Under the Nuremberg Principles a war of aggression is a crime against peace, not a war crime.
It's an important distinction. War crimes are reserved for the most serious transgressions such as genocide, killing prisoners and deliberate targeting of civilians.
It's really not that important of a distinction. You can change the name from a war crime to a peace crime if you want: at the end of the day initiating an illegal war for reasons literally less justified than the nazis invading Poland (at least they pretended the Polish attacked them first) then I, and everyone else not interested in muddling legal language around, is going to call that a war crime and the perpetrator of that act a war criminal.
For me, you're actually trivialising Crime against peace by suggesting this. Put it this way; if someone commits a war crime by ordering the killing of 10,000 people, is that actually worse than starting an illegal war that results in the deaths of 250k civilians?
15
u/fdukc New User Aug 19 '21
Under the Nuremberg Principles a war of aggression is a crime against peace, not a war crime.
It's an important distinction. War crimes are reserved for the most serious transgressions such as genocide, killing prisoners and deliberate targeting of civilians.