This chapter examines the post-World War II development of international humanitarian law, focusing specifically on the Geneva Conventions. Beginning with an overview of the history of the Geneva Conventions, it examines how the experience of World War II and the early Cold War shaped the creation of civilian immunity norms in the immediate postwar period. Specifically, it uses archival records to show how Western states and the Soviet Bloc used emotional moral rhetoric and legal discourse to construct a relatively permissive regime of law. It begins by examining how states used moral intuitions and legal rhetoric to discuss norms concerning strategic bombing and nuclear weapons use during the negotiations over the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Next, it examines the creation of the modern principles of distinction and proportionality during the negotiations over the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions in 1977.

This chapter examines links between European peaceful borders and the occurrence and proliferation of illicit transnational flows. We refer to the European “internal” borders since the implementation of the Schengen Agreement in 1995, the Southeastern European borders (regarding the Western Balkans/former Yugoslavia) since the end of the Bosnian War in 1995, and the borders between the EU and its Western Balkan neighbors. We assess the softening and the complete opening of the internal borders among the twenty-six Schengen countries in contrast to external border control, as related to the occurrence and proliferation of illicit transnational flows. The two major European concerns in the last two decades are illegal migration and transnational crime, including drug trafficking, human trafficking and smuggling, arms trafficking, and terrorism. Harmonization of internal border controls has abolished the logic of jurisdictional arbitrage. Moreover, peaceful borders that are “hard” between the EU and its Southern and Eastern neighbors remain more controlled, though that it is not necessarily an obstacle for the occurrence of illicit transnational flows.

This chapter examines the ethics of war in early Islam. Using a range of sources, it shows that Islamic law does not permit intentional attacks on innocent people, particularly women and children. It argues that civilian protection rules were most likely a holdover from pre-Islamic rules of war, and it argues that the theory developed in Chapter 2 provides a useful way of accounting for the development and content of the rules of war.

This chapter introduces the research question around which the book is organized: how do we explain why human societies create rules for protecting civilians in war? It then introduces the main argument of the book, which is that universal moral beliefs and emotions influence the development of civilian protection norms. Finally, it provides an overview of the book and a brief review of each of the chapters.

This chapter examines the ethics of war in Ancient China, focusing specifically on the development of Warring States political philosophy. It argues that the development of humanitarian values originated in the formation of the sovereign states system during the Warring States period. As states arose, they increasingly relied on peasant labor for agricultural resources and miltiary expeditions, which led to the development of political and moral ideas that reflected theinterests of ordinary people. Political theorists from the major intellectual schools (e.g., Confucianism, Taoism, and Mohims) developed humanitarian ideas as a way of reflecting the interests of the people. Throughout, it examines textual evidence that shows that humanitarian ideals shaped how Warring States theorists approached issues of war and peace.

Chapter 2 develops the theory of moral psychology that is used in later chapters to explain the evolution of the laws of war. It begins by briefly explaining why it is necessary to develop a theory of moral pscyhology to account for the evolution of international norms. It argues that existing theories have difficulty explaining why some norms repeatedly emerge in human societies. It then outlines a theory of moral psychology that holds that some norms are based on evolved cognitive heuristics and emotions. It argues that empathy and perspective-taking encourage prosocial behavior and that when these emotional capacities are engaged, they lead people to create norms that protect civilians from deliberate killing. However, it also shows that moral thinking is governed by subtle asymmetries in the way that people evaluate intentional action: intended harms are judged as morally worse than unintended harms. The rest of the book shows that this "intention/side-effect distinction" underlies the key principles of the civilian protection regime. Finally, the chapter develops a methodology for examining how moral intuitions shape international norms.

Here we have four case studies from North America, Central America, and South America to assess the links between peaceful borders and the occurrence and proliferation of illicit transnational flows. All the borders involved are peaceful with important variation across the cases in terms of historical background and trajectories. First, we study the North American Borders (US-Canada and US-Mexico), especially in the period since the establishment of NAFTA in 1994. Second comes the Northern Triangle of Central America, which includes the borders of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras since the end of the civil wars in the early 1990s. Third, we turn to the Colombian borders with Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil, with a particular focus on the last twenty years that witnessed the tensions between Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, and the long civil war that involved Colombia and the FARC until 2016. Finally, we analyze the Tri-Border Area of the Southern Cone of South America, which includes the borders of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, especially since the establishment of MERCOSUR in 1991.

In this chapter, we examine what we call the triangle of peace in the Middle East, with reference to the peaceful international borders established upon the completion of peace treaties between Egypt and Israel on March 26, 1979, and between Israel and Jordan on October 26, 1994. In both cases, we show that international peace, especially in the case of Israel-Egypt, has been a permissive condition for the occurrence and proliferation of illicit transnational flows, including transnational crime and terrorism.Yet, we explain the variance between the two cases with reference to the three variables assessed throughout the book: the degree of physical and institutional openness of the peaceful borders; the degree of governance and institutional strength of the bordering states; and the prevalent socioeconomic conditions of the neighboring states. The Egyptian-Israeli case has registered significant instances of transnational crime and terrorism, whereas the Israeli-Jordanian dyad is almost a non-case, except for drugs trafficking. Their variance is explained in geopolitical terms, governance, the presence or absence of buffer zones, and the dominance of the security discourse.

In this introductory chapter, we provide an initial examination of the linkages between peaceful borders and the occurrence and proliferation of illicit transnational flows. We refer to several empirical examples, including the cases of the Northern Triangle in Central America, the Tri-Border Area of the Southern Cone of South America, the Colombian borders, and the Schengen open regime in Europe. In addition, we refer to the existing scholarship by clarifying several key concepts, stemming from five different bodies of literature: international peace, globalization, international borders, governance and “areas of limited statehood,” and the phenomena of transnational criminal organizations and terrorism.