Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War

by Samuel Moyn

In the years since 9/11, we have entered an age of endless war. With little debate or discussion, the United States carries out military operations around the globe. It hardly matters who’s president or whether liberals or conservatives operate the levers of power. The United States exercises dominion everywhere.

In Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, Samuel Moyn asks a troubling but urgent question: What if efforts to make war more ethical—to ban torture and limit civilian casualties—have only shored up the military enterprise and made it sturdier? To advance this case, Moyn looks back at a century and a half of passionate arguments about the ethics of using force. In the nineteenth century, the founders of the Red Cross struggled mightily to make war less lethal even as they acknowledged its inevitability. Leo Tolstoy prominently opposed their efforts, reasoning that war needed to be abolished, not reformed—and over the subsequent century, a popular movement to abolish war flourished on both sides of the Atlantic. Eventually, however, reformers shifted their attention from opposing the crime of war to opposing war crimes, with fateful consequences.

The ramifications of this shift became apparent in the post-9/11 era. By that time, the US military had embraced the agenda of humane war, driven both by the availability of precision weaponry and the need to protect its image. The battle shifted from the streets to the courtroom, where the tactics of the war on terror were litigated but its foundational assumptions went without serious challenge. These trends only accelerated during the Obama and Trump presidencies. Even as the two administrations spoke of American power and morality in radically different tones, they ushered in the second decade of the “forever” war.

Humane is the story of how America went off to fight and never came back, and how armed combat was transformed from an imperfect tool for resolving disputes into an integral component of the modern condition. As American wars have become more humane, they have also become endless. This provocative book argues that this development might not represent progress at all.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, War, Military History, Law, American

416 pages, Hardcover

First published September 14, 2021

About the author

Samuel Moyn is professor of law and history at Harvard University. He is the author of The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, and Christian Human Rights (2015), among other books, as well as editor of the journal Humanity. He also writes regularly for Foreign Affairs and The Nation.

Reviews

[Murtaza · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprisingly brisk and readable account of the history of international human rights law, and how efforts to mitigate the worst abuses of war using legal tools have sidetracked efforts to cease wars themselves. The argument is perhaps counterintuitive but focus on atrocity prevention in conflict has ended up ceding the ground of war itself. This is akin to making efforts to better the condition of slaves rather than working to abolish slavery tout court. Interestingly, it seems that human rights law was traditionally considered inapplicable to non-Westerners throughout much of history and only in relatively recent times was its focus expanded. The book contains harrowing accounts of colonial and imperial warfare over the past century, and is tied up with a surprising analogy with Tolstoy's War and Peace. For a book about international law this is as accessibly interesting as it gets.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very mixed feelings about this one. Let me start with the argument: Moyn laments the rise of what he calls "humane war," which the Obama-era presidency perfected. Humane war assigns highly legalistic restrictions in the conduct of war on issues like collateral civilian damage but does not seek to restrict the geographic or temporal scope of war. This is a new twist on the "endless war" critique of USFP and of the War on Terror more specifically. The irony Moyn seeks to point out is that making more humane can detract from efforts to make war obsolete or to oppose the starting or expansion of particular wars, such as the War on Terror, which to be fair to MOyn did expand and metastasize in a variety of ways. Moyn traces this story back to the rise of international humanitarian law in the 19th century, looking at figures like Tolstoy who pointed out this irony early on.

There were many interesting aspects to this argument. He's right that much of the criticism of the WoT in the first decade was about the conduct of this conflict (the torture debate, surveillance and detention issues), but less on the wars themselves (there was almost nothing you could call a peace movement besides whack job groups like Code Pink, which Moyn takes all too seriously). He makes an interesting argument that the military shifted from the massive, crushing, but often indiscriminate use of force doctrines in wars like Vietnam and Korea to actually embracing humane war and "lawyerizing" decisions about how to use force. The military even pushed back hard against the John Yoo type efforts to legitimize torture. A lot of the history of peace movements and movements to impose more legal restrictions on war I knew little about and found pretty interesting.

But I'm less on board with Moyn's central argument, which seems a little too cute but also ambiguous. Is he really saying that humane war is a bad thing, that we should embrace the Lieber view from the Civil War that it is better to use force indiscriminately (especially against unconventional foes like guerrillas or terrorists) to either make war too horrible to fight in the first place or to make it end faster if we have to fight it (kind of like a Sherman doctrine)? Or just pointing out a risk that making war more humane can backfire by make it more enduring and more acceptable, especially to a borderline imperial power like the US?

Moyn seems to fault international humanitarian laywers for focusing so much on the conduct of war and not on trying to make war obsolete. But the latter goal is simply unrealistic: this is still a world full of threats and dangers, and countries have to be prepared and willing to use force to defend their interests and security as well as the lives and welfare of the most vulnerable, in some cases. So if war cannot be made obsolete, it is a good thing that we have lawyerized it and restrained some of the worst aspects of it. Say what you will about drone strikes, but we have to have a way of fighting extremist groups who want to do us harm, and good studies of our drone policies show that civilian casualties were actually pretty rare and that they did a good job disrupting al Qaeda and other extremist groups. Moyn is cavalier about the lives of American soldiers, flippantly saying they should be sent in to dangerous situations to capture terrorists rather than droning them from afar so we can remain in line with international law. This, frankly, bothered me.

I think Moyn is not wrestling with two big things in this book, which make the argument seem unrealistic and a bit cheap: the first is the realities of an anarchic world in which states simply cannot eschew the use of force. The second is that terrorist and guerrilla strategies, by their nature, require state opponents to choose between bad options in responding to them. Because these strategies hide behind civilian status and the bodies of civilians, they almost by design aim to provoke civilian casualties in the counterinsurgent or counterterrorist. In fighting insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan, there's no strategy that is not going to lead to civilian casualties while also being effective; the guilt for that, I believe, lies with the unconventional force as much as with the conventional force. This dilemma, of course, is a good reason to not fight these conflicts in the first place, which feeds Moyn's argument. But I think there is actually something reasonable in the Bush and Obama administration's efforts to label terrorism as an inherently illegitimate form of warfare and to rethink concepts like "imminence" when fighting these groups. Moyn, ridiculously, thinks that the US or Israel or whomever should only be able to strike terrorists via drone or special forces when they are actively posing an imminent threat to the US. This, in short, is not how terrorism works. Terrorists should be treated as illegal combatants who effectively in a state of permanent war and who can be struck at any time, just as Israel has gone after individual terrorists since the 1960s. Doing otherwise puts you in the absurd position of striking terrorists only when you know they are about to attack you or just attacked you, which most of the time is not possible.

This book also advances the dubious "forever war" narrative of the WoT that I see from leftists, realists, and sometimes the far right. He makes a fair if unoriginal critique of how the WoT sprawled out far beyond its original parameters, which were quite broad to begin with. However, he ignores 2 key points: 1. the terrorist threat did not go away, and it actually resurged in Obama's 2nd term with the rise of IS. 2. Obama inherited several hot conflicts and a morphing terrorist threat from Bush, and he wasn't in a position politically or strategically to simply scrap the entire counterterrorism apparatus.

This book made me go back and look at Obama's excellent Nobel Prize speech, where he made a case for the just war tradition, drawing on thinkers like Niebuhr to argue that war is often necessary not to build a better world but to defend the innocent and to prevent worse worlds from coming about. Moyn, I fear, may be one of what Niebuhr called "the children of light:" the well-meaning but naive pacifist idealists of the early 20th century who could not envision real threats or evil out in the world besides what big powerful states like the United States do. This book has value, but it reflects an all-too common problem among academic analysts: the failure to wrestle seriously with the causes of war and to put oneself in leaders' shoes rather than taking cheap shots from the sideline (as if someone like Obama isn't aware of the downsides of making war more humane). This also seems like a book designed to piss off int'l humanitarian lawyers for no reason.

[Montzalee Wittmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War
by Samuel Moyn

This is a very thorough book and it is deep, dense, and well thought out. It takes the reader back in time to discuss the meaning of war, what is humane during war, humanity in general at that time according to the leading philosophers and leaders. It goes through various time periods leading slowly up to now.

The very shocking depravity is on full display of war, slavery, and what some leaders felt humane treatment should or shouldn't be. I had to read this in bits and pieces because it's rich in information and the lack of humanity. I just couldn't take the constant horror knowing the truth of it all. I did learn a lot.

Despite the horrors, people need to read this. Where is America going? Do we want to continue this path?
I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read this heart wrenching book!

[Umar Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Halfway through the opening chapters I was wondering if I missed something and the book is about Tolstoy. Those early chapters laid the groundwork for an outstanding book about the history of both the attempts to outlaw war and make it more humane taking us right into the present with our last several American presidents, their advisors, and their contradictions. Something this book brilliantly illustrates is the fact whatever moves towards humane war have been made in the West haven't been afforded to non Westerners and non Christians in general who have often been targeted without discrimination between combatant and non-combatant. Near the end of the book the topic of automated warfare is discussed which makes the reader ponder a dystopian future of killer robots running wild.

[Matthew Petti · Rating 4 out of 5]

The United States military is the most humane army in history, and it is not a good thing. These are two pretty controversial points, yet Samuel Moyn makes a convincing case for both of them, and it will upend the way you think about war and peace.
Today we live in a country where lawyers have to approve airstrikes, and where generals pride themselves on following international human rights law. Yet this humanitarianism has not prevented the emergence of endless bloodshed. On the contrary, the entire world has become an American battlefield, as drones and special forces hunt down the United States's enemies without limits. Moyn argues that the first helped cause the second — that the rise of "humane, light-footprint" war has helped hide its costs from the public.
The book is pretty dense. Moyn gets into the weeds of intellectual debates, and profiles the individual scholars and lawyers who helped shape global debates on brutality and humanity. That said, it's not a specialist book, and is about as accessible a book on such a complicated topic can get. And the sources he cites are really varied, from excerpts from a Leo Tolstoy novel to an activist who disrupted an Obama speech.
Moyn begins his explanation in the 19th century, when two European movements began in reaction to the brutality of modern warfare. The humanitarians, like the early Red Cross, wanted to established new rules for armies that protected civilians and prisoners. The anti-war activists, meanwhile, wanted to abolish war entirely. And surprisingly, the two movements were often at odds with each other. While the humanitarians accused the anti-war side of being unrealistic ideologues, the anti-war activists argued that humanitarians were only putting a pretty face on an evil institution.
Of course, neither side got what it wanted at first. War became more brutal *and* more widespread, reaching its bloody apex in World War II. Finally, states began to acknowledge the concept of crimes against humanity, and the idea that aggression itself was a crime. Yet brutality and war continued. European powers attempted to hold onto their colonies Africa and Southeast Asia through extreme force, which bled into equally-brutal proxy wars between the United States and the Soviet Union in places like Korea and Vietnam.
Things began to change in the 1970s, as countries around the world signed human rights laws like the new Geneva Conventions. In the First World, the public was disgusted by the various war crimes that came to light during the Vietnam War. In the Second World — the Communist bloc — governments wanted to take the moral high ground from the First World. And in the Third World, newly-independent states wanted to prevent the kinds of horrific violence that Europe had unleashed on their people during colonial wars.
But as the United States accepted limits on *how* it could fight wars, it shed all limits on *when* and *where* it could fight them. After the fall of Communism, the USA was left as the world's sole military superpower. It used this power frequently, and sometimes even justified its wars *through* defending human rights law. And in many ways,
All of these processes came to a head during the Bush and Obama administrations. In response to 9/11, George W. Bush unleashed global military interventions and tried to shed some of the laws of war. But the backlash to war crimes — particularly the crime of torture — from U.S. lawyers and the general public was intense. Barack Obama then came to office promising to undo the worst excesses of the War on Terror. But he continued the war itself, with the same expansive legal justifications, and public debate over *why* America should be fighting in the Middle East died down.
Finally came Donald Trump, who brought more fundamental questions back to public consciousness. First, by railing against "endless wars," Trump helped break the elite consensus around continuing the War on Terror. Second, by nearly starting a full-on war with Iran, he reopened questions over what authorities the President should have over war and peace. After all, a conflict against a regional power is not the same as plinking terrorists in no-man's-land.
Moyn then ends by arguing that the evil of war is not necessarily the violence, but the domination. He speculates that, in the age of robots and AI, it will possible for militaries to take over vast territories with no civilian casualties. And this outcome, Moyn argues, could lead to a kind of global slavery. I understand his point, but it felt a bit like it had come out of nowhere. Going back, I can see how Moyn came to this conclusion, although I wish he had been more explicit in pointing to it.
Overall, I recommend the book if you want to have your ways of thinking about war and peace turned upside-down.

[Петър Стойков · Rating 3 out of 5]

Войната съществува откакто свят светува, дори не са я измислили хората - мравешките войни са любопитно интересни на всяко дете, интересуващо се от природата, а първата наблюдавана война между племена шимпанзета е пратила биоложката Джейн Гудал в психиатрична клиника и е довела до цялостното преосмисляне на произхода на войната като концепция при хората.

Няма спор, че напоследък има по-малко войни от преди. Причината за това е спорна, но това или е постоянна тенденция още от зората на човечеството (когато сме се и изяждали даже) или според други, резултат от целенасочените усилия на активисти, политици и общественици да направят войната ако не незаконна, то поне силно морално неприемлива каквато е тя в съвременния свят.

Със сигурност войната не е спряла, но е някак "по-човечна" отпреди (би казал някой, който не познава добре човешката природа) и най-малкото на методи като оръжия за масово поразяване и печално известното Chevauchée се гледа с много, много строго неодобрение както от политиците, така и от народите, които ги избират.

Сега да преминем към същността на Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War която се състои точно в това "очовечаване" на войната, което... я прави по-приемлива.

Вместо да изтребват с бомби цели градове, да правят геноциди и да поробват, САЩ (според автора) измислиха нов вид война, управлявана от ПР-експерти и адвокати, която да е общественоприемлива и да може да се точи с години, без да накара населението, което понася жертви и разходи, да протестира прекалено много. С инвазията си в Украйна Русия се опита да води в началото такъв тип война - бързо да превземе, без много жертви, да постави марионетно правителство и да се оттегли, постигнала целите си.

Работата е там, че този начин на воюване може да продължава безкрайно и да обхване много държави и позволява практически тирания, като обезоръжава световната общественост от гнева против жестокостите на войната, който подхранва анти-военния активизъм и политики.

Много по-лесно е да накараш парламентът на държавата ти да гласува за война, ако не синовете на избирателите им ще загиват в нея, а примерно дронове. Много по-лесно е да се оправдаеш пред ООН и медиите, за войната, която водиш, ако покажеш как пазиш цивилните.

До какво ще доведат тия тенденции един бог знае, както и дали и колко ще се задържат.

[Paul Womack · Rating 5 out of 5]

An informative read on the history of peace movements and the eclipse of such by emphases on making war humane, with the irony of war yet being permitted and “rules” adjusted by the powers to satisfy their aims. Drone technology is reviewed and comes in for justifiable criticism. As a former interrogator in Vietnam and with tours in Desert Storm and back to Iraq in 2004, my heart was deeply touched by the fact I may have participated in harm when I thought my humanitarian instincts were just. A good back of both historical analysis and ethical perception.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dense Yet Enlightening. This is a book about the history of the philosophical and legal thoughts and justifications for transitioning from the brutal and bloody wars of the 19th century (when the history it covers begins) through to the "more humane" but now seemingly endless wars as currently waged, particularly by the United States of America. As in, this treatise begins with examinations of Tolstoy and Von Clauswitz during the Napoleonic Wars and ends with the Biden Presidency's early days of the continuation of the drone wars of its two predecessors. Along the way, we find the imperfections and even outright hypocrisies of a world - and, in the 21st century in particular, in particular a singular nation on the ascendancy, the United States - as it struggles with how best to wage and, hopefully, end war. Moyn shows the transition from a mindset of peace to a mindset of more palatable (re: "less" horrific / "more" humane) perma-war. But as to the description's final point that this book argues that this might not be a good thing at all... yes, that point is raised, and even, at times, central. But the text here seems to get more in depth on the history of documenting the change rather than focusing in on the philosophical and even legal arguments as to why that particular change is an overall bad thing. Ultimately this is one of those esoteric tomes that those with a particular interest in wars and how and why they are waged might read, if they are "wonks" in this area, but probably won't have the mass appeal that it arguably warrants. The central premise is a conversation that *needs* to be had in America and the world, but this book is more designed for the think tank/ academic crowd than the mass appeal that could spark such conversations. Still, it is truly well documented and written with a high degree of detail, and for this it is very much recommended.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

An argument that a recent focus on making war “humane” through criminalization of specific war atrocities (e.g. civilian casualties; torture) has come at the expense of greatly diminishing a broad antiwar movement that once existed and considered war itself to be the most terrible crime, and peace to be a moral imperative.

The resulting, recent idea of “humane war”—characterized by so-called precision strikes and many lawyers to justify their tactics and targets—now prevails, allowing the US’s endless drone war against parties to whom international law protections are understood to not apply (e.g. terrorists; terror generally). Pointed criticism is reserved for human rights NGOs that condemn atrocities but refuse to take a stance on the legality of war, as well as President Barack Obama, who presented himself as an advocate for peace when it was expedient while simultaneously expanding US drone warfare.

This argument is accompanied by histories of global peace movements and of international law, pointing out that laws governing war were selectively enforced, prohibiting war between states but allowing Western powers to put down colonial uprisings or anything deemed an “insurgency.”

Absent is a needed discussion, in my opinion, about the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (which Moyn would almost certainly find illegal) and practical responses to wars of aggression. I am not satisfied with his discussion of US/NATO intervention in the Balkans, in which he questions the actions' legality but does not explore the consequences of failing to act.

A recent column by Moyn, printed days after Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, advocates for UN reform and eliminating the veto. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outloo...

Moyn briefly discusses Responsibility to Protect here, arguing that "humanitarian intervention routinely makes the world worse." https://www.thedriftmag.com/a-new-for...

[Shrike58 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Given the opportunity to look over this book before taking it out, I might have given it a hard pass. A big part of this would be due to the meandering nature of the text, as Moyn wanders from the non-violence of Count Tolstoy, through the long drawn out evolution of the American conduct of war via air power, how this was conditioned by international law, through the state of play into 2021, where the claim was that war had been "humanized."

Problem: Tell that to the populations living under the threat of drone attack, or the occasional Special Operations Command raid. The stress of living under this omnipresent threat was doing psychological and physical harm in and of itself. This state of affairs is what generated Moyn's main issue. That the American way of war has been converted into a form of structural violence, which becomes an alternative to actual peace making; particularly since this practice is mostly out of sight, and thus out of mind.

Of course, the biggest problem with this book is that circumstances have radically changed, and the prospect of general war is back on the table. This is with the on-going struggle between Kyiv and Moscow, and other fights seemingly in the works. So Moyn's concerns now appear to be almost beside the point.

I'm probably being somewhat unfair to Moyn, seeing as I'm not otherwise familiar with much of his writing. Also, this book was probably not meant for someone like myself who has a MS in the study and resolution of human social conflict (though that was acquired a long time ago), and has read more staff-school grade military history than most. But if this was meant to be a polemic it's rather weak.

[baolinh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Takes a bit of time to pick up but starts from Leo Tolstoy and the old pacifist traditions of the early 18th century and walks you through how the culture and climate around war has shifted from then up until the present day (Joe Biden’s presidency).

A densely packed book that lambasts most American politicians and presidents post WWII for their legerdemain when it comes to justifying their warmongering policies and eschewing peace in favor of “humane” warfare — if such a thing can exist. Introduced me to some pretty interesting characters (John Yoo namely) and is a good unbiased account of how both sides of the aisle have failed when it comes to advocating for peace over war.

Read this after watching Oppenheimer because I was interested in America’s war policies but found myself a bit bored for the first 1/3. Second 2/3 really picks up though.

[Margaret Crookston · Rating 4 out of 5]

“In spite of mounting evidence of exceptional brutality, few spoke out at home before My Lai brought many over a critical threshold. For most Americans, war was still necessarily hell, for better or worse. And it was easy to emphasize the truth that allegations proved useful for Communist propaganda designed to undermine the American cause. The fact that the far left was almost exclusively the source of war crimes allegations also made their dismissal easy—until it was impossible.”

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful book that clarified my thinking. My politics were born in opposition to the Iraq War and torture, and this book provided a superstructure for some of that adolescent political formation.

The epilogue was particularly powerful. Moyn draws the parallel to policing clearly here, and highlights the violence of policing even absent death.

[DRugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Explores the righteous progression of humane war and challenges the larger issue, violence of hierarchy.

[Hannah Aziza · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

[Harry · Rating 3 out of 5]

The world is a better place because idealistic people like Moyn exist, I can’t forget there are 8 billion people with the ability to act.

[Alanna R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not a nonfiction girlie so I usually judge nonfiction books just based on their readability and if they are what they claim to be - this took me a month to read but I did finish it! But it was way more historical than the title, blurb, etc led me to believe, and it honestly could’ve started 2/3 of the way through (after Vietnam) and achieved the advertised effect sooooo meh

[Jack Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sam Moyn is a law professor, and "Humane" is mostly about legal debates, but, as he reveals in his Acknowledgements (where he also thanks Marty Hagglund!), he was originally a Literature major. Maybe I'm biased... but I think that must have something to do with clarity and force of this book here. "Humane" is about the seemingly subtle but incredibly important distinction between peace movements and movements for humane war, and how the latter have almost completely overtaken the former. So thoroughly (so cleanly, and precisely?) has the logic of "targeted strikes" wiped out any larger concern about war in general that I honestly hadn't really thought about it before this book. (Chalk it up to Obama, I guess, distopia's most charming and persuasive rhetorician, especially if you're hanging on his every word as a dumb college student...) But Moyn shows definitively how the choice to end war or to just make it less brutal has been the subject of debates for generations... and how the victory of the "humane war" advocates, while obviously not a complete loss for humankind (see the Korean or Vietnam wars for more on this), seems to portend a terrifying future of "non violent" but totally unrestrained domination: an American-led global police force that swiftly and legally puts down all those poorer and weaker who deign to challenge its authority.

He begins the book, strangely and awesomely, with Leo Tolstoy. Moyn's early chapters on the fledgling peace movement show just how suddenly and dramatically the call to abolish war arrived on the political scene. But what's most shocking here is how the Count and his followers perfectly anticipate the problem of settling for less brutal forms of war. To make war "nicer" but not end it would be like trying to make slavery kinder, Tolstoy argues, which will only succeed in perpetuating it further. We see this prophecy borne out over the next 100 years or so, when efforts to give war any kind of legal gloss (see: the Geneva Conventions, the UN charter, the Red Cross, etc) are typically met with British and American bombing. It turns out to be pretty easy for the world's superpowers to dodge strictures that don't jibe with their civilian massacring prerogatives, much to the chagrin of peace activists, who insist again and again that the crime is WAR ITSELF (indeed, the point of the Nuremberg Trials was not to try German brutality (i.e. the Holocaust), but the very act of aggression).

The turning point in Moyn's narrative is Vietnam, where a newly hegemonic American empire, umm, went a little too far (but not even as far as they had in Korea, Moyn argues... truly fascinating stuff on every page of this book). It is after that debacle that the drive to make war humane finally assumes control. Importantly, this new concern with brutality is led by the now image-conscious military, who with the help of endless lawyering find a way to make war something that is more cautious, more precise, less likely to receive any public scrutiny, and never-ending. The apotheosis of this vision is the Obama administration, which is always "reflecting" on its aerial killings even as it comes up with ever-more-elaborate justifications for them (my favorite phrase in the book, to describe the new American doctrine of self-defense strikes, is "extended immanence." Ladies and gentlemen, the corpse of George Orwell!).

"Humane" is a polemic, for sure, but it's a nuanced one. Moyn contends that it is unquestionably a good thing that American war now means the deaths of hundreds of people rather than the deaths of millions (hard to argue with him, here). But he also argues that this new regime is terrifying in a wholly new way. Now that war has satisfied the public's expectations of "humanity" (i.e. we've given up waterboarding, or whatever) as well as the legal community's understanding of what's allowed, what is there to oppose it? The future Moyn envisions (with a great writer's imaginative instincts for things that policy wonks might miss) is one where America is truly the police force of the world, endlessly monitoring perceived threats (read: poor people) and cutting down all who oppose its reign with ruthless, perfect precision. That's about as distopian as it gets, surely?

Thanks, Obama.

[Pedro Glatz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo leí por sus buenas reseñas y con un poco de escepticismo porque había leído un libro anterior del autor, el cual me pareció interesante, pero demasiado repetitivo (Not Enough
Human Rights in an Unequal World").

Me pareció mucho más interesante y dinámico. La obra desarrolla una especie de cronología sobre el Derecho Internacional Humanitario, en sencillo, el derecho de la guerra. Moyn introduce analizando la obra autobiográfica de Tolstoi , sus apreciaciones sobre la guerra (que experimentó directamente) y la influencia que tuvo en el análisis sobre sus dramáticos efectos. Posteriormente se relata el nacimiento del movimiento pacifista internacional en el Siglo XIX, como fue lentamente avanzando y logrando la regulación de la guerra. Aquí se plantea la tesis general del libro: las pequeñas y costosas cesiones de soberanía que los estados nacionales han hecho en su administración de la guerra han estado casi exclusivamente centradas en la "humanización de la guerra", dejando de lado la lucha pacifista por el fin de las guerras, o al menos una regulación internacional de cuando corresponde que se pelee una.

Esta idea se desarrolla a través del siglo XX, donde se posa la mirada principalmente en Estados Unidos y cómo se trató este tema sucesivamente en la 2a Guerra Mundial, Corea, Vietnam y los sucesivos conflictos. A juicio de Moyn, la idea central del libro se cumple a cabalidad, con varios hitos bélicos donde el debate público estadounidense estuvo centrado en la "humanización de la guerra". Entre estos, los que me parecieron más interesantes son La Matanza de My Lai y los bombardeos a Serbia.

La parte final del libro analiza la "Guerra contra el Terrorismo" desatada con posterioridad a los atentados del 11 de Septiembre de 2001. Aquí es donde el libro se pone especialmente polémico, ya que Moyn hace un juicio muy duro sobre la política de Obama frente a la guerra. Se presenta evidencia de cómo durante su presidencia se creó la más detallada arquitectura que consagró un estado de guerra permanente, la cual fue contrapesada por el diseño de una regulación más "humana" de la tortura y la forma en que se desarrollan los conflictos bélicos. Esto se expresó en la reticencia a cerrar Guantánamo y especialmente en el uso de miles de drones y numerosas incursiones de Fuerzas Especiales en decenas de países, a los cuales nunca se les ha declarado la guerra formalmente. El argumento se vuelve aún mas sugerente cuando se muestra el brillante uso político que hizo Donald Trump de la idea de "guerras interminables" en su campaña presidencial.

El epílogo del libro plantea los nuevos desafíos de los avances tecnológicos y qué forma podrían tomar los esfuerzos por "humanizar la guerra" en las siguientes décadas.

[Alexey Goldin · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Torture, even more than other atrocity crimes, rose to the top of the list of immoral and even illegal acts, which was an enormous advance. But war fell off the list, and no one complained."


"The intense focus of advocacy groups and administration lawyers alike on the legal niceties of humane detention and treatment contributed significantly to a perverse outcome. The brutal treatment of captives had tainted the legitimacy of a heavy-footprint war under the prior administration. Now a concern to remove that taint led the United States to kill by preference in the new one—though the country took steps to make its regime of death more compassionate. While advertising its alleged care, the emerging form of Obama’s war negated the constraints on extending and expanding war itself that previous generations had prioritized. As the Obama administration continued, the abuses to the laws prohibiting force accumulated almost without counterexample."


"Though the United States had once organized the Nuremberg trials to stigmatize aggression, Koh opposed criminalizing it now for fear it would keep a benevolent power like the United States from stopping atrocity."

"Beyond the compromises made by advocates outside government and especially inside, the deepest blame for the perpetuation of endless war fell on Obama himself. He established a working relationship with a public that allowed itself to be convinced that his policies of endless and humane war, though not exactly what they had signed up for, were morally wholesome. This effect depended utterly on Obama’s rhetorical genius. It worked through the first-person plural but also required the audience to accept that they shared in the compromises of humane war that politicians chose and lawyers crafted."


"In his concern that advocates for more humane war could help make it endless for a public that tolerates it, Leo Tolstoy fixated on corporal wrongs and physical violence. Advocacy aimed at humane war, he contended, was no more ethically plausible than agitation for humane slavery, with daily episodes of torture replaced by everlasting—but kind and gentle—direction of labor and service. Audiences who accept endless war out of the belief that its humanity excuses them, the truculent moralist inveighed, were fooling themselves."


"Brought to its logical conclusion, humane war may become increasingly safe for all concerned—which is also what makes it objectionable. Humane war is another version of the slavery of our times, and our task is to aim for a law that not only tolerates less pain but also promotes more freedom."

[Greg Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice, neat history covering the attempts to regulate warfare under international law—and the ongoing question of whether it's more important to prevent war in the first place, or ensure it's conducted humanely.

I thought the tension was wholly novel to the present thanks to smart bombs and other "precision" targeting, but activists have been arguing about it for well over a century now, predicting a future that's now come to pass. The book does lend good background to (and makes a great pairing with) Charlie Savage's Power Wars about Obama entrenching Bush administration expansion of military/executive power by building a legal structure to "legitimize" it.

The book goes into less detail about our present moment than I'd like, but it's plenty thought-provoking and endlessly applicable. It certainly makes sense that decreasing the friction and expected human costs (both domestic and foreign) of military action makes it more likely that action takes place—and we've seen that borne out in practice.

Moyn likens the ongoing transnational drone and special forces regime to a more violent form of policing, but I think the idea applies just as well to domestic policing. The reaction since 2014 has been to provide increased training and monitoring through body cameras, but with the intent to try and legitimize an ongoing domination of poor and minority communities. They're spending millions on cop cities, training compounds that mimic neighborhoods where cops can practice violent crackdowns on dissent. Not great!

[Robert Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moyn's "Humane" is one of the most powerful books I've been blessed to read. It asks and explores the history behind a question that few ask, but could be pivotal to America's role in the world today: If we keep making war more humane - that is, more morally palatable - do we inadvertently make more war?

The answer - as Moyn's book eloquently captures as it explores the early peace movement during the Napoleonic Wars, to the question of gas in the trenches of World War One, to the explosion of air war and bombings in World War Two, to the fateful choice to cross the 38th Parallel in Korea, to the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, to the Abu Gharib prison scandal and the seemingly perpetual War on Terror - seems to be yes.

As international humanitarian lawyers, human rights groups, and American presidents both respected and hated tightened the rules and codified the "laws of war" as each conflict and brutal incident progressed, the antiwar movement found itself not debating the merits of our wars themselves, but how we conducted them.

The implications of this are hard to grapple with. As our relatively recent interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria have shown, the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. We're often so convinced of the moral righteousness of intervening - of doing that which feels right - that we act without thinking. As we choose to focus more and more on purifying the "How" we lose sight of the "Why."

[Will Norton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really touched my interests. The history of literary than legal aspects of the prevention of war crimes are discussed. Beginning with the idea of "humane" slavery, and the accounts of Tolstoy's literature that decried violence, the path towards justice jus ad bellum and jus in bello are given their complete historical treatment. The book, of course, dwells on Vietnam for a portion. This was the quintessential debate on the humanity of war that cried out so forcefully became a political staging ground that riles American politics to this day.
From conflict to conflict, the methods jus in bello reach their staging grounds usually after conflict to prevent further conflict and the simmering of the war on terror leads to a need of better conclusions. The book offers this from both historical and reflective notions of the idea of conflict and its effects to this degree. This is definitely written from an American perspective. It is also written from an historical perspective with the names and treaties on the act of making war more humane come into focus with both insight and clarity. The book is enlightening in this aspect and poses questions throughout. Anyone interested in a history of movements for peaceful resolutions to war and decry violence to people who deal directly with these issues should definitely read this largely historical perspective.

[Introvert Insane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Modern Warfare is a PR game. It's all about using the right language to justify atrocities. Enter: Humane War - making warfare more automated, more precise... more LEGITIMATE whilst masking the real atrocities behind it.

"Israel has the right to defend itself." "Palestine never existed." "There are no innocent Palestinians." "It is not a genocide because Israel is minimising casualty." those are excuses to legitimise mass murder whilst not even bother to differentiate between militants and civilians because bfr, they don't care to differentiate because the goal was never about the militants.

War is ultimately an industry and it needs to breed more wars to continue making money. But you can't just willy nilly going into war. No... You need to use the right words, the right classifications, the right verbiage, the right tone, the right PR, us vs. them (we, the white people vs. POC). This is not brand new when this book itself details its pattern all the way back to Vietnam.

Whatever standards they are implementing now conveniently overlooks and excuses the many many rule breaking actions by Uncle Sam and it makes me sick because it happened so many times before.

It's true that UN actually stands for United Nothing.

[Ernest Spoon · Rating 2 out of 5]

A legist history of what the author labels as ¨humane¨ war featuring a cast of lawyers, both within and without government service. ¨Humane¨ war is drone warfare, sanity, faraway, with few American casualties.

This author does touch on what may be the greatest mitigating factor in the start of ¨humane¨ and endless was: the end of conscription. He also mentions the ironic death by suicide car bomber in Baghdad, Iraq of an antiwar activist, to what end I don´t know.

Perhaps the author agrees with William Tecumseh Sherman´s observation: “War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.” I just don´t know?

I might add one of the primary drivers of endless warfare is, what in an earlier time was termed the munitions industry but has been euphemized, the defense industry. Whenever any political party or politician talks about cutting the ¨defense¨ budget, they mention that the individuals who bear the highest burdon are the line workers, most of whom are unionized, in defense contractor factories. Fire the generals but don´t layoff folks just trying to make a living.

[Izzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book damns not only Bush and Trump, but also Clinton and Truman, and Churchill (especially Churchill) and Roosevelt as well, for their approach to war and aerial killing of civilians. But the concept that more ‘humane’, or less civilian collateral damage has enabled ‘endless’ war is scary and well illustrated. The massive killings in fire bombing of Dresden and Tokyo by our side in WW2, (not to mention the 2A bombs deployed after the war was won, and the linkage of how we fought ‘our’ war in Viet Nam to prior European colonial imperial wars is powerfully described. Who determines the targets, and what keeps the other side from doing the same thing to us in a few years, that we are currently doing in. Waziristan? His (Moyn’s) credentials are impeccable, and it is hard to put this book down. His background in both history ad law is evident!

[Tom Murtha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book took me a long time to read, probably because due to the combination of heavy subject matter that is hard to leave and come back to quickly (I used to do most of my reading during nap at work) and the fact that I am simply not as smart as the author. The history parts of this book could have been condensed and synthesized more cohesively in my opinion, but it does a great job connecting the history of peace movements in the West to the modern-day endless wars we find ourselves in. I wish Moyn had been slightly more obvious about the connecting points and failures of the different phases of international humanitarian law, but, again, I am not a legal scholar, so the theoretical presumptions he made probably supersede my own education. Overall, a great look into how we arrived at endless war and global policing that was at times a little long-winded and wordy.

[tya · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprisingly brisk and readable account of the history of international human rights law, and how efforts to mitigate the worst abuses of war using legal tools have sidetracked efforts to cease wars themselves. The argument is perhaps counterintuitive but focus on atrocity prevention in conflict has ended up ceding the ground of war itself.

Halfway through the opening chapters I was wondering if I missed something and the book is about Tolstoy. Something this book brilliantly illustrates is the fact whatever moves towards humane war have been made in the West haven't been afforded to non Westerners and non Christians in general who have often been targeted without discrimination between combatant and non-combatant.

For a book about international law this is as accessibly interesting as it gets.

[Christopher E · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m a pleasure reader and not an academic, so that may affect what I thought of this book. The writing style is really heavy. Not an easy book to skim and I thought the paragraphs were not organized well. The thoughts skipped around a lot and concepts would shift around mid paragraph. The general sequence of events could be haphazard at times. At one point, the author mentioned four separate events through three decades in the space of two pages. The sum of all of that made it tough to discern his point.

Maybe he was writing for other Yale professors and I’m not one of them.

I think he could have covered less historical events in different level of detail and made a more impactful book.

What was the book about? Well…uh…tough to say…