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[Frumple]

Pretty sure it's an actual war crime. Not all of 'em's as visceral as some of the more obvious stuff. Term tends to be used to talk about things like mass murder of civilians or particularly heinous methods of killing and all that, but it's broader from a practical angle.

[Sergarr]

Hell, using a Red Cross sign without allowance from Red Cross organization is a war crime, too! Which means that a good portion of FPS video game designers are, technically speaking, war criminals.

[Reelya]

Yup:
http://www.crimesofwar.org/a-z-guide/war-crimes-categories-of/

By World War I, States had accepted that certain violations of the laws of war—much of which had been codified in the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907—were crimes. The 1945 Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg defined war crimes as “violations of the laws or customs of war,” including murder, ill-treatment, or deportation of civilians in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war; killing of hostages; plunder of public or private property; wanton destruction of municipalities; and devastation not militarily necessary.

Specifically it's a breach of the Nuremberg principles.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1420133.stm
It was ratified in international law under the Geneva Convetions. Article 147 outlines the scope of war crimes, while article 3 specifically mentions looting as a war crime example.

[Neonivek]

Yeah remember when Germany attacked France... and then sold off their art?

We are one upping them because we are not conquering Iraq... We are claiming to be their "Liberators".

So... Why are we pillaging people we are liberating?

[smjjames]

I may have been thinking of Geneva, but yeah, makes sense because Nazis and all that.

Also, the 'devastation not militarily necessary' makes it sound like the use of nukes is a war crime. Though I know that is covered in a different treaty.

[Reelya]

It came out of Nuremberg, but all that got bundled into Geneva. Technically Geneva is what everyone has signed onto as the treaty while Nuremberg set up the basic framework / precedent.

So... Why are we pillaging people we are liberating?

We're not liberating them. ISIS is a threat to business. We're doing it for that. But we're going to take the oil to pay for liberating them, even though we didn't do it for them anyway ...

[Neonivek]

It just doesn't make sense even without those treaties.

It isn't "To the victor goes the spoils" because it is like seeing a bully try to rob a kid of his lunch money... so you beat up the bully and then take the kid's lunch money.

It only works if you consider Iraq or all Muslims to be the enemy...

OHHHH that is why the USA is justified... because Muslims are the scum of the earth! And here I forgot that Trump wasn't racist.

[Hanslanda]

Use of nukes on cities would be that, yeah. I think nukes on military bases would probably not necessarily be out of the question, depending on where and why they were nuked. An insanely fortified position, with a vast majority of the enemy forces, in an incredibly important-yet-also-out-of-the-way place? (Not that these things really happen that way in the modern warzone. It's mostly drones and fighter jets and then we send in infantry/tanks to clean up the pieces.)

[Reelya]

Trump sees it as protection money. You don't pay, no protection. But we're going to "protect" you even if you don't want it and make you pay anyway, because that's what decent people do.

[EnigmaticHat]

Yeah remember when Germany attacked France... and then sold off their art?

We are one upping them because we are not conquering Iraq... We are claiming to be their "Liberators".

So... Why are we pillaging people we are liberating?

To be fair to Nazi Germany, they hadn't signed any treaties saying they couldn't plunder.  IIRC the Geneva Convention only applied to the wounded and prisoners.

I may have been thinking of Geneva, but yeah, makes sense because Nazis and all that.

Also, the 'devastation not militarily necessary' makes it sound like the use of nukes is a war crime. Though I know that is covered in a different treaty.

The sticking point is that nukes are more effective than conventional weapons.  Flamethrowers and chemical weapons were banned in large part because they weren't notably more effective than conventional weapons.  Why kill someone painfully if the normal way is largely more reliable anyway?  So by the standards of international law there's a strong argument that nukes are not inherently a war crime, although the nuclear doctrines of the cold war would be (since they involve intentionally devastating civilian populations).

[Reelya]

Nope. The allies nuked Hiroshima and fire-bombed Dresden. They specifically excluded bombing of civilians as war crimes. That's why Werner Von Braun wasn't charged as well: he did what they did. Also, NAZI Admiral Donitz was charged at Nuremberg for sinking civlian ships. His defense was that US Admiral Nimitz also order the sinking of (German) civlian ships, and that was enough. They dropped that specific war crime charge for Donitz.

So no, nuking civilian targets is not a war crime if you can claim it was necessary. Because America would never label something they did as a war crime. Victor's law after all.

[Baffler]

Trump sees it as protection money. You don't pay, no protection. But we're going to "protect" you even if you don't want it and make you pay anyway, because that's what decent people do.

If you mean NATO, those states who don't want to make the minimal investment in their own defense that they're treaty bound to make are welcome to leave if the terms of membership don't suit them. As is they're trying to get the benefit without the cost, the cost they agreed to pay at that. They are not the USA's responsibility, and it's pretty hypocritical of them to rely on us for their defense while simultaneously criticizing the size of our defense budget.

[Reelya]

Sounds like a load of crap actually. UK is the 5th highest spending nation in the world and France is 7th.

Big scary Russia spends 66 billion, while UK spends 55 billion and France spends 50 billion, and Germany spends 40 billion. Just those three nations outspend the Russians 2:1. It's just a Trump meme that the rest of NATO doesn't spend enough to defend themselves from ... who exactly? Total NATO arms spending not even counting America is already three times as much as the only credible threat.

EDIT: Also note that if you go off the International Institute for Strategic Studies, then non-US NATO actually spends a total that's roughly equivalent to Russia + China combined. Even without America, NATO spend enough to be considered a superpower.

[Criptfeind]

They need to maintain a large military encase a fascist dictator comes to power in the USA and Nato needs to go to war with us. Trump was just warning them all along.

[martinuzz]

Sounds like a load of crap actually. UK is the 5th highest spending nation in the world and France is 7th.

Big scary Russia spends 66 billion, while UK spends 55 billion and France spends 50 billion, and Germany spends 40 billion. Just those three nations outspend the Russians 2:1. It's just a Trump meme that the rest of NATO doesn't spend enough to defend themselves from ... who exactly? Total NATO arms spending not even counting America is already three times as much as the only credible threat.

And don't forget the millions of refugees we can draft with the promise of citizenship.