War is not a fixed thing. It evolves, and recent years have seen dramatic, even revolutionary, changes. So what characterises modern warfare? What challenges does it pose for humanitarians that are different from the past?
How has warfare changed over time?
In its underlying principle, nothing has changed. Groups of people use weapons to attack each other, inflicting injury and death to attain some objective. But the details have changed out of recognition. At one time, war was waged between uniformed soldiers drawn up in battle lines. Think of late medieval warfare, the bowmen at Crecy and Agincourt, or the cavalry, sabres and muskets of the Napoleonic wars.
Rifles and then machine guns, with faster rate of fire, longer range and greater accuracy, ended the era of soldiers marching onto a battlefield. Fighting was at greater distance, and battles less defined – as in World War I or the Spanish Civil War.
The US military recognises a third generation of warfare – a tactical shift developed by the Germans in World War II, known as blitzkrieg, where attack relied on speed and surprise. Very importantly, manoeuvres were designed to bypass face-to-face contact with enemy forces.
What are the characteristics of modern warfare?
The fourth generation is the era of modern warfare, different again from the past and characterised by high technological advances. In this case, the characteristics are computers, artificial intelligence, remotely guided weapons systems, satellite technology, electronic monitoring and surveillance.
One defining image of modern warfare might be a military commander operating a laptop computer, using it to deliver highly advanced weapon systems to a target many kilometres away. A very small group of soldiers, equipped with technology, can have a far bigger impact than a whole battalion. And they need never be very near the battlefield.
Is this what people mean by surgical strikes and pinpoint accuracy?
Yes. The laser-guided weapons able to turn corners and strike a single building in an urban street gave currency to the phrase "surgical strikes". It suggests that warfare is a very accurate, precise, almost clinical business. This is slightly misleading, as some of the weapons carry enormous explosive payloads. The damage they do to buildings and people is not clean or surgical.
Some of the weapons certainly are designed to land where they are aimed. Many do so with an impressively small margin of error. But there is more to precision than accuracy. Hitting the target means being sure what it is, which means that surveillance information has to be very good.
For example, the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was attacked in error during the Nato strikes following the war in Kosovo. This wasn't because the missiles somehow went "off target". It was blamed on an error in the intelligence-gathering process. Military spokespeople are reluctant to say more than that, for obvious reasons. Fighting wars is not a transparent business. But if the coordinates of a target are wrongly supplied, either by simple human error or through deliberate intervention of enemy intelligence agents, then buildings or people may be unintentionally destroyed.
Similarly, weapons can hit a target with deadly accuracy – even from a plane which is flying too high to make visual recognition possible. This may explain the bombing of marked International Committee of the Red Cross warehouses in Afghanistan, for instance.
Does greater precision mean that fewer non-combatants are injured or killed?
Not necessarily, unfortunately. At one level, the answer seems to be yes. A single strike or series of strikes aimed at a discrete urban target could well cause less "collateral damage" – which is what the US military calls incidental injury to civilians or damage to civilian structures from attacks on military objectives. Certainly the collateral damage could be less than that resulting from days or weeks of pounding by mortars. But then, it may also be true that, because of increased precision, targets in densely populated urban areas are being selected more often than would have been the case previously. So the risk to civilians remains high.
Technology is involved here too. For instance, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, US forces used sophisticated computer modelling to produce detailed CDEs – collateral damage estimates. In July 2003, the Washington Post reported that when military planners estimated that bombing a target could result in the deaths of 30 or more non-combatants, a decision to proceed had to be referred to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
But high-tech warfare is not available to everyone. Conflicts are not always fought between people with access to similar technologies. There is in many cases a great imbalance – known as asymmetry. This itself leads to appalling civilian casualties.
How does asymmetrical warfare lead to civilian casualties?
The most obvious and extreme example in recent times is suicide bombers. The actions usually labelled as terrorism can be seen in part as a response to massively unequal access to expensive weapons systems. Parties in a conflict strike where they think their enemy is most vulnerable. They use whatever resource they think will best do that. The phenomenon of non-uniformed combatants, dressed as civilians or in unmarked vehicles, detonating explosives that destroy themselves and others has expanded dramatically in recent years.
Just how asymmetrical this is can be seen by noting how contrasting developments are moving very quickly in the opposite direction from each other. The US already has uncrewed aerial vehicles – sometimes called robot planes – which it operates from thousands of miles away. It is currently developing robots with sensors which return fire automatically and instantly to within a metre of the source when they detect a gun has been fired. Such machines equipped with cameras could do house-to-house searches. The principle seems to be to keep troops as far as possible away from the danger zones.
Meanwhile, on the far end of the symmetry, insurgents and other groups are using people themselves as weapons. Their dying is not something to be avoided, but to be sought. And of course there is no attempt to minimise "collateral damage". The effect and presumably the intention, for instance, of the attacks on the twin towers on 11 September 2001 was to kill very large numbers of civilians.
Of course, there are still many conflicts which do not depend either on technically sophisticated and hugely expensive weapons systems or on suicide attacks. These, such as ongoing wars in developing countries, also directly affect civilians in a way that wars in earlier eras may not have.
How do wars in developing countries draw in civilians?
Another image of modern warfare, familiar from television news, might be a civilian pick-up truck driving around a town or village in Africa or central Asia. On the vehicle will be members of a local militia or rebel group, brandishing small arms and light weapons – pistols, assault rifles, machine guns and grenades. Some may be children, perhaps forcibly recruited into the militia and brutalised, threatened or drugged.
Whereas trained soldiers in an army are taught international humanitarian law and have a line of command to give legal orders and set out rules of engagement, informal militias are likely to have no such structures. Weapons are cheap and very widely available – much more so than training in international humanitarian law.
One result is that such militias affect the everyday life of civilians – perhaps attacking them, stealing food or goods, keeping them in fear, disrupting services. Whereas an army operates within the law, militia groups run by warlords or rebel leaders become the law. They freely engage in illegal activities in the areas they operate, perhaps taking over the lucrative drugs trade, people trafficking, or illegal trade in, say, diamonds. This all disrupts the lives, livelihoods and safety of civilians, who are among the very people that the laws of war are intended to protect. It also prolongs the fighting, since powerful people are making money from it.
Are the laws suited to modern warfare?
People argue about this. At one level, the underlying principles of the laws of armed conflict – or international humanitarian law – are applicable to any situation. The obligation to restrict force to what is militarily necessary, to minimise civilian causalities, and to treat non-combatants with humanity ought not to vary according to different technologies. But it is equally clear that precise laws about prisoners of war, or the distinction between combatants and civilians, are no longer as easy to define and apply as they were in 1949 when the Geneva Conventions were first drafted.
Listen to our expert, Charles Garraway explain the principles and practice of international humanitarian law.
Ideas for discussion with students
- Asymmetrical warfare isn't a modern invention. Think of Vercingetorix fighting the Romans or the tactics used against the US forces in Vietnam. There are many other examples throughout history, of partisans and guerrillas fighting a superior force using what they had at hand. Discuss with students the difficulties that emerge when conflicting parties fight by different methods and use different "rules". One major difference is timescale. Militarily weaker parties are happy to operate on longer timescale than superior forces which want and expect quick victories. Discuss why this is. Talk about past and modern examples.
- Although it is often said that wars are getting bloodier, with more and more combatants and civilians killed, studies do not bear this out. The death toll in World Wars I and II were enormous. Even the horrific genocidal slaughter in Rwanda did not reach the numbers of men, women and children killed on the western front. Invite students to look at why fewer people are dying in wars. Mention the role of the United Nations, and its peace-keeping initiatives as well as international humanitarian law. Do students have hope for the future?
- Discuss the disparity in the number of combatants injured on either side in modern warfare. It is estimated that during the Gulf War of 1991, Iraqi forces lost around 100,000 men. This compares with about 140 on the side of the US-led Coalition. Kosovo is seen as the first war in which the victors did not lose a single combatant. Are students surprised at this? What implications might it have for the way wars are fought in the future?
- Some of the technological advances that have already happened can seem like something out of science fiction. Discuss the idea of wars being fought by armed robots, operated remotely or pre-programmed to respond. Will this make the world a safer or a more dangerous place?
- Discuss entirely different forms of warfare fought without armies or military weapons. There has been some talk of cyber wars, in which conflicting parties might aim to disrupt each other's information or communication networks, including government operations or banking systems. Think through the potential effect on civilians. Would the impact on them be as great as a conventional war? What safeguards in terms of protecting them from harm could there be?
| 
