The Barbarization of Warfare

This book shows us the true barbarism of warfare. It makes brilliant but unsettling reading. Viewed together, the essays offer as good a sustained critique of war as is available anywhere in print, combined with a passion and engagement that is all too rare in first rate scholarship. The book is to be greatly treasured as an important contribution in a field of study that remains depressingly relevant in the world today. --C. A. Gearty, London School of EconomicsThe images from Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad have been a grim reminder of warfare's undiminished capacity for brutality and indiscriminate excess. What happened in Abu Ghraib has happened before: the World War II, and more recent wars and insurgencies in Algeria, Congo, Angola, Vietnam, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, and many others, all bear witness to the ever-present human capacity to commit barbaric acts if circumstances allow.What drives people to mistreat, humiliate, and torment others? In an age when real time war, violence, and torture are becoming addictive forms of entertainment, it is now more critical than ever to deepen our understanding of the extraordinary distortions of the human psyche and spirit that occur in wartime. Eight distinguished scholars explore, in this first collective effort, the effects of the barbarization of warfare on our cultures and societies.Contributors: Joanna Bourke, Richard Overy, Hew Strachan, Paul Rogers, Caroline Elkins, Amir Weiner, Mary Habeck, and David Simpson.