ABSTRACT

This book explores the issue of civilian devastation in modern warfare, focusing on the complex processes that effectively establish civilians’ identity in times of war.

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 in relation to militant combatants: constructions that prove lethal to the civilian noncombatant who lacks political power and decision-making capacity with regards to their own survival.

Civilians and Modern War provides a critical overview of the plight of civilians in war, examining the political and normative underpinnings of the decisions, actions, policies, and practices of major sectors of war. The contributors seek to undermine the ‘tunnelling effect’ of the militaristic framework regarding the experiences of noncombatants.

This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, ethics, conflict resolution, and IR/Security Studies.

part I|93 pages

Targeting civilians

chapter 3|21 pages

Devastating civilians at home

The plight of Crimean Tatars and Californians of Asian descent during World War II

chapter 4|24 pages

Military culture and civilian victimization

The Allied bombing of Germany in World War II

chapter 5|16 pages

Double victims

The recruitment and treatment of child soldiers in Chechnya

part II|114 pages

Preserving civilian immunity

chapter 8|19 pages

Civilian vulnerability in asymmetric conflict

Lessons from the Second Lebanon and Gaza Wars

chapter 9|34 pages

In the shadow of soldiers

Faceless victims in public media narrative

part III|121 pages

Redressing anti-civilian practices

chapter 11|22 pages

Trans-regional military dimensions of civilian protection

A two-part problem with a two-part solution

chapter 12|21 pages

Civilians under the law

Inequality, universalisms, and intersectionality as intervention

chapter 13|28 pages

The price of justice 1

chapter 14|17 pages

Preventing genocide

Towards systematic engagement by states 1

chapter 15|17 pages

Making amends

A new expectation for civilian losses in armed conflict

chapter 16|14 pages

Conclusion

The road ahead