Sebastian Kaempf has joined a small but growing number of scholars examining civilian casualties produced by armies that accept the principle of civilian immunity and the laws of armed conflict. Like several other authors (Neta Crawford, Accountability for Killing, 2013; John Tirman, The Deaths of Others, 2012; and Matthew Evangelista and Henry Shue, The American Way of Bombing, 2014), Kaempf focuses specifically on the United States, asking why its armies continue to kill large numbers of civilians during military operations, given its commitment to international law and the minimization of civilian casualties. To explain this puzzle, he explores the tension between two seemingly incompatible goals adopted by the United States: the reduction or even elimination of risk to U.S. soldiers and the protection of civilians in target states. He posits that when the goals are in conflict, the United States opts to protect its own troops even at the expense of civilian lives, a reflection of domestic political pressures that have been deeply embedded in U.S. political culture since the end of the Vietnam War. He illustrates his thesis by closely examining how the tension played out during U.S. conflicts in Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Although this is not an original argument in and of itself, Kaempf makes a key contribution to this literature by focusing on two factors that have not been generally considered by other researchers as explanations for the phenomenon: the transformation in the concept of the soldier and careful consideration of the strategies deployed by America’s adversaries in asymmetric conflicts.

Kaempf attributes the reluctance of the United States to accept combatant casualties, at least in part, to the transformation in the concept of the soldier from a heroic figure who risks his or her life for the nation to one who no longer experiences the honor that was traditionally bestowed on him or her for sacrifice. This reflects the fact that combatants no longer face each other directly in battle, and have therefore become detached from their adversaries, eliminating their shared common bond as soldiers. The consequence of this loss of honor, he argues, has been an unwillingness on the part of the solder to accept the loss of his or her own life in place of the lives of civilians, a departure from the traditional code central to one’s identity as a soldier.

Perhaps Kaempf’s most important contribution is the addition of an external factor—the behavior of the adversary—to explain why the tension between casualty aversion and civilian protection is so acute in asymmetric conflicts. Since weaker parties usually lack the means to successfully confront U.S. forces directly, they employ a strategy aimed at raising the body count among U.S. soldiers while simultaneously making it difficult for U.S. forces to exploit theirs military advantage without creating significant civilian casualties. They do so by launching attacks from population centers and embedding their forces within civilian areas. This has been referred to as “concealment warfare.” Thus, overmatched adversaries try to shape the conditions of combat in ways that force the United States to choose between accepting higher levels of combatant casualties and protecting civilians. In doing so, they attempt to neutralize the technological and numerical advantage of the United States by threatening both of its core values. This makes it difficult for America to protect its troops without endangering foreign civilians, and in most cases, the military chooses the former at the expense of the latter. This practice is known in academic circles as risk transfer.

Underlying this book is a moral argument regarding the obligation of combatants to minimize civilian casualties. The author argues that the choice to prioritize the lives of U.S. soldiers over foreign civilians reveals a weakness in the laws of armed conflict. Kaempf charges that although the United States tends to adhere to the letter of international humanitarian law (IHL) in terms of avoiding direct attacks on civilians, it fails to meet the greater moral standard of exercising “due care” in ensuring that civilians are protected, a higher benchmark than simply avoiding direct attacks on civilians. He thus concludes that the attempt to translate moral issues into legal ones has not been successful, inasmuch as the laws of armed conflict do not adequately address the complex questions of morality arising from military operations. Thus, “from a moral standpoint, IHL is too lenient and vague, for it fails to adequately restrain the use of force in terms of its effect on civilians” (p. 40).

This book raises some very important issues, and the author successfully presents the dilemma facing U.S. forces trying to minimize casualties to their own soldiers while simultaneously trying to do the same for non-combatant civilians. By adding an external factor—the strategy of the adversary—Kaempf makes an important contribution in explaining why it is difficult for the United States to protect both its own forces and innocent civilians. This is important because most studies of U.S. policies toward civilians fail to approach armed conflict as an interactive process in which the U.S. military is forced to adapt to their adversaries’ strategies.

Kaempf’s argument is focused on asymmetric conflicts, which is not difficult since the United States has not fought another great power since World War II. Indeed, one could argue that given the substantial disparity in resources between the United States and its adversaries, every conflict fought by America since 1945 has been asymmetric. Yet not all adversaries have employed the tactics cited by Kaempf as a means of exploiting American aversion to both combatant and civilian casualties. This raises the question of whether these practices are endemic to all asymmetric conflicts or limited to specific adversaries. If it is the latter, then how does the author explain why U.S. troops engage in risk transfer in conflicts where their adversaries do not practice concealment warfare?

Moreover, even in cases where U.S. adversaries do engage in such practices—and therefore share responsibility for endangering civilians—one must also consider the fact that the U.S. military often exploits this practice by launching attacks that they know in advance will likely kill civilians, calculating that they can shift the blame for the resulting casualties to their opponents. In this sense, the United States has responded to the strategy of weaker parties by further exploiting their weakness. In addition, sometimes adversaries fight from populated areas because that is where they live and they have few other options, a fact that is itself the consequence of the U.S. fighting wars entirely on the territory of its adversaries. For example, in Kaempf’s Somalia case, it was the United States that brought the battle to Mogadishu, making it impossible for Mohamed Farrah Aideed’s forces to fight any other way.

Kaempf is certainly correct that trading civilian lives for those of one’s own soldiers violates the spirit of the laws of armed conflict, but I find his formulation a bit too timid. Such practices actually violate the central tenet of international humanitarian law. Soldiers are agents of the state, and under the principles in armed conflict are therefore expected to assume much greater risks than civilians, who are neither participants nor principles. Therefore, the responsibilities of combatants go beyond simply exercising due care to ensure that their efforts to protect their troops do not endanger civilians; they must actually assume greater risks as a matter of military tradition, customary practice, and international law. How much risk is impossible to determine in the abstract, but certainly, combatants are expected to err on the side of civilian immunity in cases where there is a conflict. Armies are not permitted to trade civilian lives to protect their own soldiers.

Additionally, the moral principle of “due care” cited by Kaempf as only aspirational is already embedded in the laws of armed conflict through the legal standard of “feasible precaution,” which states that in the conduct of military operations, all feasible precautions must be taken to minimize incidental loss of civilian life and damage to civilian objects. In fact, this standard is incorporated into the U.S. Army Law of War Manual (Section 5.11), as well as the military manuals of scores of other countries. The problem, then, is not with international law but with state practice.

Finally, I also question the degree to which risk transfer is a new practice that can be traced to the transformation of the concept of “soldier” after the Vietnam War. Certainly, the minimization of risk to soldiers has become a much greater political issue since Vietnam and Somalia, but U.S. military practice since World War II does not demonstrate that there was any period when civilians were given greater weight than soldiers. Indeed, if John Tirman is correct, the protection of civilians has never been a priority for the U.S. military, dating back two hundred years. This would temper Kaempf’s argument that the dilemma can be traced to the transformation in the identity of the soldier after Vietnam.

Having said that, Saving Soldiers or Civilians? makes a very important contribution to our understandings of U.S. military policy, civilian casualties, and the dilemmas inherent in trying to follow the laws of armed conflict while simultaneously seeking to maximize military advantage. Kaempf’s explanations are clear and plausible, and they must be taken seriously.