Humane

June 28, 2021
The effort to make warfare more “civilized” has sapped energy from the peace movement and led to America’s “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to this provocative history from Yale law professor Moyn (Not Enough). Highlighting Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s belief that “making war more humane only allowed it to break out more often or drag on endlessly,” Moyn points out that many of the international laws established in the 19th century failed because they “didn’t apply or were ignored when it came to counterinsurgent and colonial war.” After WWII, the threat of U.S. air power helped to maintain peace in Europe, even as America went to war in Asia. The revelation of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam “added fuel to the fire of America’s last major peace movement,” while public outrage over the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq only “diverted from deliberating on the deeper choice they were making to ignore constraints on starting war in the first place.” Moyn also sheds light on the rise of drone warfare and “targeted killings” during the Obama administration. Unfortunately, he doesn’t fully wrestle with the differences between wars of aggression and those of self-defense, which somewhat undermines his case. The result is a stimulating yet inconclusive rethink of what it means to regulate war.

July 15, 2021
A searching look at the rise of the "endless war" the U.S. is now waging. "There is no single arc to the moral universe that guarantees that progress comes without regress on other fronts," writes Yale Law School professor Moyn. The way in which contemporary war is fought, at least by American standards, has become increasingly "humane," discounting the devastation it wreaks on identified enemies. Today, civilian populations suffer fewer casualties as targets are isolated and then hit with drones or Special Forces operations. The author contrasts this new approach to war with the conflicts in the last century, in which untold millions of civilians died, with cases in point being Vietnam and especially Korea, which, with good reason, Moyn considers "the most brutal war of the twentieth century, measured by the intensity of violence and per capita civilian death." The author locates some of origins of the comparatively sanitized wars of the present in abolitionist and pacifist movements of the 19th century, although more interesting are the seeming contradictions he identifies in writers such as Carl von Clausewitz, who held that "the point of engagement is annihilation"--which would, oddly enough, then usher in peace. The contradictions remain: Making war a business of killer machines and a handful of highly trained soldiers does not necessarily make it any more just. However, Moyn notes, some of the present insistence on a more humane approach to fighting comes from our revulsion in the face of such horrors as Abu Ghraib and My Lai. Never mind that, as Moyn adds, humane war is also the product of what he calls "lawyerliness" on the part of the Obama administration, which sold the public on the idea that "his policies of endless and humane war, though not exactly what they had signed up for, were morally wholesome." "Humane war" may seem an oxymoron, but Moyn's book will be of interest to war fighters and peacemakers alike.

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July 2, 2021

This book makes the case that justifications for war have become increasingly complex in response to arguments for peace from the treaties of The Hague and Geneva Conventions and assorted organizations and international law theorists. Historian Moyn (jurisprudence and history, Yale Univ. and Yale Law Sch.; Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World) maintains that the United States has superficially humanized war (especially since 9/11) and become more accurate in attacking designated targets. The concept of more humane warfare challenges those who seek to abolish it as an intrinsic evil rather than opposing particular illegal aggressive conflicts or ameliorating the atrocities within war. The author warns that those who seek control over others as in war may choose to do so more easily through various surveillance methods rather than by physical means. Readers will learn much about the views of post--World War II legal influencers, such as Telford Taylor, Richard Falk, and John Yoo, and may be surprised by the continuity of evolving policies and arguments on hostilities during the administrations of George H. W. Bush through Donald Trump. VERDICT This complex, idea-filled tome may contradict some general readers' assumptions; its subtle argumentation will appeal to contemporary political historians, students of international law, post--Cold War military analysts, and social justice advocates. These are all good reasons to study it.--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC

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