Even in the Classical Era, rulers couldn’t theorically wage war without serious motive: In Egypt, pharaohs had to ask the deities before waging wars; there were Vedic texts debating of when war is morally justified in spite of the destruction and which warfare methods are allowed; in China, under the Zhou dynasty, most philosophers only allowed for defensive wars; Greek and Roman thinkers added similar restrictions and major Christian theologians debated of the concept of just war and efforced to limit the occasions to wage war legally and Reformation humanists preached pacifism.
Even the most absolute rulers had to cite casus belli to wage war in their communication such as self-defense or previous dynastic claims. A dictator such as Hitler had to creat false flag attacks in spite of having a totalitarian control over Germany since six years, being able to imprison or execute dissenters and plenty subjects already thinking that revising Versailles was a sufficient reason.
So, thousands of years of thinking in the history of manking pointing at a widespread condemnation of offensive wars of conquest.
The Nuremberg Trial wasn’t innovating when Justice Robert Birckett described war of aggression as the “supreme international crime” becaue “its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world.”
Nor was the Tokyo Trial inventing something when, out of its 55 initial charges, 36 dealt with various iteration of the crime of aggression, as “indeed no more grave crimes can be conceived of than a conspiracy to wage a war of aggression or the waging of a war of aggression, for the conspiracy threatens the security of the peoples of the world, and the waging disrupts it.”
The new weapons of mass destruction developped during and after WW2 only made this crime even more repulsive, and the major powers all agreed to a common framework to limit wars so as to prevent the annihilation of the human race.
Nuclear weapons are able to destroy entire cities and widespread employment of these can cause the collapse of agriculture through nuclear winter.
Chemical weapons poison soils, rendering them inapt to human use.
Finally, biological weapons have the potential to cause epidemics or even pandemics, whose impact can be gauged by the recent COVID pandemic.
So, it’s you who oppose human tradition when you try to defend your heroes Trump (and Putin).
@Passerby #246300
Even fucking gangsters know that wanton aggression is bad for their businesses