What makes things like poisonous gas or some firearms banned? Most importantly, why would nations play by the rules?
Bonus question: what exactly is a war crime and how is it punishable?
In: Other
Putting aside morals, there are two situations where nations would not want to commit war crimes.
The first situation deals with a powerful third party that wants to ban something. The third party will agree through treaties to stay out of the war unless one of the warring countries doesn’t play by the rules. You can think of this situation as “big brother” is making sure you play fair.
However, nations can still play by the rules even without a “big brother” nation. The second situation is when the warring nations themselves agree to ban something. This occurs when weapons are so horrible that both sides would rather no one use it instead of both sides use it. If a nation doesn’t play by the rules, then the other nation can stop playing by the rules as well.
For a more complex explanation, this is related to a mathematical phenomenon known as a Nash equilibrium where there are four options (each nation agrees to either play by the rules or not). Your nation not playing by the rules and the other nation playing by the rules is optimal for you, but it simply won’t happen because once you stop playing by the rules, then your opponent will too. So even though there appears to be four options, there are only two “stable” options, both sides playing by the rules or neither side playing by the rules. If both sides prefer the former option, then logically both sides will play by the rules even if at first glance this doesn’t make sense.
So to answer your bonus question without regarding morality, a war crime is simply a crime that if your country doesn’t punish, it will either get a third party involved against your country in your war, or will cause the enemy countries to start using weapons or tactics that they wouldn’t otherwise use
Fun bonus fact: I was thinking of this very topic earlier due to a thread about war crimes used in fantasy TV such as Star Wars or Avatar the Last Airbender. Again, not regarding morality, but you generally wouldn’t have the concept of war crimes in these fantasy worlds because they usually involve an evil, powerful force against a good but weak force.
In this type of fantasy world there is no stronger big brother nation to make sure the rules are played by. For example, no one is more powerful than the Fire Nation in Avatar, at least not until the end of the show when >!the Avatar is able to step into that role and enforce it himself!<. Also, the evil, powerful force generally would prefer all tactics be available to make their enemies tremble in fear, even if some of their own troops fall victim to some of those tactics. For example, the Fire Nation would rather have the option to enslave Earth Benders even if some rebels end up enslaving some Fire Benders from time to time as a result.
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