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Comment by indubitable | Hacker News Reader

The 'rules of war' are written by those on top, and they tend to benefit them. Chemical/biological weapons are relatively easy to make for smaller nations, and their development can be disguised. Nuclear weapons are the opposite on both accounts. As an aside, this is a recurring theme throughout history. Chivalry, for instance, had a not coincidental effect of ensuring that knights were very rarely killed in most battles.

Look for what can't be done in warfare and it tends to have a direct link to strengthening (or sustaining) the established powers at the expense of 'lesser' forces.

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Reminds me of the statement issued by the Shining Path in Peru (who once killed everyone in village with machetes/axes, down to a six month old infant). They believed that "human rights " were an instrument of oppression, designed to weaken the power of revolutionaries.

> "...Freedom, equality and fraternity were advanced bourgeois criteria in the past. But today, since the emergence of the proletariat and more like class organized in the Communist Party, with experiences of successful revolutions, construction of socialism new democracy and dictatorship of the proletariat, has historically proven that "human rights" serve the oppressing classes and operators who run the imperialist states and landlord-bureaucratic bourgeois states in general..."

> Chivalry, for instance, had a not coincidental effect of ensuring that knights were very rarely killed in most battles.

Which is the goal of any 'rules of combat' - to formalize the process in a way which reduces the actual damage done (or at least, the damage done to those writing the rules).

It's no different to the way cats will hiss and growl and spit at each other but will usually try and avoid actually fighting. Both sides have too much to lose unless a fight is really necessary.

It had nothing to do with reducing the actual damage done. Disemboweling an unarmed and yielding infantryman was considered perfectly chivalrous. Chivalric warfare only applied to the self preservation of those in power at the time, which would be the knights and other ruling class individuals.

Reducing the damage done to people who matter, i.e. knights...

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