Throughout history, civilians have been subject to the violence of war. The legality of targeting civilians has been especially scrutinized in recent history, but the issue has existed since the earliest tales of conflict. Although it may seem brutal to attack noncombatants, targeting civilians is an effective strategy, which can be understood by examining the role of civilians during war, the objectives of such a strategy, and cases stretching from the past to the present. During war, the line between noncombatants and combatants can easily become blurred. Civilians have long played a role in enabling their military, but modern times have seen the rise of total warfare. As a result, civilians have become inextricably linked to the war effort. …show more content…
Sometimes civilian victimization is born from desperation to decrease the cost of war and is not the original intention of the state; in other cases, targeting civilians is crucial to the original aim. The latter can be seen in cases concerned with territorial conquests, in which expelling or cleansing a population is the primary goal, but is not limited to this type of aim. There are many reasons that civilian victimization is chosen as a strategy. Targeting civilians can cause a state’s social structure to deteriorate, reduce morale, damage infrastructure, and ultimately, compel the enemy to capitulate by threatening the economic, political, and social well-being of a state. Civilian victimization can highlight the ineffectiveness of a government that is not able to protect its people, cause inner social turmoil and economic issues that can significantly reduce a state’s ability to continue using resources externally as internal stability crumbles. Achieving these objectives has appealing consequences that lead to the employment of civilian victimization as a strategy. There are countless examples of civilian victimization including: the Boer War, the Allied blockade of Germany (WWI), the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (WWII), the Vietnam War, etc. Each of these armed conflicts had an aim that was attainable, or so thought, by the …show more content…
However, we must further examine specific conflicts to determine this. The Hundred Years War (1337-1453) saw widespread destruction and civilian victimization. The English and French waged war over who would be the successor to the French throne. The English utilized chevauchées, which were raids that sought to weaken the enemy by burning and pillaging. Attacking civilians could aid in taking fortified regions and, as the English hoped, draw France to the battlefield. The routiers, who were mercenary soldiers, especially contributed to the goal of economic attrition by plundering the wealth of civilians. “Houses, barns, windmills, water mills, churches, monasteries, even entire villages, or towns,” which were major sources of wealth, were destroyed (Rogers 38). These raids threatened the French economically by prompting resources to be used locally, consequently taking away from and weakening the national war effort. Moreover, the power of the nobility during conflict was not properly checked, meaning that they could be exceedingly harsh on the commoners. This threatened social order and incited smaller conflicts that perpetuated internal destruction and disunity (53). Combined, these factors also endangered political stability through which the English wished to snag the crown. Eventually, the French were forced into the Battles of Crécy and
To support his claim, McPherson argues there is nothing morally relevant to make a distinction between terrorism and conventional war waged by states. In other words, from the moral angel, there is no difference between terrorism and conventional war. Both two types of political violence have some common natures related to morality like posing threat to civilian lives. McPherson argues that conventional war usually causes more casualties and produces fear widely among noncombatants. He focuses on defending the claim that terrorists sometimes do care about noncombatants and proportionality. This viewpoint infers that terrorists do not merely intent to do harm to civilians. As a matter of fact, they sometimes put civilian interests in the first place. Those terrorists caring the victims would not resor...
War is seen as a universal concept that often causes discomfort and conflict in relation to civilians. As they are a worrying universal event that has occurred for many decades now, they posed questions to society about human's nature and civilization. Questions such as is humanity sane or insane? and do humans have an obsession with destruction vs creation. These questions are posed from the two anti-war texts; Dr Strangelove by Stanley Kubrick and Slaughterhouse Five written by Kurt Vonnegut.
Laws exist to protect life and property; however, they are only as effective as the forces that uphold them. War is a void that exists beyond the grasps of any law enforcing agency and It exemplifies humankind's most desperate situation. It is an ethical wilderness exempt from civilized practices. In all respects, war is a primitive extension of man. Caputo describes the ethical wilderness of Vietnam as a place "lacking restraints, sanctioned to kill, confronted by a hostile country and a relentless enemy, we sank into a brutish state." Without boundaries, there is only a biological moral c...
War is the means to many ends. The ends of ruthless dictators, of land disputes, and lives – each play its part in the reasoning for war. War is controllable. It can be avoided; however, once it begins, the bat...
Throughout history, war has been the catalyst that has compelled otherwise-ordinary people to discard, at least for its duration, their longstanding beliefs about the immorality of killing their fellow human beings. In sum, during periods of war, people’s views about killing others are fundamentally transformed from abhorrence to glorification due in large part to the decisions that are made by their political leaders. In this regard, McMahan points out that, “As soon as conditions arise to which the word ‘war’ can be applied, our scruples vanish and killing people no longer seems a horrifying crime but becomes instead a glorious achievement” (vii). Therefore, McMahan argues that the transformation of mainstream views about the morality of killing during times of war are misguided and flawed since they have been based on the traditional view that different moral principles somehow apply in these circumstances. This traditional view about a just war presupposes the morality of the decision to go to war on the part of political leaders in the first place and the need to suspend traditional views about the morality of killing based on this
Clearly, the UN definition being more general as any act of terror, it is found that revolutionary groups adopt the use of categorical terrorism because it is commonly cheaper than selective terrorism. Further, Goodwin argues that categorical terrorism is employed for the purpose of attacking and threatening what he calls “complicitous civilians.” Complicitous civilians are defined as (1) civilians who often benefit from state actions that the revolutionaries oppose, (2) those that support the state, (3) or civilians who have the ability to influence the state. The primary directive of categorical terrorism is to provoke complicitous civilians from further supporting the state. By applying intense...
Political violence is action taken to achieve political goals that may include armed revolution, civil strife, terrorism, war or other such activities that could result in injury, loss of property or loss of life. Political violence often occurs as a result of groups or individuals believing that the current political systems or anti-democratic leadership, often being dictatorial in nature, will not respond to their political ambitions or demands, nor accept their political objectives or recognize their grievances. Formally organized groups, Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), businesses and collectives of individual citizens are non-state actors, that being that they are not locally, nationally or internationally recognized legitimate civilian or military authorities. The Cotonou Agreement of 2000 defines non-state actors as being those parties belonging to the private sector, economic and social partners and civil society in all its forms according to national characteristics. Historical observation shows that nation states with political institutions that are not capable of, or that are resistant to recognizing and addressing societies issues and grievances are more likely to see political violence manifest as a result of disparity amongst the population. This essay will examine why non-state political violence occurs including root and trigger causes by looking at the motivations that inspire groups and individuals to resort to non-conforming behaviors that manifest as occurrences of non-state political violence. Using terrorism and Islamic militancy on the one side, and human rights and basic freedoms on the other as examples, it will look at these two primary kinds of political violence that are most prevalent in the world ...
When the Hundred Years’ War began in 1337, the strength of the French empire declined and the English possessed most of France. Although the war began in 1337, tensions between France and England started centuries earlier. In 1066, William of Normandy, duke of France, defeated the English and became king of England. A century later, conflict arose when Henry II, a great grandson of William, came into power in 1154 and wanted to add to his empire, known as the Angevin Empire, by taking over French territories. Friction mounted as the fighting between Angevin and French territories continued. Finally, King Edward III of England claimed the throne of France in 1328 but was refused, causing war to break out in 1337. The French suffered huge losses in the first period of the Hundred Years’ War. The French cavalry was decimated at Crecy in 1347, the fortress of Calais was lost in 1347, the French army was crushed at Poitiers in 1356, and King John II handed over ⅓ of the French kingdom to the English by the Treaty of Bretigny. Although the French drove out the English b...
In Khaled Hosseini’s novel titled “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, the concept of man’s inhumanity to man describes the ways that war has a ripple effect, such that any inhumanity carried out has consequences for many more people than are involved in that act. One can clearly see that war leads to destruction during different regimes in Afghanistan. The destructive effects of war can be seen in the death of so many people. It leads to the suffering of the younger generation and it demolishes the infrastructure of the country.
...civilians with ordinary families. Their wicked goal is to see Manhattan, Washington DC, Chicago, Philadelphia or Los Angeles totally obliterated. We cannot allow this to happen even though our solution might endanger the rights of “suspected war criminals” that think your neighborhood is their battlefield. If the anti-war “victim/slave mentality” should ever become the majority opinion in America, then the lyrics of the rock group Kansas would become prophetic truth, “All we are is dust in wind!”
Relations between countries are similar to interpersonal relations. When the conflicts between countries escalates to some extent, any resolutions become unrealistic except violence, and wars then occur. Although wars already include death and pain, moralists suggest that there should still be some moral restrictions on them, including the target toward whom the attack in a war should be performed, and the manner in which it is to be done. A philosopher named Thomas Nagel presents his opinion and develops his argument on such topic in the article “War and Massacre”. In this essay, I will describe and explain his main argument, try to propose my own objection to it, and then discuss how he would respond to my objection.
Violence marks much of human history. Within the sociopolitical sphere, violence has continually served as a tool used by various actors to influence and/or to control territory, people, institutions and other resources of society. The twentieth century witnessed an evolution of political violence in form and in scope. Continuing into the twenty-first, advances in technology and social organization dramatically increase the potential destructiveness of violent tools. Western colonialism left a world filled with many heterogeneous nation-states. In virtually all these countries nationalist ideologies have combined with ethnic, religious, and/or class conflicts resulting in secessionist movements or other kinds of demands. Such conflicts present opportunities for various actors in struggles for wealth, power, and prestige on both national and local levels. This is particularly evident in Indonesia, a region of the world that has experienced many forms of political violence. The state mass killings of 1965-66 mark the most dramatic of such events within this region. My goal is to understand the killings within a framework of collec...
“Terrorism involves the use of violence by an organization other than a national government to cause intimidation or fear among a target audience;” at least, this is how Pape (2003) defines terrorism in his article “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism” (343). The goal of this article by Pape is to discuss suicide terrorism and how it “follows a strategic logic, one specifically designed to coerce modern liberal democracies to make significant territorial concessions” (343). Similar to Pape, Bloom (2004) and Horowitz (2010) also delve into the exponential increase of suicide terrorism and why it occurs. Although Pape, Bloom, and Horowitz concur that suicide terrorism is increasing, they disagree why it is so prominent. While the arguments presented from each of these researchers is powerful and certainly plausible, suicide terrorism is in fact not irrational, but strategic and is most often caused by state occupation and, when organized, aimed specifically at democracies.
First, war is universal due to its violent nature, violence in its application knows no bounds, and it is the common factor that identifies the war and without it the war is nothing more than a diplomatic effort to reach the end. However, wars blow out only when the diplomacy fails. Violence is the war engine. Although the application of violence evolved through time and its severity varies according to communities, cultures, and the means and methods used. Demonstrating the violence through the application of force to subjugate the enemy is the central idea of war. “War is a clash between major interests,
With their mindset moving away from the limited wars that were fought by the old regimes, people’s ideas of war turned towards the extreme. Most French leaders had a new understanding of war, something that must end in either total victory or total defeat. This is also exemplified in the idea that the revolutionaries believed the war to turn into a war of liberation and that the ideals of the revolution would be applicable to all peoples in all countries. If the French were to successfully embark on a war or conquest with such a high purpose it would be by its nature, long, grueling and as David Bell feels, potentially apocalyptic. Due to the hostile nations and governments surrounding the French at the time, in order to achieve such a goal the French would have to be prepared to conquer in order to live free from outside enemies or perish to the last man in the process.