War crimes and criminals

[Legbreaker]

Repercussions be damned - at least that's the way many people may be thinking. Just look at how many loonies there are out there in everyday society protesting against this or that and happy to be arrested for it. Look at the people who like to disrupt WTO meetings for example - their actions may have servious impact on global relations, but that doesn't stop them from being a pain in the posterior.
While ever there are people who believe somebody has been or is being wronged, there will be people willing to do whatever it takes, rightly or wrongly and damn the political fallout!

[Raellus]

Yeah, but look at how reluctant everyone in Europe was to stand up to Hitler until '39. Why? No one wanted another world war. Appeasement was the product of war weariness resulting from the human, material, and financial costs of the "Great War". It traumatized the hell out of Europe and no one wanted to rock the boat for two decades after it ended. Imagine how traumatized people/nations would be by the Twilight War/WWIII.

Yes, there are individual citizens and small groups of radicals who just won't give a toss about that sort of thing. They might take matters into their own hands and you may see some vigilantism (or terrorism) related to wreaking vengeance on war criminals. But I really don't think you'd see governments pursuing war crimes prosecutions with much fervor.

[Legbreaker]

It really depends on which way the political wind is blowing and who's going to gain the most out of it. France for example may be willing to pursue some who came into contact with their citizens either on the Rhine, or when somebody was caught nosing about where they shouldn't have been - who's going to want to argue with what is the post WWWIII superpower?

Twenty five years later the political landscape may be completely different with a big general push to find any potential criminals. It may even be the government of the day bringing their own citizens to trial if it's in their political interests.

[Targan]

T:2300 shows that, like WWI, the Twilight War completely failed to be The War to End All Wars. Admittedly large-scale hostilities between the major powers fizzled out after 2001 (and I don't have the 2300 books here at work with me to check) but there were some really nasty regional wars in the century after the Twilight War ended. I recall that South America had its own really vicious series of wars.

And then things really kicked off all over again once the Stutterwarp faster-than-light drive was invented - a rare element called tantalum was a key requirement of the Stutterwarp drive and many countries went to war over the very finite deposits on earth. In the medium term those countries which had access to tantalum became major space faring powers while those without had to either ally themselves to those that did or resign themselves to being terrestrial nobodies (I say medium term because in the longer term terrestrial tantalum deposits became irrelevent in the face of the vast resources available in space).

In the CONUS MilGov and CivGov finally reunited in 2020. I suspect they would not have sought to prosecute one another's war criminals, in the spirit of detente and reconciliation (and political expediency of course). I'm sure however that any New America notables in custody would have been mercilessly punished.

[Mohoender]

IMO, after the Twilight war nobody would be prosecuted for war crimes as there is no winning side and as it would be more than complicated to find clear charges. Moreover, how could you charge your former ennemy for war crimes when you commited exactly the same crime? The use of nukes to the level of T2K is a war crime in itself. I would love to see the result of a war crime case where a government (which had dropped several Mt of nukes on others) would accuse one of, for exemple, privateeering or piracy.

Recall the case of the Admiral Donitz which was not found guilty because of his decision concerning submarine warfare as the USA had conducted the same kind of dirty war with their own submarines.

However, I would think that people could be charged with "crime against humanity" as Ratko Mladic is. Mass murder of civilians is a much better case. I can perfectly see a renewed US governement prosecuting former members of New America as it will add to their legitimacy. It will also be needed to avoid further chaos as you'll find criminal hunters such as Simon Wiesenthal. If they can't bring these people to court, this will quickly turn to bloodshed and cold revenge.