to be both the degree of intensity of coercion which must be applied and the level of destruction effected to achieve such objective, for the greater will be the target’s resistance.” Any use of force intended to go beyond countering the threat is unnecessary, for “prominent among the motivations of participants is, of course, a desire not to provoke retaliatory destruction which necessarily raises the costs of of achieving an objective. Coercion and destruction in excess of the amount necessary to reconstruct the expectation structure of the enemy elite represent inefficient and wasted expenditure of force and constitute a invitation to costly retaliation.” What use of force is unnecessary? Any use of force beyond that which is necessary to bring about the partial or complete submission of the enemy with a minimum expenditure of time, life and physical resources is unnecessary and “must be avoided to the extent possible and, consistent with mission accomplishment and the security of the force, unnecessary human suffering avoided.” The law of armed conflict recognizes that it is unrealistic to expect acts of self-defense to be undertaken with exactly and only that quantum of force necessary to tactically counter an aggressor’s attack – in fact, “it can be expected some attacks will almost inevitably lead to civilian deaths in the long term” – so it instead additionally permits that amount of force necessary to allow that attack to be tactically countered. When the injury from such “unnecessary” force can be avoided – when its application does not actually enable the acting State to further its legitimate political objective of self-defense with a minimum expenditure of time, life and physical resources – it should be avoided. Additional Protocol I requires that all “incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated” be avoided. Accordingly, when a State has the opportunity to choose between several different military objectives offering
suggest that only when such an extensive need for self-defense exists, would the extreme force likely to be associated with even “clean” low-yield tactical nuclear weapons, possibly be justified in terms of the additional force necessary to convince the opposing Party to abandon a political objective of such magnitude. Such an interpretation is strengthened by the suggestion of one scholar that the Court’s decision in the Palestinian Wall Case was meant to resolve the ambiguity regarding the use of nuclear weapons in extreme cases of self-defense that its 1996 advisory opinion has raised. In the Palestinian Wall Case, the ICJ, although acknowledging that both Israel and Palestine each often claim that the very existence of its State is at stake, nonetheless determined they were both “under an obligation scrupulously to observe the rules of international humanitarian law, one of the paramount purposes of which is to protect civilian life.” This understanding is furthermore generally consistent with modern understandings of “military necessity,” as the concept has survived its kriegsraison incarnation: military necessity may not permit the violation of international humanitarian law to the extent that rules lay down absolute prohibitions and do not expressly provide “exception for those circumstances constituting military necessity.” This is because the “rules and customs of warfare are designed specifically for all phases of war. They comprise the law for such emergency,” therefore, “to claim that they can be wantonly – and at the sole discretion of any one belligerent – disregarded when he considers his own situation to be critical, [would mean] nothing more or less than to abrogate the laws and customs of war entirely.” In order for the use of a any weapon to be deemed lawful, the principal of necessity demands that: 1) the weapon is directed towards a legitimate military objective; and 2) the force to be delivered is no more than that which is necessary to enable the acting State to end the