The forgotten story of the birth and life of the definition of ‘military objectives’ is relevant to the ongoing discussion about the need to adapt the law to asymmetric warfare. This definition, authored by a West German law professor and former member of the Nazi party, was driven by a Western effort to privilege regular armies while curbing the actions of guerrilla fighters and exposing their civilian supporters to harm. The Non-Aligned Movement turned the tide by burdening regular armies while exempting irregular combatants from the consequences of disregarding the law. It was only through judicial intervention—grounded in an imagined history of the linear progress of humanity—that civilians on both sides of asymmetric conflicts would ultimately become entitled to receive adequate protection.

This article provides a legal analysis of the largely uncharted notion of “acts harmful to the enemy” under international humanitarian law, which reconciles the humanitarian need to grant special protection to medical services (medical personnel, units and transports) in the interests of the wounded and sick with the military necessity to remove it when acts are committed contrary to good faith and for hostile purposes or with effects which harm the adverse party. The meaning of the notion is clarified by primarily looking into the legality of an attack against land-based medical services by the aggrieved party to the conflict as a consequence of harmful acts. It concludes with specific recommendations on how to interpret the law governing such an attack, considered prima facie lawful, on a hospital.

Military medical personnel and objects, as well as wounded and sick combatants, are protected against direct attack under the principle of distinction in international humanitarian law. However, some authors argue that they are not covered by the principles of proportionality and precautions. This opinion note explains that military medical objects constitute civilian objects under the rules governing the conduct of hostilities. It also demonstrates that, in view of the object and purpose of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, expected incidental casualties of military medical personnel and wounded and sick combatants must be included among the relevant incidental casualties under the principles of proportionality and precautions. This stems in particular from the interpretation of the obligation ‘to respect and protect’ as the overarching obligation of the special protection afforded to all medical personnel and wounded and sick. Support for this conclusion can be found in a number of military manuals and in the Additional Protocol's preparatory work and Commentaries. This conclusion also reflects customary law.

Grisly images of dead or injured civilians vie with ‘morbidly spectacular film of PGM (precision guided munition) strikes’. These phenomena, like this article, focus attention on the two most basic law of targeting components, that of military objective and that of incidental civilian losses. The latter component, being incidental civilian loss, injury and damage, also known as collateral damage, is one side of the proportionality ‘equation’. Expected incidental civilian losses (which term will be used interchangeably with collateral damage) are balanced against the anticipated military value of the strike. This balancing, i.e., proportionality, is one of the major factors in the law of targeting. The concepts examined are two of the most dramatic aspects of targeting. Is there any relationship between military objective and incidental civilian losses? If so, what is the linkage? If one concept expands or contracts what happens to the other? This relationship may have important implications for the type of expertise required to make legal targeting decisions. The type of expertise required would indicate who is best placed to make such targeting decisions and what sorts of errors such decision makers are prone to make and thus must particularly strive to avoid.