Sir Mike Jackson death: Ex-general speaking on lessons of Northern Ireland

Sir Mike Jackson death: Ex-general speaking on lessons of Northern Ireland at a University of Edinburgh event, 2009

Transcript

00:00General Jackson might I start by putting a couple of those points to you the first

00:05raised by

00:07professor Fabre

00:08About the nature of the wars that are being fought now. This is not a conventional force against a conventional force and when the enemy

00:16abuses the willingness of the

00:18Army in question to obey by the rules in order to gain greater access to inflict casualties on that army

00:25The morality changes doesn't it?

00:27Well the law changes

00:29state on state conflict is

00:31Subject to the international law of armed conflicts and we've covered that point with the Geneva Conventions being being at the heart of that

00:38But this is not seen as state-on-state conflict because it self-evidently is not

00:45there is of course a

00:48Temptation and we have our own long experience in Northern Ireland, which is a very good handrail here. There is a temptation to

00:57Overplay

00:59the use of force as a

01:02single

01:03manner of defeating such an insurgency

01:06It cannot be

01:09there are many strands to this of which the military strand is but one and

01:16Some

01:18Evidence I think shows both from Northern Ireland and indeed elsewhere that an excessive use of force

01:25Whatever its legality is actually operationally counterproductive in any way

01:30So you would not want to go down that road

01:33Because we were talking about an enemy now that hides in the civilian population emerges from the civilian population and retreats back into it

01:40Yes

01:41I mean it's so-called

01:42Asymmetric and it's asymmetric legally as well as in every other way because they couldn't give a damn about the Geneva Conventions

01:49But it still requires in my view very careful

01:55discipline on

01:57The conventional armies not the unconventional ones because if they misbehave they are giving away their moral high ground

02:05Does it need to be codified it in the way that conventional wars are codified in the Geneva Convention legally codified?

02:11I think there's much in that suggestion

02:14Because there isn't much at the moment

02:17Different and different countries within a coalition such as operating both in both theatres

02:22Have different approaches to this very naughty problem as I say we use our Northern Ireland experience how we

02:30very clear rules of engagement which are

02:34Constructed to be within actually the lawyers say within about 80% of what is available to be done

02:40The lawfully so you've got that 20% buffer

02:45But perhaps yes, I think there's merit in I had not thought of that that

02:50some codification

02:53Because we sadly I fear we are going to be seeing this irregular warfare for some years to come