Weapons So Terrible They Had To Be Banned From War by Infographics Show | A History Teacher Reacts

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[jacobbabson]

I assume, the reason lasers that can blind people are banned is that it is considered inhumane. While shooting someone in the head will (most likely) kill them, the laser will just blind them and they will have to live the rest of their lives without their eyesight. Its like if a weapon was created that's sole use was to chop someones hands off but not kill them, or paralyzed soldiers for life instead of killing them.

[phyrath]

Weapons are generally banned or restricted for doing one of several things:
Maim but not kill
Kill slowly
Erratic in targeting/can't be controlled

Essentially the agreement is "We can kill each other if we really feel the need to but lets keep it to just killing, not perminant wounding or disabling, and let's use weapons we can actually aim at each other."

[thepetermullins]

To quote Team America:
"Stop or
"Or else what????"
"Or else the UN will write you a very nasty letter!"

[Leafsdude_]

"How do you enforce it, [and] how do you punish it?"

Well, that's *supposed* to be the point of the UN International War Crimes Tribunal. The issue is, the 4 founding members of the UN (US, UK, Soviet Union (now Russia) and China) have _so_ much power in the UN (ie: veto powers), that if they, or any of their allies, violate the rules, they tend to get away scot-free. Look at US activities in Guantanamo, or Soviet activities in Afghanistan, etc.

[sionae]

To answer the question you were asking on how this can be enforced, there have been numerous examples in history (dating back to even the bronze age!) where some countries/civilizations would severe/cut diplomatic and commercial ties with another country/civilization if the latter used "improper" weaponry. An example I like from the bronze age was the use of spikes next to the wheels of the chariots of the Hittite empire, that would cut through entire bodies or even drag living soldiers down with the chariot (which is obviously quite horrible). As a reply on one occasion, the Egyptians would have severed any commercial tie with them (perhaps it was just an excuse as they ended up using spikes next to their chariots as well, but still). Similarly with Greeks and Mycenaens, the very well known myth/story of the siege of Troy contained an act of war which was deemed as inhumane, even at the time, with a body being dragged behind a horse/chariot, alive or dead. In the story, we hear that even some generals on the Greek side were horrified and threatened to leave, so that says a lot about the view of certain war practices by ancient greeks.
More recently, it's quite obvious that any country using improper weaponry will lose more diplomatically and economically from international response than any possible gain from this weaponry.
That was a long answer but hope it clarified why these treaties are indeed useful :)
Oh and for the thing with the laser being inhumane, that's for two main reasons : the range of the most modern harmful lasers is far greater than the range of a sniper, and the fact that it affects someone's life permanently, whereas a bullet that doesn't kill doesn't necessarily handicap you for life (and, when you think about it, if your goal is to reduce the number of enemy soldiers, the bullet strategy will probably be more useful than the laser one)

[Cykeys]

Most weapons that are considered "illegal" in warfare are banned due to either the prolonged undue suffering it causes to people in general compared to weapons that kill instantly, or the possibility of collateral damage (which is why we have a lot of emphasis on precision guided weapons in the modern day) to civilians in the present day or future.

[m-n]

Land mines are Area Denial weapons meant to control the movement of the enemy keeping them from certain areas and funneling them into others. To do that they need to be clearly marked so that the enemy can see where they are. This marking is also supposed to protect civilians from the minefields by making sure the field is clearly marked to prevent them from entering it unknowingly. Landmines are not really meant to kill either, they are meant to disable and inconvenience vehicles or wound personnel seriously making soldiers not likely to move through that area, again they are meant to control the enemies movement on the battlefield so other weapon systems can defeat the enemy.

The reason for landmines being banned is their persistence on the battlefield long after the war is over as well as the way the anti-personnel mines are designed to maim people which is seen as needlessly cruel. These two then combine to cause significant civilian casualties which furthered calls for them to be banned.

[cactitiger]

The problem is that a lot of times countries don’t follow these rules

[TheSilverWolf]

It's much easier to point a laster at someone's eyes than accurately shoot them in the eye without killing them

[TheSilverWolf]

"What's the penalty and how do you enforce it?"
I'm no war expert but I'd imagine it's a lot like the auto-sniper in counter-strike. It's an unspoken rule that it's unsportsmanlike to use it. If you catch the other side using it, then you either dispose of it when you get your hands on it so no one can use it, you use their own gun against them, or everyone starts using one and chaos ensues.

[swirvinbirds]

When we deployed to Bosnia we were told there was about 1 million mines in country the size of the state of Tennessee.

Mines left behind after conflicts is a major problem.

[animeking]

I feel like the idea is that if two countries are at “war” and one is caught other countries would “punish” them.

[darthbob]

5:00 My dad once found an unexploded WWII shell at a beach in France on a school trip. He took it home and a few days later the police came

[Merennulli]

Sort of a running answer to the questions as they come up in the video -
- How are they enforced? - Prior to WWI they were enforced entirely as an "if you don't use them, we won't use them" agreement between signatories of the Hague Convention. I'm barely oversimplifying that, but it grew a little more complex by WWII with the Geneva Protocol rule being that any violating signatory was no longer protected from ALL the other signatories. Chemotherapy actually comes from this. During WWII the US anticipated German use of chemical weapons in violation of the Geneva Protocol, so it parked a ship at the port of Bari, Italy that carried 2k tons of mustard gas munitions intended to retaliate if needed. Germans bombed the port, sinking the ships, and the accidental release of mustard gas was devastating for the local area, but the doctor researching it noticed it was affecting cancer cells.

- Why no blinding lasers - Weapons that intentionally maim (permanently harm) rather than kill a soldier are generally considered unethical because a weapon meant to kill either works or there is a possibility of treatment, while a soldier maimed (blinded in this case) WILL have to live with that disability. Further, "less lethal" weapons have a tendency towards overuse as we've seen with the careless use of tasers in law enforcement lately. These bans make it easier to discourage wars that hide their high casualty counts.

- The point of well-marked minefields - is area denial. If you fence an area around your base and mark it as a minefield, it creates an area where the enemy is less willing to enter (whether the mines are there or not, notably), and with mines there it slows any ground advancement. Obviously, you lose other tactics and it limits the size of the area you can use it on, but the human cost of mines after wars has been considered too high. Also, mines are often MORE dangerous as they get older because the chemicals become more unstable. Where at one time you might have been able to dismantle them, now they have to be detonated in place as even slight jostling can set them off.

- Why not ban all weapons? - This is tantamount to banning war, which is the baseline of many international agreements, including the Concert of Europe. As you recall, the Concert of Europe created what amounted to a choice between no war and global war with no in-between. And someone decided to test it to catastrophic consequences. By banning certain weapons outright and separately banning war, when war DOES break out (as it inevitably does) it doesn't throw out all the more serious weapon bans. And further, those bans are compartmentalized. When Iraq used chemical weapons, it didn't allow everyone else to use chemical weapons like the pre-WWII agreement (Geneva Protocol) but instead resorted in sanctions. Further, if Russia were caught using a bioweapon, it wouldn't automatically mean the US would retaliate with nuclear weapons. Violations and reprisals have a chance to stay within the bounds of the violation. You can see the same thing in criminal law - theft, assault and murder are treated separately so someone who is committing theft DOES have something to lose if they escalate that theft to assault, and more to lose if they escalate an assault to murder. You want there to always be a worse penalty so the offending country doesn't decide on total war.

- Inspections/penalty - Under the current chemical weapons ban, which is a combination of several agreements, if a country is suspected of producing chemical weapons, the UN can decide to require inspections. This works the same as the UN inspections of nuclear facilities in Iran in recent years, and the enforcement are sanctions. The UN can permit coalition actions if it chooses to do so, like with the Gulf War (though that was for an invasion, not the chemical weapons later discovered), but I honestly can't see them ever doing that for merely possessing a banned weapon.

- Nuclear is the ultimate "deterrent" weapon that enabled a lot of these bans to have teeth. The US and many other countries refused to sign development bans for chemical and biological weapons for decades because they felt they needed them as a deterrent against other countries violating the usage bans. The US only ended its development of these weapons and later agreed to the bans because nuclear was seen as being a sufficiently worse threat that no one would anticipate coming out ahead of the US in a total war. Each country had its own path to get to that ban, but the superpowers having nuclear weapons was a major factor in making retaliatory banned weapons no longer needed. The US, Russia and China will never agree to a total ban on nuclear weapons for this reason...unless something worse comes along.

[ObscureLego]

So the thing with minefields is that they are typically used as an area denial weapon. Mines are a good way to force the enemy to go where you want them. Even just putting up signs that say minefield can be effective. It can also tie up an advance because they have to call the engineers to clear a path through the field.

[thatlaneboy]

With the Geneva convention - the rules are in place so you know when the rules have been broken. Therefore, when something goes against those rulings it can be deemed as a "war crime" and is punishable. When civilised countries sign up to the convention it is them clearly saying that they agree and will abide by those rules.

[HistoryWithZero]

If I remember correctly, I believe they still have a mine problem in the Falklands after the Falklands Conflict. They're working on removing them but they're not done yet, so there's still a big issue. Plus, it was meant to be finished in March of this year, but hasn't finished yet as they cannot guarantee that they've cleared them all.
Most of the mines were laid in sandy or peat bog areas, so imagine how hard they are to find. Luckily (and slightly strangely), some of the areas have become reserves for the native penguin populations because they're not heavy enough to set the mines off!

[cerberus]

A general rule of thumb is that if a weapon's only purpose or use is to inflict a permanent disability like blindness, deafness, etc it violates the Geneva Convention. This doesn't mean that a weapon that could plausibly do the same thing would be banned, just if that is the only reasonable use for a weapon. Another general rule is that if a weapon is just cruel, and more importantly, less efficient at its purpose than other common weapons, its banned. That's the real reason why most chemical weapons are banned, too inefficient compared to say, incendiary bombs and its just a crueller, lethal form of tear gas.

[tskmaster]

"Bat bomb... what they were is what they sound like."
Bat shaped bombs? Something Batman would use in his darker periods?
"Bats carrying small bombs."
That sounds nothing like Bat Bombs! They should be Bomb Bats!

[Imbapiranha]

Coming from a realistic view, "banning all weapons" will never work out. Getting nations together and signing to ban the most horrifying weaponry might be an unprecendented attempt in recognizing the human species as a whole to be something worth protecting.