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

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.

Daniel Rothbart is Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. He has published extensively in the fields of identity-based conflicts and the ethics of war, and currently co-chairs the Sudan Task Group.

Karina V. Korostelina is Associate Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. She has published extensively on identity-based conflicts, civilian devastation, interfaith dialogue, and history and conflict.

Mohammed D. Cherkaoui is adjunct professor at George Mason University and recently published The Palestinian Media at the Crossroads: Challenges and Expectations.