BOOK REVIEW

The Conduct of Hostilities Under the Law of InternationalArmed Conflict by Yoram DinsteinCambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010 (2nd Edition)

Laura M. Calkins

Published online: 11 May 2012# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

In this concisely crafted volume on the laws of international warfare, ProfessorDinstein finds a touchstone for setting parameters on the often unrestrained employ-ment of violence in war in the “St Petersburg Declaration Renouncing the Use, inTimes of War, of Explosive Projectiles Under 400 Grammes Weight,” promulgated in1868. This Declaration found that the “paramount precept” of the law of internationalarmed conflict is “alleviating as much as possible the calamities of war” by setting“the technical limits at which the necessities of war ought to yield to the requirementsof humanity” (p. 5). Dinstein himself argues that the St. Petersburg Declaration andsimilar international conventions should be known as the “law of international armedconflict,” or LOIAC, to distinguish it from international human rights law, which maybe relevant in wartime but which does not define the rules of interstate hostilities.Many of the early LOIAC conventions required a contracting state to disseminateinformation on the requirements of the instruments throughout its military commandstructure, but recent protocols have begun to declare that legal officers must beavailable to advise military commanders on the application of LOIAC in battle (pp.31–32). In 1996, the International Court of Justice issued an opinion that states mustnever make civilians the object of attack and therefore must never use weapons thatcannot distinguish between civilian and military targets; in this way, the opinionupholds what Dinstein sees as “the most fundamental pillar of LOIAC,” which is “thedistinction between civilians and combatants” (p. 62).

This work provides detailed discussions of international protocols covering con-ventional weapons including projectiles, non-detectable fragments, booby traps, landmines, naval mines, torpedoes, incendiary and cluster munitions, as well as weaponsof mass destruction including chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. It drawsattention to new features of warfare, such as the complicated position of moderncontract laborers working as auxiliaries to combat forces, noting that the 2008Montreaux Document sets out a new intergovernmental understanding on the status

Hum Rights Rev (2012) 13:249–250DOI 10.1007/s12142-012-0223-5

L. M. Calkins (*)Department of History, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-1013, USAe-mail: laura.calkins@ttu.edu

of such employees (p. 122). The author also accounts for other complexities ofmodern warfare. He discusses the circumstances under which civilians can lose theirnon-combatant status (pp. 146ff) and declares that the “intentional intermingling ofcivilians and combatants contrived to lead to an ‘excessive’ number of civilianscasualties”—the use of “human shields”—is “a flagrant breach of LOIAC” (p. 152).

Three chapters are devoted to detailed presentations on specific protectionsafforded to people and property in LOIAC. Most unexpected is Chapter 7, whichcovers the “protection of the environment.” Dinstein cites a 1996 International Courtof Justice opinion which announced that “respect for the environment is one of theelements that go to assessing whether an action is in conformity with the principles ofnecessity and proportionality [in warfare]” (p. 197). Dinstein also discusses theimperfect but landmark agreement of the United Nations General Assembly entitledthe “Convention on Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environ-mental Modification Techniques” (the ENMOD Convention), which includes pro-tections for the earth's biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and outer space(p. 199). In this same vein, the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Courtheld it to be a war crime to launch a military attack knowing that it would cause“widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment” when theattack was inconsistent with specific military objectives (p. 206).

Dinstein has written a law book which he contends is designed not just forinternational lawyers but “also as a tool for the instruction of military officers” whocan be taught during peacetime “the constraints on their freedom of action imposedby law” (p. xiii). He reserves an entire chapter for discussions of war crimes, orders,command responsibilities, and defenses in law against charges of war crimes. Inanother example of the timeliness of this book, Dinstein maintains that the state of thelaw as it is currently emerging from the decisions of the International CriminalTribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is that “the commander is accountable for hisown failure to act (act of omission) rather than for the direct acts (of commission) ofthe subordinates” (p. 271).

This volume is the third in a series of works on international law by the distin-guished author; the others are War, Aggression and Self-Defence (Fourth Edition,Cambridge University Press, 2005) and The International Law of Belligerent Occu-pation (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Professor Dinstein has served as bothDean of the Faculty of Law and President of the University at Tel-Aviv Universityand is widely recognized as a leading expert in the field of international legal studies.This book will confirm and bolster that reputation. Intricate issues are broken downinto sub-problems and made accessible to a wide readership, and there are amplerunning footnotes throughout which substitute for a bibliography. This volume is veryhighly recommended for human rights, international relations, military history, and ofcourse international legal studies collections.

250 L.M. Calkins