US and UK hollow out commitment to preventing civilian war casualties

The US and UK have gradually hollowed out any commitment to preventing or recording civilian casualties in their wars. In the latest sign of imperial decay, the Pentagon has quietly shut down a program meant to prevent civilian deaths. The UK, as ever, are following suit.

The Guardian reported on 15 May:

A report released by the department’s inspector general concluded the US military no longer has the people, tools or infrastructure needed to comply with two federal statutes requiring it to maintain a functioning civilian casualty policy, and operate a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence (CP CoE).

The full report can be read in full here.

A similar process has been underway in the UK. As the Canary reported on 6 May:

The UK military has no way of detecting civilian casualties in war, a new study shows. And even processes developed during the failed occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan have now been virtually abandoned.

War casualties further abandoned

The NGO Ceasefire said the UK military’s own internal review:

reveals that adequate systems to track, investigate and respond to civilian harm either do not currently exist in the UK, have fallen into disuse, are not built for modern warfare, and/or are not scalable for future wars.

This revelation comes shortly after it was announced that the UK’s Conflict and Security Monitoring Project for tracking civilian casualties in Gaza had been shuttered.

Hard-right US war secretary Pete Hegseth has made it clear he thinks the laws of war and rules of engagement are ‘woke’.

As Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported:

[Hegseth] commented at a news conference on March 2, 2026, about “stupid rules of engagement,” suggesting that they may interfere with “fight[ing] to win.”

Drift into open barbarism

The Intercept’s Nick Turse has reported that in Iran, Yemen, Africa, and the Caribbean there have already been serious issues with casualty reporting. This appears to be due to severe cuts to the Pentagon’s Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, or CHMR‑AP.

As the Pentagon has starved the CHMR enterprise, the U.S. has killed more than 2,000 civilians across the world — from Latin America to Africa to the Middle East — during Trump’s second term.

UK NGO Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) said on 16 May:

For years, Britain and America have claimed that their militaries wage war ethically and with accuracy. Words like precision weapons, legal oversight and sophisticated targeting procedures were bandied around and, to be frank, they were done so with a sense of exceptionalism.

Adding:

They were meant to be the waging of ‘civilised war’ and they distinguished Western democracies from the indiscriminate violence they condemn in others. But two recent developments suggest that such a moral high-ground – for all of its fragility and questionable claim – is no longer being so brazenly claimed.

Needless to say ‘civilised war’ has still proven to have plenty of scope for massive violence and large-scale civilian deaths. The US and UK way of war – and the ‘liberal’ pretensions which ride with it – is shifting. From the war on terror, through Gaza, and now in Iran and elsewhere, accelerating imperial decay has pulled the humanitarian mask off – likely for good.

Featured image via Getty Images/Tim Boyle

By Joe Glenton

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