This topic comprises Themes #3 and #4, whose central thrusts are, respectively, cheap military successes and paths to the same larger political end using civilian approaches – i.e., winning without major fighting (at least in a classic military sense). Although it does not capture the sum total of Sun Tzu’s Theme #3 thinking, a core part of that thinking focuses on extremes of both benefits and costs – reaping the former and avoiding the latter.

War is often seen as both morally repugnant and as a heroic activity conducted in the national interest. This introduction outlines some conditions in which this moral dualism appears and is managed in eighteenth-century Britain. It surveys the financial, social, and cultural pressures that could influence public attitudes to war. Focusing on selected examples, it explores the role of humanitarian feeling in justifying particular acts of violence, in enabling a general, compassionate acquiescence in war, and in encouraging the emergence of anti-war attitudes that eventually led to organised opposition to war.

In her review of Joshua Goldstein’s War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa, Francine D’Amico writes: “War is constructed as a test or signifier of manhood/masculinity: victory is confirmation of male identity, defeat is emasculation. Femininity is constructed to reinforce the ‘man as warrior’ construction, both in support roles as nurse, mother, or wife and in opposition as peace activist: all confirm militarized masculinity.” Building on this observation, this chapter asks whether war fiction and poetry support and reinforce these popularized conceptions, or whether they offer opposing or more complex views. Examining some of the most classic and popular war novels of the twentieth century such as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, this chapter shows that these popular war novels of the twentieth century do not promote “militarized masculinity” but focus instead on the physical, psychological, and emotional cost of war by portraying its devastating effects on both men and women.

Chapter 4 explains the relevant rules of armed conflict that provide for the protection against the effects of hostilities. To the extent that humanitarian law protects civilians and civilian objects, it also protects foreign investors and their investments, as far as natural persons and tangible assets are concerned. The chapter shows how the law of armed conflict balances military and humanitarian concerns and illuminates the operation of the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution. In analysing the limitations of this protection, the chapter further identifies circumstances in which harm to foreign investors and their investments may be lawful under international humanitarian law. In particular, the chapter shows how foreign investments can easily become military targets and under which circumstances inflicted damage can be an acceptable side effect of military operations. The chapter thus forms the basis for the subsequent examination of international humanitarian law’s impact on individual investment treaty standards.

This chapter focuses on human targets. It foregoes the traditional division into civilians and combatants in order to address lawful targets in bothinternational and non-international armed conflict, and the notion of 'combatant' has no application to the latter category. For maximum clarity as to who can be lawfully attacked in armed conflict, itdiscusses – separately with regard to international and non-international armed conflict – the situation of several categories of persons such as members of the armed forces, members of the police, members of non-state armed groups, civilians, and peace operations personnel.

Chapter 6 discusses the two most notorious institutions in wartime Singapore, the Changi and Outram Road prisons, with key focus on civilian internment at Changi. It describes the colonial origins of penal institutions and the erection of Changi Prison as the first modern (reinforced-concrete) penal complex. The prison’s inversion to intern colonial residents, as an act of forced removal and dispossession of once-privileged colonial civilians, is discussed in terms of “subalternization,” a recurring theme in subsequent chapters. The chapter focuses specifically on the experiences of incarcerated colonial women, children and elders, as different to those of imprisoned service personnel. It concludes with their relocation to Sime Road Camp.

Chapter 9, “Home Army on the Offensive: Violence in 1943-1944,” dissects mature intelligentsia military resistance. As the tide of war turned and the Germans endured their first battlefield defeats against the Soviet Union, the consolidated Home Army grew aggressive. Its most effective move was a 1943 assassination campaign targeting Wehrmacht officers, Nazi police, and German administration personnel called Operation Heads. Heads intimidated the Germans and shifted occupation policy. The Home Army’s perceived success and the advance of the Eastern Front toward Warsaw in 1944 convinced underground military leaders that they were facing their last opportunity to launch a city-wide insurrection. Their rebellion, now known as the Warsaw Uprising, failed. Remaining German personnel in the city were reinforced and crushed the insurrection, slaughtered civilians, and destroyed the city. This chapter argues that military conspiracy, like Catholic resistance, had its successes but was ultimately dependent on the international situation and could not secure the practical support of the Grand Alliance in the face of both German and Soviet opposition.

Chapter 6 relates the individual status of the “players” on an armed conflict battlefield. It is the second question students should answer (after the conflict’s status) because the players’ status determines their rights and legal duties in the conflict. Civilians and combatants predominate, of course, but there are numerous subcategories for both: prisoners of war, retainees, militia, persons accompanying the armed forces, levée en masse fighters, spies, and mercenaries. Each category is explained and placed in relation to the other players. What if a civilian captured with weapons claims noncombatant status? LOAC provides for an informal tribunal. How is the familiar “farmer-by-day-fighter-by-night” dealt with? Who is an “unprivileged belligerent” and are they the same as an “unlawful combatant”? What status for a civilian who directly participates in hostilities and what are their battlefield rights, if any? Who is a “protected person” and what makes them such? These statuses and more are considered, along with their positions vis-à-vis the combatants who engage in combat with them.