Scorched Earth

A scorched earth policy is an military strategy which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area. It is a military strategy where all of the assets that are used or can be used by the enemy are targeted, such as food sources, transportation, communications, industrial resources, and even the people in the area. The practice is carried out by an army in enemy territory, or its own home territory. It may overlap with, but is not the same as, punitive destruction of an enemy's resources, which is done for purely strategic/political reasons rather than strategic/operational reasons. It was most famously used by General Sherman against the South in the American Civil War, by Lord Kitchener against the Boers, and by both Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler during the Winter Campaign of 1941–1942.

The strategy of destroying the food supply of the civilian population in an area of conflict has been banned under Article 54 of Protocol I of the 1977 Geneva Conventions. The relevant passage says:

It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.

Despite being prohibited, it is still a common military practice. The protocol only applies to those countries that have ratified it, and notable states that have not ratified it are the United States, Israel, Iran, Pakistan and Iraq.