The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World

This thought-provoking collection of original essays, edited and written by American history professors ( and one Britain), defines the limitations that Western societies have attempted to impose on themselves in warfare, and the extent to which these attempts have been influenced by the development of new weapons. Adam Roberts's ``Land Warfare: From Hague to Nuremberg'' focuses on the non-use of poison gas in WWII as one of the successes of voluntary restraint, but he goes on to note that the introduction of the machine gun, tank, submarine and bomber increased humankind's capacity for destruction. The present century, despite the optimism at the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, saw the intensification of violence and the adoption of indiscriminate forms of ``total'' war. Tami Biddle Davis's ``Air Power'' makes the point that the most effective aerial bombardment campaign in history, Operation Desert Storm, was also the most indiscriminate. As for the Bomb, David Alan Rosenberg's ``Nuclear War Planning'' argues that nuclear weapons remain largely outside the sphere of international controls. In the concluding piece, ``The Laws of War,'' Paul Kennedy and George Andreopoulos discuss the intersection between human rights and the laws of war, especially in connection with the current debate over ``humane intervention.'' (Jan.)