Just and Unjust Wars by Michael Walzer

Author:Michael Walzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2015-05-26T15:25:58+00:00

The last of these is particularly problematic, for in the conditions of guerrilla war it must often involve releasing prisoners, something most guerrillas are no doubt loath to do. Yet it is at least sometimes done, as an account of the Cuban revolution, originally published in the Marine Corps Gazette, suggests:7

That same evening, I watched the surrender of hundreds of Batistianos from a small-town garrison. They were gathered within a hollow square of rebel Tommy-gunners and harangued by Raul Castro:

“We hope that you will stay with us and fight against the master who so ill-used you. If you decide to refuse this invitation—and I am not going to repeat it—you will be delivered to the custody of the Cuban Red Cross tomorrow. Once you are under Batista’s orders again, we hope that you will not take arms against us. But, if you do, remember this:

“We took you this time. We can take you again. And when we do, we will not frighten or torture or kill you. . . . If you are captured a second time or even a third . . . we will again return you exactly as we are doing now.”

Even when guerrillas behave this way, however, it is not clear that they are themselves entitled to prisoner of war status when captured, or that they have any war rights at all. For if they don’t make war on noncombatants, it also appears that they don’t make war on soldiers: “What happened in that potato field was murder.” They attack stealthily, deviously, without warning, and in disguise. They violate the implicit trust upon which the war convention rests: soldiers must feel safe among civilians if civilians are ever to be safe from soldiers. It is not the case, as Mao once suggested, that guerrillas are to civilians as fish to the ocean. The actual relation is rather of fish to other fish, and the guerrillas are as likely to appear among the minnows as among the sharks.

That, at least, is the paradigmatic form of guerrilla war. I should add that it is not the form such war always or necessarily takes. The discipline and mobility required of guerrilla fighters often preclude a domestic retreat. Their main forces commonly operate out of base camps located in remote areas of the country. And, curiously enough, as the guerrilla units grow larger and more stable, their members are likely to put on uniforms. Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia, for example, wore distinctive dress, and this was apparently no disadvantage in the kind of war they fought.8 All the evidence suggests that quite apart from the rules of war, guerrillas, like other soldiers, prefer to wear uniforms; it enhances their sense of membership and solidarity. In any case, soldiers attacked by a guerrilla main force know who their enemies are as soon as the attack begins; ambushed by uniformed men, they would know no sooner. When the guerrillas “melt away” after such an attack, they more often disappear into jungles or mountains than into villages, a retreat that raises no moral problems.

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