AUA Seminar 2008 (Opening Remarks)
Ideas matter
As in most fields, from criminality, to medicine, to psychology we focus on the deviations, unhealthy, violations, rather than on the positive – we see the glass half-empty rather than half-full and expect perfection in an imperfect world. Moreover, armed conflict is one of the more blatant examples of human imperfection.
Armed conflict is bad. There is a slippery slope.
Anything goes once the moral compass is thrown out.
Consider what might be if we did not even try to articulate these standards or have a vocabulary for discussing it.
Can’t comply conform behavior to an unarticulated standard
Can’t discuss standards, have a public discourse about unannounced standards
Can’t assume human decency and moral compass will guide and restrain sua sponte
Human beings express their values through rules
Rule of law is a state of mind
Voluntary compliance – self-discipline
Violations must be punished – can’t make a scarecrow of the law
Just as we celebrate rescuers and resisters to genocide, through such initiatives as Aurora, we need to celebrate those who conduct war with care.
Collateral damage – externalities of war. Just like environmental degradation – belligerents externalize their costs, sacrificing civilians and mutilating their own troops psychologically and even physically – scarring them for life. What does one do with the guilt and inability to redeem or atone?
Failure to articulate standards and enforce them, lowers the bar on barbarity.
Destruction and violations do not just happen – they are formulated in the corridors of power – need to assure that civilian leaders and the public insist on “civilized” actions, even in the face of barbarity. Just as people/the public at large holds companies and governments accountable for health and security, it should also hold them accountable for uncivilized behavior.
We can’t fight barbarity with barbarity. Must fight barbarity with superior values more effective means.
When private civilians face barbarous armed forces, then barbarians win. Such calamities call for public/community action through the police powers of the national and international community.
Blurred lines between non-belligerents and armed forces. The democratization and decentralization of the means of destruction.
People are used as human shields, as pawns in a game, atrocity is sometime to create a sensation or generate fear and anxiety, or move public opinion.
Particular in groups, human beings are prone to stampede, by overreacting to perceptions of imminent threat or overreacting in a preemptive or retributive way to non-imminent threat.
Soldiers as well as decisionmakers and the public at large need to be aware of the psychological forces that often uncontrollably drive human behavior.
Training and awareness of IHL fosters the self-restraint that is essential for the prevention and remedy of such destructive behavior.
