Part VII Targeting Law Challenges and Compliance, 23 A Challenge to the Distinction Principle—Effects Based Warfare

Numerous texts have been written addressing the changing nature of conflict. Some seek, like the soothsayer, to foresee future developments. Trying to foretell changes in the way wars will be fought is of particular importance to militaries around the world, always keen as they are to know from where the next threat is likely to emerge and the form it is liable to take. Other writers draw attention to recent technological advances and either assert that the law is now rendered irrelevant, for example because of the new phenomenon of asymmetric warfare, or they...