Jus in Bello: Directly Correlated to Societal Advancements?

War is an essential part of the human condition, and with it come positives and negatives. On one hand, you have the barbaric side of war, brute force and slaughter, while on the other hand, you have the just side, which controls war in order to maintain peace and morality. Both are essential, but the latter,aside from giving modern society a base for its morality, is known for creating some of the most well written pieces of law, literature, and narratives. Essentially, what some might call gruesome and “no longer necessary” has brought about a significant amount of societal advancement at the cost of billions of lives and across thousands of years. Therefor, the documentation of war reglaments give a broader look into how society has advanced via one of the most basic effects of the human condition. The first ever written war law, in the Koran, set the stage for the coming eras of “just war”(i.e. Jus in Bello) and how the morality of war was viewed. This in turn ushered in a new era of Greek theory based on war, which influenced the motivation of warlords and emperors for the next 9,500 years. Once one reaches the Medieval Ages, what was once called “immoral” in war, is now acceptable and vice-versa. The true causes for war changed as the years went on, but by comparison, there reasoning was radical in comparison to the centuries before. All of the written war rules and regulations culminate with the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars, which is considered to be the beginning of 1st Generation Warfare. This warfare differs greatly from war before it, mainly because of technological advancements and less because of strategic advancement or the meta-war. As the 2nd Generation Warfare is ushered in by the American Civil War, it sharin...

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