The Law of Reciprocity in War keeps the Belligerents Concerned about the Do’s and Don’ts in the Combat.

An essential element of the laws of war is the law of reciprocity.

In fact every party in a conflict has to abide by certain established rules. It is done so that it is expected that the enemy will do the same as a reaction. If I abstain from killing women and children during the war, I will expect that the enemy will do the same, and vise versa. if I treat the prisoners of war in humane manner, I can claim that the enemy should also do the same. This principle is fundamental in any rule of war that can be considered as a more or less an explicit agreement between the parties. The breach of a rule by a party will entail the penalty the other party.

The laws of reciprocity cannot be made to deal the culprits within the states. If such an actions are allowed then it will become a revenge and not a rule of law.This is called the prohibition of private revenge. It is the State that ensures compliance of the rules and does not allow the individuals to take the law into their hands.

Argentinian POW

But in war there is obviously an authority that can guarantee that the excesses committed by the enemy will be paid in the same coin. Thus reciprocity is the key element of the penalty. We can also draw a very important conclusion from this. The laws of war apply within a culture or a civilization that recognizes such laws and do not apply outside that cultures. When two entities belonging to different civilizations or cultures are at war they may tend to deviate from the rules of law. The other party is therefore not obliged to go according to rules of the game. For example if a civilized country is at war with savage people who do not recognize any humanitarian rules and start killing the prisoners of war in a brutal manner, that country in retaliation will also kill the enemy mercilessly.

The Japanese were notorious for their cruelty to prisoners of war in World War II. That was one of the reasons that the Japanese soldiers would prefer to commit suicide rather than go into enemy hands, because of the fear of brutal treatment in retaliation.

POW Execution by Japanese

The Spanish conquerors in America did not apply all those rules of chivalry against the Indians that they observed in the wars in Europe. Indeed at the time of discovery, they did not even recognize the legitimacy of the states. The non-Christians and their lands were considered as open property, which every Christian state was justified to seize. The Pope with the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1495 divided the world into two parts. He drew a line on a map by assigning one part to Portugal and the other to Spain, because the other Christians had every right, rather a duty to seize the lands of the non-Christians.

I think this philosophy was at the back of mind of the European nations that came out in 18^th century to colonize the world. Some people gave it the name of “white man’s burden”, implying that it was the duty and responsibility of the white man ie the civilized nations to capture the lands of backward nations with an aim to make them civilized.

This is how an wheel of neo-slavery was set into motion, and the world peace became the first casualty.