One of the most important achievements of the post-1945 legal order is the insistence that even war must have limits. International humanitarian law does not pretend that armed conflict can be made humane, but it does try to prevent war from becoming limitless. At the center of that effort is the principle of distinction: parties must distinguish between combatants and civilians, and between military objectives and civilian objects. The International Committee of the Red Cross defines military objectives narrowly as objects that make an effective contribution to military action and whose destruction offers a definite military advantage in the circumstances at the time.
By Clarence R. Pearson, Sr., PhD
That legal protection becomes dangerously fragile when war aims themselves grow vague. When a state’s objective shifts from something concrete, such as repelling an invasion or degrading a specific military capability, to abstractions like “stability,” “deterrence,” or “neutralizing threats,” the category of what counts as necessary force can begin to expand without clear limits. The result is not only mission creep in strategy, but elasticity in law. The ICRC has repeatedly warned that urban warfare already places extraordinary pressure on distinction, proportionality, and precautions; broad and shifting objectives make those pressures worse.
This is where civilian protection begins to break down. Once the objective is framed at a high level of abstraction, infrastructure that sustains daily life can be redescribed as part of the enemy’s “war-sustaining” capacity. Power stations, water systems, telecommunications, roads, fuel depots, and housing can be recast as militarily relevant because they are connected, in some indirect way, to the broader aim. Yet the same interconnectedness that makes urban infrastructure strategically tempting also makes civilian harm predictable. The ICRC notes that explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas are very likely to have indiscriminate effects and widely disrupt services essential for civilian survival.
The consequences are not limited to those killed in the initial strike. Modern cities depend on tightly linked systems. When electricity fails, water pumping and sanitation fail with it. When water and sanitation fail, hospitals struggle, disease spreads, food storage collapses, and indirect mortality rises. The ICRC has stressed that conflict-related damage to essential services creates vast humanitarian consequences long after active hostilities move on, and its work on urban warfare emphasizes that protection of civilians cannot be separated from protection of the infrastructure they need to live.
This is why the debate over so-called dual-use infrastructure is so important. International law does not forbid every strike on an object that also serves civilians; some facilities can become lawful military objectives under specific circumstances. But the legal test is supposed to remain restrictive, not permissive. The danger today is that “dual use” can become a solvent that dissolves civilian protection whenever political leaders adopt broad war aims. If the goal is undefined security or total degradation of an adversary’s capacity, almost any object can be rhetorically folded into the war effort. That turns military necessity from a limiting doctrine into a loophole.
Housing has become one of the clearest examples of this danger. United Nations human rights experts have warned that the mass destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure can amount to an international crime, not merely because of property loss, but because destroying dwellings on a large scale makes communities uninhabitable and drives displacement. In early 2024, U.N. experts described the devastation of homes in Gaza as causing “domicide,” and linked it to the broader destruction of the conditions necessary for life.
The humanitarian implications of explosive warfare in cities are already severe enough without strategic ambiguity. The ICRC and the wider explosive-weapons policy community have repeatedly cited evidence that when explosive weapons are used in populated areas, around 90 percent of those killed or injured are civilians. That is why the Political Declaration on Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas matters: it reflects a growing international recognition that states must restrict or refrain from using explosive weapons in cities and towns when civilian harm is likely.
There is also a precedent problem. When powerful states or their close allies stretch legal categories to justify high-casualty urban warfare, they do more than shape one conflict. They send a signal about what the system will tolerate. If the states that claim to defend a rules-based order treat international humanitarian law as a flexible vocabulary of justification rather than a binding restraint, other governments will learn the same lesson. The erosion of reciprocity then accelerates: one side cites exceptional necessity, the other answers in kind, and the law begins to look optional. The ICRC’s contemporary-conflicts report warns that preserving IHL depends not only on formal rules, but on sustained compliance and credible commitment across conflicts.
Public understanding matters here more than governments often admit. Media framing research shows that the way events are described influences how audiences assign agency, blame, and urgency. When coverage privileges the language of tactical success or “security” while downplaying cascading humanitarian harm, the destruction of life-support systems can appear as a secondary effect rather than the central legal and moral issue it is. That does not make journalists villains; it does mean that citizens need a more literate vocabulary for evaluating what war aims actually authorize in practice.
The remedy begins with clarity. States should be required, politically and legally, to articulate specific and limited objectives before force is expanded. Civilian life-support systems should be treated as a red line, not an elastic category. And governments that endorse the declaration on explosive weapons in populated areas should implement it seriously, not ceremonially. The ICRC has argued that the declaration is meaningful only if states change the way they fight in cities.
The world does not face a shortage of law. It faces a shortage of discipline in applying it. When objectives become confused, civilians pay for that confusion first. And when the most powerful states normalize that confusion, the rest of the world learns to live closer to lawless war. The choice before the international community is stark: restore precision to military aims and protection to civilian life, or continue drifting toward a world in which survival itself is treated as collateral.
