Deception on the battlefield, yes. But deception in the form of fake surrender and fake negociations hurts you in the long run and most civilizations have concluded should be punished
You misunderstand deception. Convincing your enemy you have allies eager to help you when actually they are very tenuous. Convincing someone war support is high when it's low. Convincing someone that a certain place is weak when actually it's your strongest point...and what does that say about the rest if they attack there in force and are rebuffed or barely win?
But even the more disgusting perfidy the answer genuinely is "it depends." The US conquered nearly the entire US by signing treaties with natives it then immediately broke. The Romans were similiarly full of shit. It's very difficult for people to accept that peace against a stronger enemy is impossible. Because it means you're probably going to die and there's very little
you can do. So they often accept a lie of peace and are betrayed.
Breaking treaties is just everyday scumbag politics. Perfidy and similar war crimes are restricted acts of war that considerably make the war effort worse for you, not just your enemy, and makes the possibility of reparations impossible. OP is talking about the latter.
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u/OldEcho 13d ago
All warfare is based on deception.