Strategy & Entailments: The Enduring Role of Law in the U.S. Armed Forces

Abstract

This essay aims to redescribe key moments in the history of American military engagements to account for a persistent role that law has played in these conflicts. The law of war tradition has persisted since the War of Independence, we argue, because of an internal dynamic that makes it both strategically useful and costly for the United States to commit itself to rule-bound warfare. Invoking the laws of war to advance the strategic interests of the United States, American soldiers and statesmen have found, entails consequences beyond their control, making reversals in position more costly and enabling critiques in the language of the law. These entailments, we argue, are built into the enduring strategic value of the laws of war. The law has remained useful not because it can claim perfect neutrality, but because it has force independent of the interests for which it is mobilized.