American Counter-Insurgency Operations in the Philippines and the Question of War Atrocities

Theories of war atrocities, both against enemy combatants and civilian populations, are almost entirely concerned with the motivations and factors contributing to states’ norm-violating behaviors during war situations. In many cases, especially where the leading states of the international system are involved, states violate international norms when they believe they can justify their actions in the eyes of other states and the world’s public opinion. I will argue, in this paper, that within the context of the colonial wars in the age of Imperialism, the justification was based on first, a “civilization” notion that distinguished between a group of nations organized into modern sovereign states and abiding by the conventional modes of Western warfare and those who did not, and second, on an alleged “civilizing” mission for imperialist acquisitions around the world that helped to replace the logic of war with that of law enforcement operation, on the other. Thus, by disassociating the military operations in the colonies from the context of war and placing it within the category of “policing actions”, colonial powers claimed exemption from following the laws and customs of war norms regarding the humane treatment of the captured enemy combatants and the privileged status of neutral and uninvolved civilian populations.