War Law: Understanding International Law and Armed Conflict

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

English criminal law dates from the reign of King Henry II in the 12th
century. Laws concerning prisoners of war date from the 1859 Battle of
Solferino in northern Italy. Finding agreement among most parties to a
dispute required decades, but during World War II, thanks to
international conventions, most sailors, soldiers, and aviators from
Western countries who were captured—even by Hitler’s
forces—survived. Japan had not approved the conventions, and
conditions in its POW camps were much worse, with much higher fatality
rates.

Now, in the aftermath of 9/11, the administration of George W. Bush is
rejecting procedures that predate World War I, even some that predate
the Magna Carta. Prominent members of the Bush administration have
argued that the Geneva Protocols on POWs do not apply. Bush and his
associates have outsourced torture by sending captives to sites from
Guantбnamo Bay to Syria and by redefining torture, and they have
rejected the tradition in place since the 12th century that a suspected
criminal is entitled to either a trial within a reasonable period of
time or release from confinement. The events of 9/11 were horrendous,
but the security threat to America is less than what it was in the eras
of Hitler and Stalin.

Surely it is not in the best interests of the United States or of its
allies, including Canada, that there should be no international law.
Treatment of enemy captives may well become precedents for treatment of
captured Americans and Canadians. Nor will the United States forever
remain the world’s most powerful country. Disregard for international
law creates dangerous precedents for others, not all of them rogue
states. America, says Byers, should respect it now.

Authorities from Noam Chomsky and Mel Hurtig on the left to Lewis
MacKenzie on the right endorse this book. Hopefully some Americans in
positions of authority will read it and take heed. Given that good
relations with the United States are the Harper government’s highest
foreign policy-priority, Canadians should read it too.