Civilians and Modern War: Armed Conflict and the Ideology of Violence

This book argues that civilian devastation in wars is perpetuated systematically through institutional practices that produce the conditions for civilian lethality. It focuses on a set of practices and policies that coalesce to rationalize actions that lead to civilian devastation. Underpinning the physicality of war'¬"s tumult are structural forces that create landscapes of civilian vulnerability. Such forces operate in four sectors of modern warfare: nationalistic ideology, state-sponsored militaries, global media, and international institutions. Each sector promotes its own constructions of civilian identity and difference in relation to militant combatants, constructions that involve direct implications for decisions and actions that are lethal to civilians. Some of these constructions are characterized by the ambiguous role of civilian noncombatants in the enemy territory'¬ ;civilians are neither enemy nor ally, neither demonized nor glorified as individuals. From the perspective of state-run militaries, civilians living in a war zone are cast as bodies in a network of relations, bodies which are subject to manipulation, control, or even elimination. Civilians lack political power and decision-making capacity regarding their own survival. In these ways, the seemingly innocuous categories of civilian identity and their alliances or relations with military combatants are operationally linked to an enormous body of cognitive and normative instruments, such as declarations, edits, proclamations, laws, rules of engagement, and post-combat reports. This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, ethics, conflict resolution, and IR/Security Studies.