This and Chapter 3 seek to give an idea of the scope of the current use of interstate use of force. Chapter 2 offers brief descriptions of post-WWII conflicts, region-by-region. It covers the paucity of wars in Africa, Europe and the Americas, many conflicts in the Middle East, including Gulf War 1990, Iraq War 2003, Syrian Civil War, and the wars in Yemen and Afghanistan and Iran nuclear deal 2015 (JCPOA), It further describes conflicts in Asia and the Pacific, India/Pakistan conflicts, India/China clashes.

The chapter opens with an overview of the discussions on internal armed conflict at the four sessions of the diplomatic conference convened between 1974 and 1977 (the ‘CDDH’) which led to the conclusion of the first two Additional Protocols to the 1949 Conventions. The chapter then considers key outcomes of the CDDH – Article 1(4) of Protocol I, which requires ‘wars of national liberation’ to be treated as international rather than internal armed conflicts, and Protocol II in terms of both scope and content – from the perspective of the principal actors in the negotiations, in this instance the USA, UK, Canada, Nordic states (particularly Norway), Australia, Egypt, India, Pakistan, the Soviet Union and ICRC. In this instance, the provisions on internal armed conflict primarily reflected the preferences of materially less powerful states: the 1974 negotiation of Article 1(4) also illustrates well the limited efficacy of moral persuasion, technical authority and principled argument in the absence of a normative consensus across delegations. The 1977 drafting of Protocol II, in contrast, highlights the ability of weaker powers to deploy moral and technical authority alongside principled argument to bring about drafting outcomes.

Roger Hilsman and Robert Thompson prepared plans for Vietnam that counterbalanced the increasing pressure to deploy troops. Thompson had a great influence on McNamara. He informed the Secretary’s frustrations with the US mission’s inability to coordinate existing programs and with the Chiefs’ focus on conventional tools. By July, McNamara instructed the Chiefs to prepare a phaseout plan for US advisors in Vietnam, which was called the Comprehensive Plan for South Vietnam (CPSVN). It was designed to train the South Vietnamese to fight the communist insurgency themselves. Growing unrest in South Vietnam did not dampen these plans; instead, they accelerated. A phaseout brought order to existing programs and promised to secure their long-term funding.