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Ethics of War | Thomas Gregory | TEDxYouth@ParnellCollege

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Core Argument

The speaker argues that although wars are often discussed in terms of tactics and the effectiveness of weapons, the physical reality of the wounds caused by weapons—and the moral/legal limits on that harm—are too often ignored.

International Humanitarian Law (laws of armed conflict) seeks to restrain warfare through rules about:

  • Who may be targeted
  • What weapons may be used

A key idea is the principle of unnecessary suffering and superfluous injury, which bans or regulates weapons that cause more pain or injury than is necessary to achieve legitimate military objectives. At the same time, the principle implicitly accepts that some harm in war may be unavoidable.

The Central Difficulty: “Necessary” vs. “Unnecessary”

A major problem, the talk says, is deciding where the line is between “necessary” and “unnecessary” suffering. That line is not obvious and is a persistent source of dispute.

The speaker cites:

  • The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has convened experts repeatedly to clarify the principle but has struggled to produce workable definitions.
  • Critiques from legal thinkers, including:
    • Professor Warren, who questioned why blinding laser weapons would be deemed unacceptable while similarly brutal harms from other weapons (e.g., napalm, bombs, bullets) are often permissible. He argues institutions are better at creating technological destruction than managing its moral/legal consequences.
    • Professor Antonio Cassese, who argued the principle is so vague that it has little practical effect. If lawyers can’t reliably distinguish “necessary” from “unnecessary,” regulators can’t credibly justify bans or restrictions.

Proposed Approach: Use History (“Genealogy”)

To address these problems, the speaker proposes turning to history—not to find a single definitive rule, but to examine:

  • How the principle developed
  • How it has been applied
  • How different actors defined “necessary” and “unnecessary” in different eras

The speaker also frames their motivation as pacifist, suggesting the principle can be reappropriated to focus attention on war’s destructiveness—potentially opposing war itself, rather than only restricting particular weapons.

Origins: The St. Petersburg Declaration (1868)

The talk traces the principle’s origins to the St. Petersburg Declaration (1868), which banned certain explosive projectiles (under 400 grams).

Historical context

  • Russian experimentation with exploding bullets intended to destroy wooden ammunition chests.
  • Concerns that such bullets could be modified to explode upon contact with soft tissue.

Justifications in the Declaration

The declaration used humanitarian language to claim that:

  • War’s “technical limits” should yield to humanity’s demands.
  • The ban targeted harms that unnecessarily aggravate suffering or cause “unavoidable” deaths in more brutal ways.

Competing interpretation

Historians argue motivations may have included self-interest: limiting battlefield cruelty could help ensure soldiers would actually be willing to fight.

Uneven application

The limits had geographic exclusions and were not consistently applied—for example, arguments for using such bullets in colonies with racist justifications.

Later Clarification Attempt: The ICRC (1973)

The speaker describes a later attempt to clarify the principle through the ICRC in 1973, where experts considered competing approaches:

  1. Scientific/metric method Measure pain objectively and set a precise threshold for “too much” suffering. Rejected because pain is subjective.

  2. Narrow focus on weapon modifications The emphasis would be on unnecessary alterations—for example:

    • Bullets that explode on contact
    • Wrapping weapons with barbed wire
    • Serrated bayonets
    • Poisoning bullets

The argument: similar results could be achieved with conventional means.

  1. Broader view All wars inherently involve unnecessary suffering. This approach gained urgency after the Vietnam War, including concerns about:

    • Environmental damage
    • Long-term health effects from defoliants

The talk references estimates of massive victim illness and intergenerational birth defects. This group argued that if the aim is eliminating unnecessary suffering, many more weapons would need to be banned.

Conclusion: Archives Won’t Make the Rule Unambiguous

The speaker concludes that historical archives won’t magically produce a perfect, unambiguous definition. Instead, they show the concepts have always been contested and unstable.

By studying that “genealogy,” the speaker argues people can escape existing conceptual constraints and challenge modern harms—potentially extending the principle to oppose war itself, by emphasizing that unnecessary suffering and superfluous injury are produced by all weapons and by war broadly.

Presenters or Contributors

  • Thomas Gregory (speaker)
  • Professor Warren (referenced; associated with blinding lasers, 1989)
  • Professor Antonio Cassese (referenced legal scholar)
  • International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) (referenced institution)
  • Martens Boss (historian referenced)
  • Vietnamese Red Cross (referenced for health-impact estimates)

Original video