Civilian Casualties in Modern Warfare: The Death of the Collateral Damage Rule
Participants of equipped forces are sent to battle to eliminate opponent combatants. They are not sent to eliminate private citizens. Nevertheless, modern battles inevitably outcome in much more private fatalities compared to military fatalities. This article analyzes the civilian casualties guideline, among the main functional rules controling the conduct of hostilities, that basically just permits private casualties when they are incidental to an assault on a genuine military target. The guideline is checked out in light of the changing nature of war over the last 2 centuries consisting of the moving proportions of military to private war-related fatalities. The article eventually questions the proceeding credibility of this guideline when, in current years, the overall statistics for war-related fatalities expose that private deaths are significantly greater after that military fatalities. The civilian casualties guideline is meant to offer protection to private citizens in batt...