Political strategies with military impact include the formation of alliances, crafting humanitarian law or arms control regimes, and other efforts to leverage diplomacy, law, information, and economics to enhance one's military wherewithal.10 Asymmetry not only acts at different levels, it also takes multiple forms. Ethnic cleansing is a tragic contemporary example, one that led to claims that although the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 may have been illegal, it was nevertheless legitimate.143 Whatever the objective reality, States understandably often demonize their opponents in order to shore up civilian and military morale and garner international support.
Just-war theorist Michael Walzer argues that armed humanitarian intervention is morally justified, perhaps even required, in response to massacre, rape, ethnic cleansing, state terrorism, [and] contemporary versions of bastard feudalism, complete with ruthless warlords and lawless bands of armed men.
From an international legal perspective, PMSCs and their personnel raise a number of controversial issues, such as their status under the Geneva Conventions, individual accountability for misconduct in different jurisdictions and the duty of authorities to survey and screen the actions of firms for potentially abusive behavior. Experts from states with a special interest in international humanitarian law and human rights law complemented the list of participants, together with representatives of the PMSC industry and the NGO community. Whenever governments rely on PMSCs in war zones, they retain a responsibility to ascertain that international humanitarian law and human rights law is upheld, and to exercise due diligence.
Notwithstanding its private-initiative origins, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been the main driving force behind the development of international humanitarian law for 140 years. It was the ICRC that took the initiative, which led to the adoption of the original Geneva Convention of Aug 22 1864, an instrument that is the starting point of contemporary international humanitarian law and a landmark in the development of public international law. Bugnion discusses the origins of the ICRC and the development of the international humanitarian law.
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