The quandary: you win a long war, and now you are stuck with millions of people who supported the regime in some way. Since that regime murdered many of your own people, this means they all are guilty of murder via conspiracy. How should we proceed?
This document is a first cut at aligning the prescribed actions of the aftermath, to encourage people in similar future situations, to take the actions we would desire. It first starts with notable exceptions, and then using the principles illustrated in those exceptions, directly addresses the matter of mass guilt. (Which is not the same as what you actually do to these people, but rather what you are justified in doing if the situation permits – see below notes)
Throughout, there is reference to “the punishment worse than death”. That is: to enslave them, torture such as serial rape, and so forth.
The obvious first exception is the soldier who defects. For force balance, morale, and the lack of further murder, we wish to encourage any soldier or other front-line functionary to defect, and so we certainly would not punish (and may even reward) this conduct.
Likewise, as the regime begins its campaigns of murder internally and externally, any civilians who flee in the regime’s duration of power, also should be unpunished, for the similar reasons.
We also consider the lot of people (if any) who voted the dictator in, provided the early financial and military support, and generally constituted the core of the regime and its ideology. For their active participation in the cause of the conflict, and particularly because they gave orders to those below, hence they should not receive less punishment than their subordinates, they all should receive the punishment that is worse than death.
Next we come to the point of the dead enders (primarily police, but also e.g. naval forces), usually within the country, who directly carried out the crimes ordered by regime leadership, but did not have the easy escape route afforded to those on the borders. They have the means of violence available for active resistance against the regime, or to make an escape by force, but almost certainly did not use it. The consequences for their active resistance almost certainly could have included death. Therefore, in order to encourage such active resistance e.g. in escaping, we must set their punishment as worse than death.
Next we come to the point of the general population, who might possess some means for violent resistance (not prisoners in camps) or have some chance of escape. These are the mass of people on whom the logistics of the conflicts/murders rests; if they do not work, the regime cannot continue its murder for long. However, their deaths in fight or flight are even more likely than those of the police and military. Even so, with knives and similar, they have means to make the attempts, and hence we must consider that they chose otherwise, leaving us to administer the punishment that is worse than death.
Next we come to the point of the prisoners in camps and cripples, who only can expect failure for their efforts; indeed, they might not even have the strength to overpower a single guard. If they didn’t meaningfully contribute to regime strength e.g. they were in cells the vast majority of the time, then we have to consider them as any other victims, if they were there from the beginnings of the regime. Moreover, if they were among those who tried to escape or fight the regime and failed, we also must consider them to have performed as we hoped, and hence should not assess punishment. However, if they wound up there mid-way through the regime in one of its purges, with no record of resistance, then we can’t consider them so different from the general population.
There is a special case where an individual lives out in the woods or mountains, and hence effectively was in hiding/neutral from the beginning; and in this case we would not assess punishment or reward.
A tricky case is the matter of sabotage. Abstractly, if the sabotage offset the benefit of the person’s continued participation in regime economics and other activities, then one could consider the person to at least be neutral in guilt, similar to a worthless prisoner or cripple. Speaking to the crime of murder, we have a few possibilities:
- If the person facilitated the defection/shelter of soldiers, intelligence collection, or other similar military strength enhancement, to offset their portion of the murder
- If the person caused major economic damage such as substation or pipeline destruction that could be considered roughly equivalent in value to military actions
- From the perspective of murder, if the person directly participated in violent resistance activities, or supported enough violent resisters, that you clearly could see that they were showing a positive balance of murder
Likewise, related to the economic assistance:
- If the person caused their contribution to come to net economic negativity, by inserting defective components, damaging tools, or causing major accidents like fuel truck fires
- If the person funneled sufficient profits or goods across the border to be used against the regime
- Similarly, if the person sponsored/facilitated the internal resistance to a degree that their economic contribution to the resistance outweighed that to which they were providing the regime
The question comes to how to apportion the murder and economic contribution, especially since neither of them conform to civilian economic analysis. The easiest means is when you have in-kind like for like; a policeman kills 10 people a week, but turns a blind eye to the bulk of the local resistance, who collectively are able to kill more than 10 regime supporters per week because he permits the cell to continue. Likewise to the point of foodstuffs and arms dealing. Usually, though, the murder and economics are quite indirect. One can’t properly apportion all murders per capita, because the crippled/imprisoned/retired/children/etc. are not making meaningful positive contribution to the murders. Moreover, we have to consider the difficulty of accurate judgment in a postwar situation where the economic records may have been destroyed, wealth likely was confiscated at some point, and the full and accurate extent of the murders may never be known. Hence, I would propose that we assess the innocence based on whether, if per worker/able-bodied person, the regime would have lost all its soldiers/material/provisions, and hence the war/collapsed, if each individual had performed in the way that this saboteur did.
The preceding discussion incorporated a lot of talk about death, punishments worse than death, etc. Is that actually what you want to do? The preceding punishment list provided clear incentives for defecting, but what about the mass of the population that remains after the enemy leadership surrenders (not their specialists whom you certainly would draft into your service)? If the enemy truly is defenseless, then you have not altered any dynamics about people being motivated to fight and kill your own people even when the war is lost. However, if the enemy still has significant war-fighting capability, and if the punishment is known to be death, slavery, etc. then the game theory is obvious: keep fighting to the very end, wasting your own soldiers’ lives.
I believe (with little firm evidence, I don’t think it always will work) the punishment that the mass of the enemy force would accept in this situation, is indentured servitude of a fixed term (e.g. 10 years), but without the worst of slavery e.g. rape. It gives some punishment to appease the anger of your own people, but gives the enemy a clearly superior alternative to dying for nothing.