Prosecution for War Crimes as Part of War Termination: Missed Opportunity in the Gulf

Abstract

This paper examines the prosecution of war crimes as part of the war termination process. Unique aspects of the American strategic culture are identified to demonstrate how ensuring accountability for violations of international law accords with our preconditions for employing military force. The humanitarian and pacifistic foundations of the law provide a framework for constraints on the means and methods of warfare, as well as limiting the suffering of the victims of war. Although the United States and its Coalition partners scrupulously adhered to these standards, Iraq demonstrated a total disregard for these rules in the Gulf War. Because neither the United States nor the United Nations established accountability for war crimes as a political aim of the war, the war termination did not include enforcement of applicable standards through war crimes trials. As a result, Operation Desert Storm failed to be a defining event for the primacy of international law in the new world order....War termination, War crimes, Persian Gulf War

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 17, 1993
Accession Number
ADA266913

Entities

People

  • Thomas R. Taylor

Organizations

  • Naval War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Human Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Economic Sanctions
  • Employment
  • Foreign Relations
  • Geneva Conventions
  • Genocide
  • Intergovernmental Organizations
  • International Law
  • International Organizations
  • Law
  • National Politics
  • National Security
  • New York
  • Persian Gulf
  • Personnel Management
  • Second World War
  • Treaties
  • United States

Readers

  • Military History / Militaries and War Studies
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.
  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.