Foreign Secretary Pym wrote to Thatcher with regard to the way in which our action would have to be publicly justified and its legality defended. I believe our position would be immeasurably strengthened if we had given a warning to the Argentine government, requiring the aircraft carrier to stay within the narrow zone. He attached:
a draft of a possible warning message which we could ask the Swiss to convey urgently to the Argentine government. This is no way alters the substance of the decision we took yesterday. But I believe it would greatly strengthen our hand in dealing with criticism at home and abroad once an attack on the carrier had been carried out. (Signals of War, p.253)
My question is :
Does each side of the belligerents need to issue a warning message illustrating what targets are to each other during the war they’re fighting?
Is it part of some international laws?
No, they do not have to do that, there is no law about warnings and targets…
It MIGHT be a defense to a War Crime charge which involved doing harm to civilians if the civilians were somehow warned and didn’t take heed.
The UK may have had agreements with other countries to not expand the war into the Argentinian mainland, or the territory of other countries, and they had declared that was their policy anyway, but Pym was just saying that they could issue warnings if they detect naval movements in Argentinian coastal waters…
Remember this is the air craft carrier going north, with the submarines following it with permission to sink it IN international waters. Its always suggested that the submarines did detect it international waters, and readied torpedoes… but didn’t get the shot in. That is, they had been authorised to sink her, and would have sunk her, but she was speeding along so she got back inside the line by luck ? . Who knows… the CO of the submarines may not have felt like sinking a ship that was not obviously headed out to war, but rather trying to making haste up there for a civil duty (protecting the border with Uraguay, Brazil … ),
Pym was saying he wouldn’t like the Argentinians to have been able to claim the aircraft carrier had accidentally strayed into international waters, eg navigation error - the heading was correct but the wind or tide causes sideways drift so it drifts off to the side rather than going exactly to the heading.
He didn’t want a repeat of the “oh what, you just sunk the General Belgrano instead of sending it home ??? Not even a warning shot ?? Hundreds killed to make a headline …” situation…
Thank you very much for your informative explanation.War situations are always more complicated than we think.
If the reference being made here is to ARA General Belgrano, the warship sunk by HMS Conqueror during the Falkland Islands war, it was not a carrier. It was a cruiser.
The action was entirely legal. The ARGENTINE NAVY said it was legal, and I’d take their word for it in front of anyone’s, wouldn’t you? No serious person who understands the laws of war at all thinks it was illegal, and I suspect even when Argentina’s President mentions it and complains about it, they know full well it was a legal act.
The idea a belligerent needs to announce what they’re attacking is preposterous.
There is no general obligation to give advance warning of an attack on a target, and indeed such an obligation would be a very odd one. But there are some limited situations where a warning is required.Article 57 of the First Protocol to the Geneva Convention requires it in cases where the attack may affect the civilian population (but subject to exceptions on tactical grounds):
Article 57 - Precautions in attack
[…]
2. With respect to attacks, the following precautions shall be taken:
[…]
(c) effective advance warning shall be given of attacks which may affect the civilian population, unless circumstances do not permit.
Thank you very much, Schnitte.