Wartime impunity rests on a fictional war pact granting equal footing to belligerents.

Evidence

Samuel von Pufendorf explains, “The custom of nations holds that the belligerents mutually in a formal war are upon an equal footing so far as concerns the justice of the war, when they make peace,” and so “the damage caused by either side is forgiven, as if it had been done by agreement.” This is the thesis that there exists between belligerents some kind of war pact. “A similar agreement is entered into by those who leave the decision of their disputes to the outcome of duels … inasmuch as each of them, willingly and by agreement, entered a combat the law of which was either to kill or be killed.” Of course, this is a legal fiction, but the law is, in its very essence, founded upon such fictions. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 521

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘war pact’ fiction (Pufendorf) that mutualizes the right to kill without crime.
• XREF: connects to: War’s immunity from murder prosecutions rests on mutual reciprocity

Related

• War’s immunity from murder prosecutions rests on mutual reciprocity (similarity 0.85)
• Legal immunity for wartime killing presupposes that the right to kill is mutual. (similarity 0.81)