How international is international humanitarian law? The Laws of Yesterday's Wars 2: From Ancient India to East Africa, together with its companion volume, The Laws of Yesterday’s Wars: From Indigenous Australians to the American Civil War (Brill-Nijhoff, 2021), attempts to answer that question. It offers a culture-by-culture account of various unique restrictions placed on warfare over time. Containing essays by a range of laws of war academics and practitioners, it approaches the laws of yesterday’s wars from a wide cross-section of history and culture, seeking to find any common ground and to demonstrate a history of international law outside the usual confines of its ‘development’ by Europeans and its later ‘contributions.’ This volume includes studies on Japanese, Islamic and Eastern Native American rules of war.

This book offers an exploration of unique laws and customs placed around warfare throughout history, from Indigenous Australians to the American Civil War.

How international is international humanitarian law? The Laws of Yesterday's Wars 3: From Highland New Guinea to the Island of Malta, together with its companion volumes, The Laws of Yesterday’s Wars: From Indigenous Australians to the American Civil War (Brill-Nijhoff, 2021) and The Laws of Yesterday's Wars 2: From Ancient India to East Africa (Brill-Nijhoff, 2022), attempts to answer that question. It offers a culture-by-culture account of various unique restrictions placed on warfare over time. Containing essays by a range of laws of war academics and practitioners, it approaches the laws of yesterday’s wars from a wide cross-section of history and culture, seeking to find any common ground and to demonstrate a history of international law outside the usual confines of its ‘development’ by Europeans and its later ‘contributions.’ This volume includes studies on Mongol, Iban and Ottoman rules of war.

How international is international humanitarian law? The Laws of Yesterday's Wars 2: From Ancient India to East Africa, together with its companion volume, The Laws of Yesterday's Wars: From Indigenous Australians to the American Civil War (Brill-Nijhoff, 2021), attempts to answer that question. It offers a culture-by-culture account of various unique restrictions placed on warfare over time. Containing essays by a range of laws of war academics and practitioners, it approaches the laws of yesterday's wars from a wide cross-section of history and culture, seeking to find any common ground and to demonstrate a history of international law outside the usual confines of its 'development' by Europeans and its later 'contributions.' This volume includes studies on Japanese, Islamic and Eastern Native American rules of war.

This unique new work of reference traces the origins of the modern laws of warfare from the earliest times to the present day. Relying on written records from as far back as 2400 BCE, and using sources ranging from the Bible to Security Council Resolutions, the author pieces together the history of a subject which is almost as old as civilisation itself. The author shows that as long as humanity has been waging wars it has also been trying to find ways of legitimising different forms of combatants and ascribing rules to them, protecting civilians who are either inadvertently or intentionally caught up between them, and controlling the use of particular classes of weapons that may be used in times of conflict. Thus it is that this work is divided into three substantial parts: Volume 1 on the laws affecting combatants and captives; Volume 2 on civilians; and Volume 3 on the law of arms control. This second book on civilians examines four different topics. The first topic deals with the targetting of civilians in times of war. This discussion is one which has been largely governed by the developments of technologies which have allowed projectiles to be discharged over ever greater areas, and attempts to prevent their indiscriminate utilisation have struggled to keep pace. The second topic concerns the destruction of the natural environment, with particular regard to the utilisation of starvation as a method of warfare, and unlike the first topic, this one has rarely changed over thousands of years, although contemporary practices are beginning to represent a clear break from tradition. The third topic is concerned with the long-standing problems of civilians under the occupation of opposing military forces, where the practices of genocide, collective punishments and/or reprisals, and rape have occurred. The final topic in this volume is about the theft or destruction of the property of the enemy, in terms of either pillage or the intentional devastation of the cultural property of the opposition. As a work of reference this set of three books is unrivalled, and will be of immense benefit to scholars and practitioners researching and advising on the laws of warfare. It also tells a story which throws fascinating new light on the history of international law and on the history of warfare itself.

"Stunning. Sean McFate is a new Sun Tzu." -Admiral James Stavridis (retired), former Supreme Allied Commander at NATO An Economist Book of the Year 2019 Some of the principles of warfare are ancient, others are new, but all described in The New Rules of War will permanently shape war now and in the future. By following them Sean McFate argues, we can prevail. But if we do not, terrorists, rogue states, and others who do not fight conventionally will succeed—and rule the world. The New Rules of War is an urgent, fascinating exploration of war—past, present and future—and what we must do if we want to win today from an 82nd Airborne veteran, former private military contractor, and professor of war studies at the National Defense University. War is timeless. Some things change—weapons, tactics, technology, leadership, objectives—but our desire to go into battle does not. We are living in the age of Durable Disorder—a period of unrest created by numerous factors: China’s rise, Russia’s resurgence, America’s retreat, global terrorism, international criminal empires, climate change, dwindling natural resources, and bloody civil wars. Sean McFate has been on the front lines of deep state conflicts and has studied and taught the history and practice of war. He’s seen firsthand the horrors of battle and understands the depth and complexity of the current global military situation. This devastating turmoil has given rise to difficult questions. What is the future of war? How can we survive? If Americans are drawn into major armed conflict, can we win? McFate calls upon the legends of military study Carl von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and others, as well as his own experience, and carefully constructs the new rules for the future of military engagement, the ways we can fight and win in an age of entropy: one where corporations, mercenaries, and rogue states have more power and ‘nation states’ have less. With examples from the Roman conquest, World War II, Vietnam, Afghanistan and others, he tackles the differences between conventional and future war, the danger in believing that technology will save us, the genuine leverage of psychological and ‘shadow’ warfare, and much more. McFate’s new rules distill the essence of war today, describing what it is in the real world, not what we believe or wish it to be.