Governing War: How Laws against Weapons are Made and Broken.

During World War II, both civilians and militaries witnessed the terrifying effects of the new technology of war. Strategic bombing and unrestricted submarine campaigns blurred, if not eliminated, the boundary between battlefield and homefront. The introduction of chemical weapons exacerbated the unrelenting horror of trench warfare. Strong effort was made in the interwar years to prohibit the use of "uncivilized" technology. Despite these attempts at limiting war, France, Germany, and Britain defected from the strategic bombing and submarine agreements in the first months of World War II; only the chemical weapons protocol remained secure. This variance raises the question, under what conditions do states adopt or reject the laws of warfare? This paper argues that the current literature on the war is insufficient. Traditional realist or rationalist analysis would dismiss the so-called laws of war; yet there are instances in which states have limited use of a weapon, even if it could have given them an edge on the battlefield. Constructivists, in turn, have pointed to the strength of the norm or, as Jeff Legro argues, the organizational culture of the military, but many of these explanations are tautological. This paper uses this critical evaluation as a starting point to develop new hypotheses on the laws of war. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]