Recent actions of Russia in Ukraine have shown how vacuous the term “valid military target” is, to the point that there’s very little sense in discussing it. (

Recent actions of Russia in Ukraine have shown how vacuous the term “valid military target” is, to the point that there’s very little sense in discussing it. (One may argue that along with that it also exposed how empirically inadequate are a lot of other terms, institutions, conventions, and rules we’ve become accustomed to relying on for maintaining our peace, security, and ensuring that bad guys don’t go unpunished, but i guess that would be a digression for another time). The meaning behind such terms, absent methods of enforcement when they are violated, exists only for those warring states that choose to respect them - the list that likely does not include any of the realistic opponents we consider today, such as Russia, or North Korea, or Iran, or unfortunately, China.