Belligerent Reprisals

Characterizing his inquiry as a paradoxical question of how far states may use inhumanity in order to promote the interests of humanity, Kalshoven (formerly a professor of international humanitarian law at Leiden U. and Groningen U., the Netherlands) examines the international legal conundrum of belligerent reprisals, in which states respond to unlawful encroachments of the rules of war with equally unlawful actions for the purpose of dissuading the opponents from their actions. After conceptually developing the idea of belligerent reprisal and placing it within the framework of international law, he presents a historical narrative of the rules developed prior to the Second World War; British measures of reprisal in the context of economic warfare against Germany; other measures of reprisal during the war involving such matters as indiscriminate bombing of enemy populations, killing prisoners of war, and taking and killing of hostages; post-war war crimes trials involving the plea of belligerent reprisals; and post-war attempts to codify the law of belligerent reprisal; and instances of belligerent reprisals in more recent conflicts. Nijhoff, an imprint of Brill, is republishing this work, which had fallen out of print since its original 1971 appearance. Annotation c2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Frits Kalshoven was Professor of IHL at Leiden University (1967-1989) and Groningen University (1999-2002). He began his career as an officer in the Royal Dutch Navy (1945-1967). He has been Advisor to the Board of the Netherlands Red Cross Society (1971-1993). He has also served as Chairman of the UN Commission of Experts to investigate serious violations of IHL in the Former Yugoslavia (1992-1993) and as member of the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (1991-2001), the last five years of which as its President. He has authored and edited numerous publications on the laws of war. In 2003 the Standing Commission of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement awarded him the Henry Dunant Medal.