ are treated as an adversary
and driven out (as revealed, for instance, in recent practices of ethnic cleansing.’ 33 A
fundamental tenet of jus in bello is being not simply flouted but turned on its head.
Worse, as such violence is carried out in order to intimidate and terrorise, it is invariably
extreme and uncontrolled; a breakdown or absence of discipline – itself a consequence
of the involvement of non-professional forces – tends towards an orgy of violence and
sexual abuse inflicted on a largely undefended population. All of this is often further
exacerbated by the growing role played by so-called ‘child soldiers’: dispossessed
adolescents brought up in a moral vacuum and an atmosphere of testosterone,
aggression and hatred. The particular impact of child soldiers will be considered in
detail in Chapter 4.
* We should note, however, that for major wars such as the First World War a large proportion of these
will only have been military by virtue of the war – they were conscripts not professional soldiers.
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