Decelerating Militaries: A Strategy to Limit Urban Destruction

Abstract

War used to take place on the outskirts of a city, but in the last 100 years, military conflict in urban regions shifted from a tactic to be avoided at all costs to the dominant form of warfare. This trend, which experts expect to continue well in the future, jeopardizes civilian life. International Humanitarian Law, designed to protect civilians from the effects of war, was developed when most states avoided urban battles. However, military innovation in weapons and transport technology, driven by a desire to gain a speed advantage, reversed this relationship. Urban war now places civilians in the center of the battlespace making it difficult for combatants to avoid civilians and civilian targets. IHL requires combatants to discriminate between enemy combatants and civilians, but this task becomes nearly impossible when the two parties exist in the same space separated only by a wall or floor in a building. Speed has eliminated the capacity to meaningfully distinguish between combatants and noncombatants in real-time. Consequently, no amount of planning or technological superiority can prevent the loss of civilian life and property when it takes place in a civilian habitat. While the existing literature on urban war explores the changing landscape of war and acknowledges the impact on civilian life it fails to recognize the tension between the design of cities and the goal of militaries that makes urban war fundamentally dangerous for civilians. My research will explore this tension, repositioning Urban War as not just a shift in battle strategy but a shift in war-making that places civilian life at the center of war. In doing so, local populations can be rallied to take advantage of their relative power and influence in the international political landscape to encourage normative change to protect the future of our urban spaces.