Handwave that country A has a way to accurately drop an asteroid on country B and keep the damage to only one city. Is this a war crime?
That would probably fall under some combination of intentionally killing civilians, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, mass killings, proportionality, and military necessity.
Also most countries signed the Outer Space Treaty, one of the provisions being limiting the use of the Moon and all other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes.
Is the city populated only by active combatants? If not, how would it not be a war crime? Would it be any different if country A dropped a nuclear bomb on some random city?
That’s my question. Do the “rules” for a war crime specify such things?
The offence is indiscriminate killing of non-combatants, not really the method of doing so.
It certainly seems like a war crime but is it one as far as the world governments and treaties go? Probably not.
The UN would deem that a WMD:
In 1977, the General Assembly, through its resolution A/RES/32/84-B, affirmed the definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction as “[…] atomic explosive weapons, radioactive material weapons, lethal chemical and biological weapons, and any weapons developed in the future which might have characteristics comparable in destructive effect to those of the atomic bomb or other weapons mentioned above.” - SOURCE
But, there are treaties that cover uses of WMDs and dropping space rocks on people does not seem to be one:
A number of multilateral treaties exist to outlaw several classes of WMDs. These treaties include the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Multilateral treaties targeting the proliferation, testing and achieving progress on the disarmament of nuclear weapons include the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests In The Atmosphere, In Outer Space And Under Water, also known as the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which was signed in 1996 but has yet to enter into force. Several treaties also exist to prevent the proliferation of missiles and related technologies, which can be used as a vehicle to deliver WMD payloads. These treaties include the Hague Code of Conduct (HCOC) and the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). - SOURCE
Remember, the Bush administration found a legal loophole to allow torture.
From the UN definition of War Crimes:
Other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict, within the established framework of international law, namely, any of the following acts:
- Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities;
- Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives;
- Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;
- Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives;
Completely destroying a city would run afoul of several definitions, regardless of the method used. Perhaps a more interesting question would be if a space rock were used against a legitimate military target would that still be an issue.
I’m open to that discussion as well, if that’s allowed.
Violations of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which prohibits deployment of weapons of mass destruction in space, are not ‘war crimes’ but just treaty violations, and there are essentially no penalties other than potentially sanctions against signatory nations that violate the treaty. War crimes are defined by various international treaties and conventions regarding the execution of military action largely affecting civilian populations or utilizing specific weapons, and are typically focused on the actions and orders of specific individuals who can be prosecuted and punished by international tribunals.
Well, they lied, refused independent observers, and prevented detainees from effective legal representation. That’s not so much a legal loophole as just redefining terms and obstructing investigation.
There is pretty much no way to use an orbital weapon like an asteroid that wouldn’t be regarded as a weapon of mass destruction. Well, except something like this, but frankly it is way easier to use remotely piloted drones to assassinate people and blow up wedding parties. “Just like shooting ducks in a barrel!”
Stranger
The International Court of Justice was faced with this very question (in an advisory opinion, not in adversarial proceedings) and dodged it (cite). Essentially, it said that the use of nuclear weapons was not prohibited per se and that the legality depended on the circumstances. The opinion implies that it will be difficult for a nuclear attack to meet the usual thresholds for the use of weapons in international law, but it does not go so far as to rule it out altogether.
And there’s pretty much your answer. “Strategic” aerial bombardment, even using WW-II era weapons and tactics is arguably a war crime.
Modern industrial warfare is two economies tussling over control of territory and commerce. In a very real sense, 100% of the economy is part of the supporting cast of the military. The notion that there are combatants and non-combatants with no gray area in between is a chivalrous notion from the 15th(?) century.
That may be true for the massive world wars of the twentieth century, but more recently, wars have become more compact and confined (and also asymmetrical) again. It’s certainly not correct to say that 100% of the American economy was busy supporting the military during, say, the Gulf War of 1990/91 or even the Afghanistan War of 2001-2021. In such a scenario, the distinction between combatants and non-combatants very much makes sense.
Perhaps. The sanctions currently applied to Russia (if they were more complete), and the sanctions applied to Iran are definitely harming the civilian populace. And that is in fact rather the point.
Admittedly any lethal outcomes to that populace are 2nd or 3rd order effects of the unavailability of parts or food or medicine or whatever. But those are totally state actions intended to visit harm upon the general populace of a hostile power.
If they are not war crimes (and they are not), why not? Beyond just the time-based argument that civilization hasn’t gotten around to outlawing them yet.
Sub-Question (pun intended) :
If the orbital weapon mentioned above were to be dropped in a harbor of a city with a Naval Base, would the collateral damage be a war crime?
I think you already have the answer from above:
Collateral damage is just a euphemism. You might get to argue the nature or value of excessive, but you would be hard pressed to wipe out a city and claim it was proportionate to the military value of a naval base.
Sadly war crimes tend to be judged by the victors, so one might assume that 50% will go without prosecution or punishment.
This is where there are interesting dichotomies in this year’s wars…
The economy of Germany, or Britain, or Japan (or the USA if they could reach it) was a giant assembly line producing the materials to carry out the full scale war effort of WWII and presumably considered fair game, especially with the limited accuracy of the time. However, neither Ukraine nor Gaza are the major ongoing source of the war materials being used. So there is less of a justification for indiscriminate bombing. (I will note that the IDF claims their bombs are specifically targeted). Similarly, civilians in Israel on farms or at music festivals, when it was not engaged in a total war are not sufficiently part of their “military-industrial complex” to justify targeting them. These are a different type of war, where the materials are being supplied form afar (NATO for Ukraine, Iran and other sympathizers for Hamas) from areas deemed not part of the theatre in the current state of those wars.
But the argument “part of the total industrial machine” is always tenuous. They people who make tanks and bullets - sure. The factories that make engines for tanks, or refineries making fuel for them - OK. The homes of the factory workers? The people who pack rations for the troops? The mines where the metals come from? The electrical grid that supplies both those factories and the general population? By the time you reach that level, why would hospitals rehabilitating wounded soldiers be off limits, if the soldiers are just going to be able to resume fighting?
Like much of life, there are grey areas, but we have to draw a hard line somewhere - and that line should be fairly close to actual combat. (Ideally, it should never come down to combat… but humans are humans)
Re. thermonuclear FOBS, some U.S. officials, such as McNamara, were reluctant to claim that the Soviet FOBS missions violated the Outer Space Treaty; see page 28:
I can’t see how it could be a war crime if dropping a nuke on a city is not, but that could change. A war crime is a violation of the laws of war, but those laws can change because they are determined through multilateral treaties, an example being the Geneva Convention. Google research showed me that, more recently, the most comprehensive legal statement on war crimes was the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
If we ever truly evolve, war itself will be an international crime with the perpetrators either killed imprisoned.
Waging aggressive war is already a crime. Which is what Putin was indicted for at the ICC.
While a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) does enter an orbit for a short time, it is not “based” in space any more than a ballistic launched weapon, and indeed, a ballistic trajectory is also technically an orbit that just happens to intersect with the Earth at the target point. Realistically, by the time a FOBS weapon is deployed i.e. in a strategic nuclear conflict and presumably as part of an attempted disabling first strike (since the purpose is to deliver weapons from an unexpected azimuth) treaties have been thrown out the window and the consequences are destruction of human civilization. And, as noted previously, violations of the Outer Space Treaty aren’t war crimes.
Putin wasn’t just indicted for “waging aggressive war”, which is a violation of the principle of Westphalian sovereignty, but specifically for targeting civilian populations and human trafficking of Ukrainian children as a matter of policy rather than incidental or ‘collateral’ harm. Essentially all wars and military conflicts that are not broadly supported by the international community are violations of sovereignty, e.g. the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, and it is virtually impossible to conduct a modern war without severe impact to civilian populations, but repeated bombing schools and hospitals or kidnapping and ‘relocating’ children are terroristic actions.
The use of nuclear weapons should so obviously qualify as a war crime that it doesn’t even seem worthy of debate, and the only reason that this isn’t a universal agreement is that the only nation to use nuclear weapons in war against civilian targets doesn’t want to admit that its military and executive leaders committed war crimes, however ostensibly justified they may have seemed at the time. The is no way to use nuclear weapons, and especially in a strategic exchange, that will not result in disproportionate death and destruction to non-combattants, and indeed, the destruction of nations and cultures.
Stranger