Samuel Johnson once remarked: ‘Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’ It seems doubtful that the issue by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague of an arrest warrant for war crimes for Vladimir Putin will cause his mind to concentrate on much beyond what usually concerns it, but nonetheless the action taken by the ICC inevitably raises a lot of difficult questions—not least the idea of a lawful war. As Ernest Hemingway pithily put it: ‘Never think that war, no matter how necessary nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.’
Where does the idea that some conduct in war is unacceptable come from, when the very notion of war itself is unacceptable to so many people?
Unchivalrous conduct
The idea of war crimes has in fact been around for much
