Enemies by accident: An existential encounter between combatant subjectivity and the law of war

Abstract This article interrogates the moral inflation latent in socialization programmes that court combatants’ compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL) through moral character-building identity projects but neglect the unique logic of IHL as an emergency brake on total destruction and elide the liminal subjectivity of combatants on this precipice. The article begins by uncovering two divergent views on combatants’ subjectivity that underpin different approaches to influencing their conduct: one views combatants as functionaries and advocates hardwiring IHL into commands and policies to build shortcuts to combatants’ pre-reflective self-consciousness, while the other views combatants as reflective individuals and aims for their internalization of the ethical values underpinning IHL as a more durable way of promoting restraint. The article then examines the radical potential of combatants’ self-conscious exercise of their existential freedom in war, explores the limits of the use of “identity” inculcation to rein in this freedom, and demonstrates how IHL compliance could itself be an expression of combatants’ authenticity in an existential sense through acknowledging their inherently limited subjectivity as “enemies by accident” in war.