Part VII Targeting Law Challenges and Compliance, 25 When Things Go Wrong

The title of this chapter refers, advisedly, to ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ things go wrong. As we observed in Chapter 6, the fact that an attack which had as its object a military objective also caused civilian deaths or injuries and/or damage to civilian objects does not per se render the attack unlawful. Indeed, the fact that a planned future attack may be expected to cause such casualties and damage does not cause the plan to undertake such an attack to be unlawful. It is only if the attack breaches the targeting rules that we have been discussing, for example if...