The modern Law of International Armed Conflict is principally framed upon a linear notion of warfare. It classically anticipates massed armies engaging one another upon the battlefield where victory is achieved by way of decisive military defeat of one side by the other. The targeting philosophy underpinning this paradigm is that civilians are to be spared to the greatest extent possible during the course of the conflict. Concomitantly, military force is to be applied in a surgical and economic manner mainly against the sovereign forces of the enemy as well as defined ‘military objectives’, with the law being relatively comprehensive as to the character of each of these categories. Under the prevailing philosophy, the law nonetheless acknowledges that where civilians vitiate their protected status and elect to participate directly in hostilities, then they might also be targeted. The paucity of legal prescription in this area strongly suggests, however, that this is regarded as a somewhat exceptional phenomenon.
