AHC: No or delayed/broken Geneva. Hauge conventions.

I'm not sure about the Geneva Conventions but I'm fairly familiar with the Hague. It's pretty easy to have it never happen, NO one wanted to attend in the first place.

Czar Nicholas proposed the Hague Convention out of misguided realpolitk, thinking that limiting both the enemy's and his own armaments would help to soften the rapidly expanding technologic gap between Russia and the Austro-German alliance. The Germans, for their part, despised the idea and wanted desperately to find some excuse not to attend.

The other nations were suspicious but did not want to bear the brunt of having such a noble endeavor fail. Public opinion and mutual suspicion of one another eventually won out and everyone showed. So basically you have a few options.

1) More communication between the powers. This was before both Moroccan crises and the British and Germans didn't hate each other quite as much. The British were wholly unwilling to be the first to pull out, but if they did France and the US would likely follow. If you have either more pressure from the Admiralty (Jackie Fisher, who ended up being one of Britain's delegates, was particularly critical of the convention) or more communication between the Germans and British. It wouldn't have taken much pressure from the British to get the Kaiser to fall on his sword and be the first one to withdraw.

2) You could have a more decisive public relations campaign on the opposite side. Alfred Thayer Mahan, who was quite famous at the time amongst those who followed international relations, was also critical of the conference (he, like Fisher, ended up attending). If you could build up a bigger "pro-war" sentiment you could make it more publicly acceptable for the Great Powers to pull out of their own accord.

3) You could have a war break out. The Fashoda incident developing into a war, or a more overt sign of support from the Kaiser to the Boers would have led to such irresolvable tensions between those attending that the Conference would have to be called off. It was hypocritical enough to begin with.

Barbara Tuchman's essay "The Steady Drummer" concerns the Hague Conventions and I strongly advise you read it if you're interested in the travails of early champions of internationalism. Hope this helps!
 
Looking at the Wiki link provided, the only obvious arms limitations are aerial bombing, poison gas artillery, and in the second one, mines.

Most of the rest is codifying behaviour during war, which works for militarists, anyway, as most of the behaviour condemned (looting, atrocities, etc.), are prejudicial to discipline and make your army less effective.

So, as the conventions turned out, what restrictions to warfare did they really pose?
 
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