The crime of war

Juan Bautista Alberdi wrote The Crime of War in 1872, under the deep impression produced by the Paraguayan defeat in the so-called Paraguayan War and its aftermath on the population of that country.
Alberdi studies the historical origin of the law of war. It discusses the perverse nature of that right, the responsibility attached to the crime of war and its pernicious effects. For Alberdi, warmongering sophistry avoids issues without actually resolving them. Thus he concludes that war is a crime to which abolition must be aspired.
Alberdi proposes two alternatives to avoid wars. The first would be to apply the right of men to nations and the second would be to promote, still more, free trade.

“The crime of war. This word surprises us, only by force of the great habit we have of this other, which is the really incomprehensible and monstrous: the law of war, that is, the right of murder, robbery, arson, devastation on the largest possible scale; Because this is war, and if it is not this, war is not war.
These acts are crimes by the laws of all nations of the world. War sanctions them and turns them into honest and legitimate acts, war actually becoming the right of crime, a frightful and sacrilegious contradiction, which is a sarcasm against civilization.
This is explained by history. The law of peoples that we practice is Roman of origin like our race and our civilization.
The right of Roman peoples was the right of the Roman people towards the foreigner.”