Principles of warfare are the evolved concepts, laws, rules and methods that guide the conduct of combat related activities during conflicts. Throughout history, soldiers, military theorists, political leaders, philosophers, academic scholars, practitioners of international law and human rights advocacy groups have sought to determine fundamental rules for the conduct of warfare. Principles of warfare impact on the health and security of civilian populations in a zone of conflict, human and natural environment, social networks and groups, rural and urban societies, national and international economic relations, political structures and international diplomacy, and the means and methods by which conflicts are brought to conclusion. These approaches have been both prescriptive, stating what activities are forbidden in warfare by law, ethical considerations, or religious beliefs, and descriptive, analyzing the best practices and means by which armed forces can achieve victory.
Famous quotes containing the words principles of, principles and/or warfare:
“Indigenous to Minnesota, and almost completely ignored by its people, are the stark, unornamented, functional clusters of concrete—Minnesota’s grain elevators. These may be said to express unconsciously all the principles of modernism, being built for use only, with little regard for the tenets of esthetic design.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“It is not impossible, of course, after such an administration as Roosevelt’s and after the change in method that I could not but adapt in view of my different way of looking at things, that questions should arise as to whether I should go back on the principles of the Roosevelt administration.... I have a government of limited power under a Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law. Now, if that is reactionary, then I am a reactionary.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)