from Part II - Military Necessity in Its Material Context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 May 2020
Chapter 2 illustrates how material necessity reflects a two-fold truism that it is in each belligerent’s strategic interest to do what is necessary and to avoid what is unnecessary. The notion evaluates how the means taken advances the ends sought under the prevailing circumstances. A given act can be a military necessity compared to some alternatives, yet a non-necessity compared to some other alternatives. Acts that are wasteful, excessive, inapposite, futile or purposeless are improvable military non-necessities rather than solely the results of war’s irresistible friction. The necessity assessment of particular action cannot be meaningfully generalised or seen outside of its factual context.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.