The Barbarization of Warfare

by George Kassimeris

Overview

The images from Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad have been a grim reminder of warfare's undiminished capacity for brutality and indiscriminate excess. What happened in Abu Ghraib has happened before: the World War II, and more recent wars and insurgencies in Algeria, Congo, Angola, Vietnam, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, and many others, all bear witness to the ever-present human capacity to commit barbaric acts if circumstances allow.
What drives people to mistreat, humiliate, and torment others? In an age when real time war, violence, and torture are becoming addictive forms of entertainment, it is now more critical than ever to deepen our understanding of the extraordinary distortions of the human psyche and spirit that occur in wartime. Eight distinguished scholars explore, in this first collective effort, the effects of the barbarization of warfare on our cultures and societies.
Contributors: Joanna Bourke, Niall Ferguson, Jay Winter, Richard Overy, David Anderson, Hew Strachan, Paul Rogers, Kathleen Taylor, Marilyn Young, Paul Rogers, Anthony Dworkin, Amir Weiner, Mary Habeck, and David Simpson.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814747971
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	09/01/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

George Kassimeris is a Senior Research Fellow in Conflict and Terrorism at the University of Wolverhampton. He is the author of Europe’s Last Red Terrorists (NYU Press) the first book in any language on Greece’s notorious November 17th terrorist group. He writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal Europe and the International Herald Tribune and is now working on a biography of Andreas Papandreou.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements     v
The Contributors
The Barbarisation of Warfare: a User's Manual   George Kassimeris     1
Barbarisation vs. Civilisation in Time of War   Joanna Bourke     19
The Second World War: a Barbarous Conflict?   Richard Overy     39
Time, Space and Barbarisation: the German Army and the Eastern Front in Two World Wars   Hew Strachan     58
The Modern and the Primitive: Barbarity and Warfare on the Eastern Front   Mary K. Habeck     83
Something to Die For, a Lot to Kill For: the Soviet System and the Barbarisation of Warfare, 1939-1945   Amir Weiner     101
Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing: the Dynamics of Defeat, Surrender and Barbarity in the Age of Total War   Niall Ferguson     126
Surrogates of the State: Collaboration and Atrocity in Kenya's Mau Mau War   David Anderson     159
The American Empire at War   Marilyn B. Young     175
The Global War on Terror and its Impact on the Conduct of War   Paul Rogers     186
The Texts of Torture   David Simpson     207
The Laws of War in the Age of Asymmetric Conflict   Anthony Dworkin     220
On Brainwashing   Kathleen Taylor     238
Epilogue:Reflections on War and Barbarism   Jay Winter     254
Notes     267
Index     317

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This book shows us the true barbarism of warfare. It makes brilliant but unsettling reading. Viewed together, the essays offer as good a sustained critique of war as is available anywhere in print, combined with a passion and engagement that is all too rare in first rate scholarship. The book is to be greatly treasured as an important contribution in a field of study that remains depressingly relevant in the world today.”
-C. A. Gearty,London School of Economics

“Warfare, [Kassimeris] reminds us, can foster the best of human virtues. But it can also provide an arena in which a nation's true character is demonstrated in the eyes of the world.”
-Kansas City Star

Editorial Reviews

"This book shows us the true barbarism of warfare. It makes brilliant but unsettling reading. Viewed together, the essays offer as good a sustained critique of war as is available anywhere in print, combined with a passion and engagement that is all too rare in first rate scholarship. The book is to be greatly treasured as an important contribution in a field of study that remains depressingly relevant in the world today."

C. A. Gearty

"Warfare, [Kassimeris] reminds us, can foster the best of human virtues. But it can also provide an arena in which a nation’s true character is demonstrated in the eyes of the world."

Kansas City Star

"Warfare, [Kassimeris] reminds us, can foster the best of human virtues. But it can also provide an arena in which a nation’s true character is demonstrated in the eyes of the world."

Kansas City Star

This book shows us the true barbarism of warfare. It makes brilliant but unsettling reading. Viewed together, the essays offer as good a sustained critique of war as is available anywhere in print, combined with a passion and engagement that is all too rare in first rate scholarship. The book is to be greatly treasured as an important contribution in a field of study that remains depressingly relevant in the world today.”
-C. A. Gearty,London School of Economics

“Warfare, [Kassimeris] reminds us, can foster the best of human virtues. But it can also provide an arena in which a nation’s true character is demonstrated in the eyes of the world.”
-Kansas City Star

From the Publisher