The banning of some practices\tactics or weapons have nothing to do with trickery. Most laws are there to defend non combatants and civilians.
Well, no. Soldiers couldn't give half a shit about civilians, which is why carpet-bombing of worthy targets is still perfectly okay. Rules of war exist only to stop others from doing unto you what you weren't quick enough to do to them first, and to manage escalation.
That is why gases and poisons are prohibited, since they hurt indiscriminately (not that is stopping many countries today).
No. Gases and poisons are prohibited because they are not good weapons. Nukes are not prohibited because, while they are
much worse in dishing out indiscriminate damage, they are good weapons. Gases don't kill soldiers and stop armies with sufficient efficiency and cruelty. Tactical nukes do.
Disguising yourself as medical personal is prohibited not because it's trickery, but because it can lead to real medical personal being hurt.
More specifically, it can lead to
your medical personnel being hurt. Killing all the medics of the opponent would be a great thing, because he would then drown in not-quite-dead corpses. But medics are soft targets (you could arm them to the teeth and have them drive around in tanks, but they still stop and debus at the most inopportune places and spend lots of time motionless next to a lot of other motionless people), so there's inherent advantage to declaring them off limits on both sides. And, consequently, immense advantage to exploiting them for trickery. And, consequently, immense risk of getting caught on such things.
That is why mines are acceptable in some places (land), but not others (sea, where they can drift and hurt civilians).
Again, this is limited to where they can hurt the ones writing the rules. Land mines are bad for civilians (if used in areas where there are civilians - many a border/frontier minefield is devoid of civilians), but great for soldiers (who have tricks for dodging and means of protected passage). Sea mines only hurt people at sea, and as a first approximation, there are no people at sea. But there are expensive warships at sea, which is the reason for the ban on sea mines. That, and the fact that the usual halfhearted mine-clearing methods applicable on land that provide safe passage for troops while leaving civilians one-limbed aren't applicable at sea.
The actual legal texts usually include lots of lies about the motivations, and they make for an amusing read for the morbidly oriented. They pertain to a specific state of international balance of forces, of weapons technology and of doctrine, though. Expect no stability or predictability there, then.
Kirk is a soldier. There are certain windows of context that allow us to peer through at him and see a hero. Those windows move, though. We can keep on moving to compensate, but Kirk no longer moves on screen. It's fortunate that the writers knew not to take his heroism too seriously, though, as "Errand of Mercy" where he rants and raves about his right to wage war nicely disabuses the audience of such ideas. Perhaps the modern Trek heroes ought to get ridiculed for their moral values preemptively, too? That is, even before their moral values grow grossly outdated.
Timo Saloniemi
