ABSTRACT
The 'Hague' division of international humanitarian law is concerned with the regulation of methods and means of warfare, meaning on the one hand lawful and unlawful tactics, and, on the other, the law relating to weapons types and usage. To deceive the enemy about one's intentions is a fairly obvious and in itself unobjectionable practice in both strategic and tactical planning. On the grander, strategic, level, the best-known example of deception is perhaps the Allied endeavour at the end of the Second World War to deceive the German military command as to the intended location of the D-Day landings. Bombardment is, self-evidently, a central aspect of the conduct of hostilities, and is subject to a number of constraints by international humanitarian law, all of which relate ultimately to the basic 'principle of unnecessary suffering' in so far as they are designed largely to limit target selection and to proscribe indiscriminate attacks.
