War and Genocide

Organised Killing in Modern Society

Martin Shaw

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780745619071, 9780745619064
• eBook ISBN: 9780745697543
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Genocide & War Crimes
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This comprehensive introduction to the study of war and genocide presents a disturbing case that the potential for slaughter is deeply rooted in the political, economic, social and ideological relations of the modern world.

Most accounts of war and genocide treat them as separate phenomena. This book thoroughly examines the links between these two most inhuman of human activities. It shows that the generally legitimate business of war and the monstrous crime of genocide are closely related. This is not just because genocide usually occurs in the midst of war, but because genocide is a form of war directed against civilian populations. The book shows how fine the line has been, in modern history, between 'degenerate war' involving the mass destruction of civilian populations, and 'genocide', the deliberate destruction of civilian groups as such.

Written by one of the foremost sociological writers on war, War and Genocide has four main features:

• an original argument about the meaning and causes of mass killing in the modern world;
• a guide to the main intellectual resources – military, political and social theories – necessary to understand war and genocide;
• summaries of the main historical episodes of slaughter, from the trenches of the First World War to the Nazi Holocaust and the killing fields of Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda;
• practical guides to further reading, courses and websites.

This book examines war and genocide together with their opposites, peace and justice. It looks at them from the standpoint of victims as well as perpetrators. It is an important book for anyone wanting to understand – and overcome – the continuing salience of destructive forces in modern society.

Index

11 September (2001)

1984 (Orwell)

absolute war

abstract thought (slaughter)

Afghanistan

aggression

human

military

Africa

Africa’s Great War

African National Congress

age (victims)

airpower see bombing

Albanians see Kosovo Albanians

Algerian War of

Independence

allies, local (new Western wars)

Allies, Western

World War I

World War II

American Civil War

American Revolution

Amiriya bombing

anarchists

anarchy (international relations)

Anglo-American military tradition

Angola

anti-capitalists

anti-Communist regimes

anti-draft movements

anti-globalization movement

anti-militarism, anti-war movements

anti-nuclear weapons movements

anti-peasant policies

anti-Semitism, anti-Semites

anti-urbanism

anti-war structure of feeling

apartheid

Arab-Israeli War

Arabs

arbitrariness (victims’ experiences)

Arkan

armament culture

armed forces, armies

in genocide

armed struggle

transformation

Armenians, genocide of

arms economy

arms manufacturers

arms markets

Arusha Accords

asymmetry (conflict)

atomic bomb(s)

on Japan

scientists and

Auschwitz-Birkenau

Australia

Austria

Austria-Hungary

authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states

authority, political

Axis powers

Baghdad

Baltic states

Balkans see also Yugoslavia

battle

Clausewitz on

face of (Keegan)

illegitimate killing in

in war, degenerate war and genocide

battlefields

robotic

battlespaces

Baudrillard, J.

Battle of Britain

Beirut

Belgium

Belgrade

beliefs, belief-systems

in genocide

in war

Benelux

Berlin

Best, G.

bin Laden, O.

Black Consciousness (South Africa)

Blacks (US military)

Blair, T.

Blitz (English cities)

blocs, international

Boadicea

body (as battlespace)

Boers

Bolsheviks, Bolshevism see also Communism

bombing

Allied (World War II) see also strategic bombing

atomic (on Japan)

of cities

in global-era wars

bordered power containers (Giddens)

borders

Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bosnian War

Bosnian Muslims

Bosnian-Serbian Army

Boyne, Battle of

Brazil

Brighter Than a Thousand Suns (Jungk)

Britain, British

Brodie, B.

Browning, C.

Bush, G.W.

Cambodian genocide

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

camps

concentration

death

extermination

labour

Canada

cannon fodder

Canterbury, Archbishop of

capitalism (and war)

Castro, F.

casualties

civilian-military ratios

direct, indirect

numbers

categories (violence, war)

Caucasus

Ceadel, M.

Chalk, F.

Chambers, J.W.

chance (genocide)

Chang, I.

Chang, J.

Charter

Chechnya, Chechens

Chiang Kai-Shek

children (war, genocide)

Chile

China, Chinese

famine in

guerrilla war in

Japanese war against

Chinese Communists

Chinese Nationalists

Christianity

churches

Churchill, W.S.

cities (sites of war, genocide)

cities of death (extermination camps)

Civil Rights Movement

civil war(s)

civilian death (media)

civilian service

civilianization (mass death)

partially reversed

civilians

handed to killers by UN

non-combatants

participants (genocide)

targets (terrorism)

targets (war)

clash (actors)

genocide

war

class war

classes, social

participants in war, genocide

targets of genocide

Clausewit’z, C. von

Clinton, W.

CNN effect

coercion (genocide)

Cohen, S.

Cold War

end of

collateral damage

collectivisation (agriculture)

Colombia

colonists see settlers

comfort women (Japan)

combatants

in genocide

see also soldiers

command economy

commemoration (victims)

communications (war)

Communism, Communists

and war, militarism, genocide

community, political

Comte, A.

concepts

Congo Civil War

Congo-Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo)

Congo-Zaire

conflict

genocide as

war as

conquest (context of slaughter)

conscientious objection

conscription, conscripts

constraints (war)

contact groups

cosmopolitan democracy

cosmopolitan victims

cosmopolitanism

counter-culture

counter-insurgency

counter-revolutions

Crimean Tartars

Crimean War

crimes against humanity

Croatia, Croatians

Croatian War

Croats

cruelty

cruise missiles

Cuba

Cultural Revolution

culture, cultures

cultures of slaughter

cyberwar

Czechoslovakia

Davis, M.

Dayton settlement

death (sanitization)

death penalty

degenerate war

compared to war and genocide

defined

legacy in new Western wars

democracy

and armies

and peace, justice

cosmopolitan

linked to genocide

national and global

democratic deficit

democratic movements

democratization

denial

and Yugoslav Wars

deportations

Depression (1930s)

devastation

destruction

in genocide (social groups)

in war (enemy power)

deterrence

dictatorship

difference (and slaughter)

discrimination

in genocide

in war

disintegration (armies, in battle)

Dresden

Dryden, J.

Dubrovnik

Duffield, M.

East Timor

Eastern Europe

economic factors (war)

economies

of violence, slaughter

targets of war

see also arms economy, command economy, war economy

education, educated

elections, electorates (genocide)

elites

emotion (war, genocide)

empires,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Boxes
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Episode 0: The trenches
• Episode I: The Armenian genocide
• Episode II: Stalinism’s mass murders
• Episode III: Nazism, war and the Holocaust
• Episode IV: Japan’s genocidal wars
• Episode V: Allied bombing in 1939–45
• Episode VI: Nuclear war preparation
• Episode VII: The Cambodian genocide
• Episode VIII: Genocidal war in Yugoslavia
• Episode IX: War and genocide in Rwanda
• Episode X: The new Western way of war
• Index