When and how are the terms of surrender determined in a war?

Question

I was wondering about that. Let's say that the Chinese sink an American ship accidentally and it escalates into a war, how does China raise the white flag, and does the United States have the prerogative to keep attacking and ignore the white flag? When and how are the terms of surrender determined and what forces countries to acknowledge that a country surrendered and force it to stop attacking?

Answer 1

The terms are either negotiated, or imposed. An early surrender, when a side realises it will loose but still has some strength, allows negotiating better terms than fighting a war to utter destruction.

For example, as the end of WWII in Europe approached, it became clear that German resistance on the Eastern, Italian and Western fronts could not be sustained, and large groups of Germans started to surrender on the Italian and Western fronts.

At this point, General Jodl, the head of the Operations section of the German High Command arranged to travel to General Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims, the HQ for the entire Western Front. These arrangements were presumably made via Allied and German representatives in Switzerland; this kind of thing is quite normal in the closing phases of a war.

Jodl was entirely happy to surrender to the Western Allies, but not to the Soviets. This offer was from Admiral Dönitz, who had been designated as the new leader of Nazi Germany by Hitler before committing suicide. The offer was refused, in accordance with the commitments made to the Soviet Union by the West. Eisenhower made the threat that if Germany did not surrender the Western Front armies would cease taking surrenders from the Germans, forcing them to surrender to the Soviets.

Jodl was allowed to send a message to Dönitz, who bowed to the inevitable and told him to surrender Germany to all the Allies. The Germans had been well aware since the Casablanca Conference in early 1943 that any surrender would be unconditional. They tried to split the Allies by surrendering only to the West, and did not try to negotiate anything else.

In contrast, there was significant negotiation over the surrender of Japan. On August 6th 1945, Hiroshima received an atomic bomb. On the 8th the Soviets broke their non-aggression pact with Japan and declared war. On the 9th the Soviets invaded Japanese-held Manchuria, and Nagasaki received another atomic bomb. At this point, the Emperor of Japan ordered his government to surrender. They started to communicate, via Switzerland, on the 10th.

The Allies' announcement of surrender terms, the Potsdam Declaration had not been explicit on the position of the Emperor. This was a major sticking point for the Japanese, who could not publicly accept any reduction in his status. If the government were to do so, a military coup was almost inevitable. They told the Allies that they could not accept any terms that would "prejudice the prerogatives" of the Emperor. President Truman had suspended atomic bombing, but allowed conventional attacks, including firebombing, to continue after a pause for the Japanese to consider their position.

On the 14th, the Emperor decided to surrender anyway. The Cabinet ratified the decision and sent instructions to the embassies in Switzerland and Sweden to accept the Allied terms. There was an attempted coup, but it failed. The Emperor's status was reduced to that of a constitutional monarch, but this happened gradually during the occupation of Japan.

Answer 2

International law permits war only as a means of self-defense. This is part of the founding charter of the United Nations (Article 2 (3), with Article 33 (1) and 51 providing context). Revenge or extolling compensation are not permissable war goals. As such, in your scenario the US would be required to stand down as soon as there is ongoing or immediate attack on them anymore.

[However, that of course doesn't mean they'd actually do it. And there isn't really anyone around who'd be in a position to make them either.]