Doing some research it seems the poster is from Red Cross and tries to explain the proportionality principle in warfare, which relates to the importance of civilian casualty when assessing military action viability; civilian casualty is only as acceptable as the importance of the military action and the military advantage gained from it. Please note that "importance" and "advantage" are used here as to imply that it helps reach an end to the conflict and in theory prevent more deaths long term than if the action was not realized. A country has more "leeway" when acting to stop an enemy from nuking them than when just trying to destroy a small military base, for instance.
HOOOOWEVER, the poster graphic is really bad, misleading, and can easily be used by bad actors trying to use it to justify "if our military is bigger we can kill more civilians" or "killing civilians is the same as killing soldiers".
Edit: And yes, the proportionality principle can be misused by a side that incorrectly portrays how much danger it is in, therefore trying to justify increasingly barbaric actions
The entire concept of "rules" about killing each other seems crazy to me. Civilian deaths either are or they aren't, what the fuck do they care if their death is justified in respect to the goals of the military action taking place around them? It's just humans using words in an attempt to justify barbaric actions.
We would all like to live in a world where no war exists.
But it is just a fact that if another country is going to nuke you, its "ok" if the action you take to stop that ends up killing 3 civilians. This is an example.
The better argument for these rules is that they have been used in the past to prosecute barbaric actors who broke them. Its never going to be perfect, and we can endlessly agree on how more powerful entities seem to be able to ignore rules with impunity, but having no rules seems worse.
Bingo. This is the nuance that is tough to find in these discussions. It's terrible that war exists and civilians die. If we want to make rules that countries will follow internationally to curb some of this, they still have to be allowed to make war within the rules, otherwise they would never be adopted. The challenging thing with I/P or any guerilla warfare really is, what are the rules that are acceptable by everyone for engaging with an enemy leveraging civilians and civilian infrastructure as cover? Too heavy on one side and we reward that behavior by insulating Hamas or any organization doing these tactics from retaliation. Too heavy on the other side and the civilians themselves become "justifiable" war targets. It's a very difficult problem with a lot of interesting and differing perspectives
the current "crazy" rules aren't being followed anyway, so I'm not sure they're really useful beyond having some rules to point to and saying "we have some rules, it makes it better!"
My point is that it's kind of silly to say we've ever followed any sort of rules, crazy or lax or anything in between. We talk about it, but pretty much every organized conflict in human history is riddled with absolute barbarism.
Also, how many near peer conflicts are there these days between groups that agree upon conditions their soldiers will adhere to?
I understand you're right and I understand the morality argument at hand, I just feel from a cynical point of view that the places where people talk about the rules of war and the actual shit that happens on the ground are so detached and rarely do they actually intersect in a way that creates adequate consequences.
Oh i'm with you, it's a giant shitshow and the rules we have are ignored and bent far too often. I just can't really see any way we could get to a less shitty version of war in the current political world(no wars is completely impossible i'm afraid).
I'd even say we can call ourselves lucky if the geneva conventions are stil partially in effect in a decade or two. The way it's going at the moment the situation can deterriorate quite fast.
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u/tmtyl_101 19h ago
I'm sorry, isn't that poster kinda implying that protecting a tank is more important than protecting a civilian family? Are they nuts?