The Limits Of Violence: An International Political Research Of The Laws Of War

Before the second half of 19th centuary, the use of violence in the war was a legal right of nations. There were no decent endeavors to restrict the use of violence in the international community. However, the European governments and the international lawyers began intentionally to restrict the use of violence in the war by establishing international norms from then on. Their endeavours drove directly the birth and development of the laws of war. Digging out the logics of evolution of the laws of war is of vital importance to its future development and the international efforts of peace-maitaining and violence-restricting.The laws of war are a sort of international norms and can be considered as the shared beliefs among the states about the appropriateness of the violence in the war. Human rationality can be divided into wertrationalitt and zweckrationalitt. Wertrationalitt equals to the shared beliefs among the states about the appropriateness of the violence in the war. It is necessary for the states to share the common wertrationalitt for their efforts to maintain an old international norm or establish a new one. The evolutionary process of the laws of war is shaped simultaneously by the wertrationalitt and zweckrationalitt. When wertrationalitt changes from the original"unrestricted violence"principle to the"restricted violence"principle ("humanitarian"principle), which means the states change their judgements to the violence from admiration and worship to denouncement and abhorrence, the shared beliefs among the states about the appropriateness of the violence in the war will alter accordingly. The states will deem some behaviors in the war an excess of violence and hence should be restricted or forbidden. Although the change of Wertrationalitt shapes the general track of development of the laws of war as a whole, the evolution of an individual law is influenced by the zweckrationalitt (the military necessity). If the military necessity is quite high, the new laws will be difficult to establish, although they can restrict the extent of violence. Once the military necessity abates, the new law will come on successfully.The change of wertrationalitt can be traced to political revolution in the western world. The ideas of liberalism and the resulting political revoltion facilitated the western governments to change their the beliefs about the appropriateness of the violence in the war, which in consequence made them to build up some international laws to restrict the violence. The causes that result in the change of military necessity either come from some pure military factors, such as the progress of military technology, the emergence of a new military doctrine, or are the conseuqences of the political revolutions (reforms), such as the establishment of the new political systems.Moreover, the culture and ideology have the impact on the validity boundary and the abidance of the laws of war. The more homogeneous a specific culture (or a specific ideology) enjoys with the western culture (or liberalism), the more strictly abidance of the laws of war will be expected by the state with the specific culture (or the specific ideology). Whereas, the more heterogeneous a specific culture (or a specific ideology) is, the more probably the state with the specific culture (or the specific ideology) will violate, even refuse to abide by the laws of war. That is because the humanism which is the philosophical foundation of the laws of war roots in the western civilization and the outcome of renaissance, enlightment movement and liberal democracy. It cannot be applicable to all states, especially the non-western world. Besides, the humanism cannot totally counteract the influence of racism or nazism. Therefore, when the war breake out between western countries and non-western countries, the belligenrents still will possibly violate or refuse to comply with the laws of war.