From Ami:
snip
Civilian law is convoluted enough as it is. Military law can be
outright wacky. As the saying goes, "all's fair..."

But both FM 27-10 and the Geneva conventions say that all isn't fair.

Of course there are rules in war. Our discussion has centered on such
rules. There are rules in love too (else only "9 Commandments", etc).
That cliche seems to stem from the tendency for passion to override
reason in the heat of love/war.

In
particular, both parties to war are expected to try to avoid civilian
casualties (both by not targeting them and by not placing military targets
in civilian areas), and you aren't allowed to violate the sort of
"meta-rules" which are in place to allow wars to start and stop, and reduce
needless suffering. In particular, feigned surrenders, maltreatment of
prisoners (including those who are not POWs), not accepting prisoners,
misrepresenting a flag of truce or a truce itself, targeting uniformed
non-combatants or falsely representing oneself as a uniformed non-combatant
(chaplain, medical personel), or the distinctive badge of the Geneva
convention. You also aren't allowed to use weapons which cause undue
suffering, shoot at persons descending by parachute from disabled airplanes
etc. As FM 27-10 states, "Treacherous or perfidious conduct in war is
forbidden because it destroys the basis for a restoration of peace short of
the complete annihilation of one belligerent by the other."

These are some of the things I was referring to. It seems wacky to
declare treacherous conduct as forbidden when the very nature of war
is treacherous.

snip
So? Sailing just in international waters gave military ELINT trawlers an
excellent position for reconnaissance, but they are not considered to be
violating the laws of war by being unmarked. Especially when there are
no
active hostilities.

Ok, now imagine if that trawler was designed and built to Soviet
military specification, it carried a Soviet military payload in its
cargo hold, and its crew was all Soviet military members wearing
civilian clothes...

What do you think I'm talking about? I'm talking about the Soviet spy ships
that used to sail up and down the US coast, and follow navy task forces.
(OK, they may have been militarized commercial designs, but they had lots of
radars and antennas and such.)

(Yes, I knew exactly what you were talking about.)

As soon as a foreign country arrives at the conclusion that the US
astronauts "detainees" have been out and about on a military
reconnaissance mission, it's easy to see that a conclusion will be
reached that it is the United States of America who is in violation of
the Outer
Space Treaty.

Um, and what exactly about Gemini III was a military reconnaissance
mission?

Any piloted spacecraft with a window and a radio could be used for
reconnaissance. If they take pictures then it becomes photo
reconnaissance.

And that is a violation of the Outer Space Treaty how?

This is completely open to a wide variation of interpretation from
different countries. See the following as a possible example:


Here is an excerpt from Article IX as a sample:

In the...use of outer space, ...States Parties to the Treaty shall be
guided by the principle of co-operation and mutual assistance and
shall conduct all their activities in outer space...with due regard to
the corresponding interests of all other States Parties to the Treaty.



Consider the recent case of the Navy EP-3 landing in China. There was
no airspace violation in its patrol. So why was it being harrassed by
Chinese pilot ("Wong Wei", as in "you're going the wong wei")?

This is because countries are not particularly fond of surveillance
they have not consented to. Whether the "intelligence gathering" is
legal or not, it is still bothersome.

Right. And the harrassment by the PRC certainly violated international law,
at least when it got to the point that Wong Wei interfered with the EP-3's
flight. Just because the intelligence gathering is bothersome, it is not
illegal by international law, and attempts to interfere with it by force
*are* illegal. There is also precedence that seizing the crews of vessels
engaged in legal intelligence gathering is also illegal. So, should NASA had
made the crew draw window blinds everytime they passed within site of a
country which had not given them specific permission to look at it?

Well I'm sure that the USSR would have preferred that for those
military shuttle missions.

Perhaps when details from those missions get declassified we will
learn of many ways that the Soviets found to interfere with their
operations.


~ CT