Professor Amanda Alexander wrote in 2007:
This paper argues that the concept of the civilian is a specific way of viewing non-combatants that can be traced to the First World War. Before the war, non-combatants were seen by the law and the prevailing culture as citizens. The citizen was potentially and probably aggressive, bound to the fate of his or her state and, therefore, granted only minimal protection by law. The war, however, brought technological changes and a propaganda effort that transformed these citizens into a civilian population. Civilians were essential to the war effort, which meant that they were a target. Yet, at the same time, they were feminized, described as vulnerable and deserving of protection. This cultural shift influenced the way in which the laws of war were understood, leading to the replacement of the traditional categories of law with a military/civilian distinction in the 1923 Hague Draft Rules of Aerial Warfare. In this way the concept of the civilian entered international law.
Civilians today attract the protection of international law and the attention of the world. Among observers of conflict the plight of civilians is arguably the foremost concern. In more theoretical circles, the inviolability of the civilian has become so obvious and crucial that it has been described as the foundation of international order. Yet the very importance of the civilian provokes the questions, what is the source of this concern and what implications does it have for its subject? Some international lawyers presume that it is a timeless principle of international law.2 Others see it as an achievement of the Lieber Code, the Hague Conventions, and/or the Geneva Conventions.3 In this article, however, I argue that the idea of the civilian is a peculiar way of conceptualizing people that evolved during the First World War. When the war began non-combatants were perceived as citizens, who were either voluntarily passive or wilfully dangerous. But after the Germans invaded Belgium Allied propaganda erased the threatening aspect of the non-combatant population and redrew them as helpless victims… Governments and population alike acknowledged the vital role of non-combatants in the modern, industrialized
war machine, while military strategists described them as a key military target. It was this paradoxical reconstruction of non-combatants as both weak and critically important, as both pitiful victims and primary targets, that constituted the new idea of the civilian population.…The civilian has achieved such ascendancy in international law that it is hard to imagine a code of warfare or a world without civilians. Indeed, it is often written that the civilian has long existed as a protected subject of international law.5 Yet both the term ‘civilian’ and the group it describes are relatively new.
…Citizens of an enemy state are enemies too. But if they are not combatants then they are passive enemies… If, however, placing pressure on the general population can
bring the war to a speedy conclusion then it will be allowed as a necessity of war.…During the war, in the ‘theatre of operations’, they could expect little relief. Their property could be destroyed and, if they were besieged, they could be killed by bombardment or starvation.22 There was no obligation to allow ‘useless mouths’ to leave a besieged town.23
…As Captain Liddell Hart argued in Paris, or the Future of War, the old strategy of destroying the enemy’s armed forces was misguided and outdated. Rather, the purpose of war was to destroy the enemy’s will to resist – the moral objective. This objective should be pursued in the easiest and most cost-effective way possible. And now the aeroplane
had exposed the easiest target, the Achilles heel of civilization – the civilian.* Liddell Hart’s expectation that civilians would be the primary target in the next war was generally shared.96 This military consensus also held that it would be useless to try to defend civilians. In the influential Air Warfare, Sherman explains that using aircraft for defence was a misallocation of resources that would ultimately lead to defeat. Anti-aircraft guns, according to Douhet – the accepted authority on air strategy – were also a useless waste of energy and resources.97 In this situation, Douhet asks, ‘How can we defend ourselves against them? To this I have always answered, “by attacking”.’98 The threatened state must send their bombers against the enemy. War would no longer be a battle between soldiers but a contest to see which population would crack first. ‘To put it vulgarly’, as Colonel Fuller wrote, ‘in the next great war [the civilian] is going to be “in the soup”, and what kind of soup will it be? A pretty hot one!’99 Most military writers accepted this development and some actively embraced it.
…Faced with the destructive potential of the aeroplane, states might hesitate to go to war. When they did start a war, it would be sharper and shorter and, therefore, more humane.101 Instead of the appalling slaughter of millions of soldiers as in the last war, Fuller suggested that an air campaign could end a war with only a few thousand of the enemy’s men, women, and children killed.102 He also thought that technical developments might allow non-lethal gases to be used in air raids.103 At any rate, both he and Liddell Hart felt that everyone would attempt to limit the destruction in the hope of future friendly relations between the warring states.104
…Yet even if there were greater civilian casualties than they forecast, these writers agreed that it would still be no more immoral than traditional forms of warfare. Killing civilians in an air raid, they argued, was no worse than the cannon-fodder wars of the past, sinking ships, or starving people.105 Moreover, there was no reason why civilians should be immune from war. When a nation went to war the entire population was involved and the solidarity and capacity of the fighting forces depended on the people at home.106 Indeed, as Fuller suggests, the civil population is responsible for its government and must bear the consequences of its decisions…
…This acceptance of civilians as targets was even shared by some international lawyers. The postwar editions of Oppenheim’s International Law suggested that the development of aerial warfare, the idea of the nation-in-arms, and the spread of democracy had threatened any distinction between the armed forces and civilians. Meanwhile Royse argued that there had never been an effective norm that protected non-combatants and that aerial bombardment directed at civilians was legal.108
…It was not until the 1949 Geneva Convention IV that any protection for civilians was codified, and not until the 1977 Additional Protocols that the principle of distinction was ratified.
