Book Reviews: Civilian Suffering in Armed Conflict

In recent decades, the persistent tragedy of civilian suffering in war has inspired a growing body of scholarship seeking to understand not only how but why civilians continue to be targeted despite longstanding legal and moral prohibitions. Two important contributions to this field—Alexander B. Downes’s Targeting Civilians in War and Hugo Slim’s Killing Civilians: Method, Madness and Morality in War—offer distinct yet complementary perspectives on the roots of civilian victimization. Drawing from empirical political science and philosophical humanitarianism respectively, these books together advance a multidimensional understanding of the intentional and systematic targeting of civilians in armed conflict. Both works challenge comfortable assumptions about the moral progress of warfare and compel readers to confront uncomfortable truths about strategic necessity, ideological justification, and the ambiguity of civilian identity.

Downes’s Targeting Civilians in War is a methodologically rigorous and provocatively argued book that blends statistical analysis with historical case studies. Contrary to much of the prevailing literature, Downes disputes the notion that democracies are inherently more restrained in their use of force against civilians. Instead, he identifies two primary drivers of civilian targeting: (1) the desperation to win a protracted, costly conflict while minimizing one’s own casualties and material losses; and (2) the ambition of territorial conquest, often requiring ethnic cleansing or mass displacement. Downes marshals an original dataset covering interstate conflicts from 1816 to 2003 and supplements his quantitative findings with compelling case studies, including the Anglo-Boer War, the blockades of World War I, strategic bombing in World War II, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Notably, he also investigates “negative cases”—instances where civilian targeting was avoided—to demonstrate the role of quick victory and limited war aims in mitigating civilian harm.

Downes’s contributions are significant not only in content but also in approach. His book decisively refutes regime-type determinism, arguing that democracies are not exempt from committing atrocities when strategic conditions demand it. Furthermore, he offers a dynamic analysis of conflict escalation, showing how initial strategies of limited violence can evolve into full-scale civilian targeting as frustration mounts and other tactics fail. In doing so, he complicates existing theories, including those advanced by Stathis Kalyvas, that suggest violence becomes more discriminate over time. Downes’s conclusion—that identity-based justifications for violence tend to follow, rather than precede, the descent into desperation—is a powerful challenge to accounts that place ideology at the core of civilian victimization.

In contrast to Downes’s structural and strategic lens, Hugo Slim’s Killing Civilians offers a more ethical and phenomenological exploration of violence against civilians. Slim, drawing on his background in humanitarian work and moral philosophy, begins from the premise that civilians constitute a morally “protected people,” a notion rooted in both ancient principles of mercy in warfare and modern international law. His inquiry is broad and interdisciplinary, synthesizing theology, psychology, and personal testimony to explore what he calls the “seven spheres of civilian suffering,” including displacement, torture, and sexual violence. Unlike Downes, Slim does not develop a testable theory or comprehensive dataset. Rather, his is a philosophical and humanitarian reflection on the conditions—practical, ideological, and emotional—that lead individuals and institutions to violate the civilian ethic.

At the heart of Slim’s analysis is the concept of anti-civilian ideologies, a spectrum of justifications ranging from regretful necessity to outright rejection of the civilian category. Slim argues that without engaging seriously with these ideologies—and the moral reasoning that underlies them—we cannot effectively advocate for the protection of civilians. He is especially concerned with the ambiguity of civilian identity: in modern conflicts, the lines between civilian and combatant are blurred by social roles, economic activities, and political affiliations. This ambiguity, he argues, is exploited by military actors who find it easier to justify indiscriminate or collective punishment. His conclusion is both pragmatic and hopeful, offering a set of behavioral and institutional strategies to encourage restraint and compassion in war.

While each author acknowledges the other’s domain—Downes includes ethical concerns, and Slim notes strategic calculations—their methodological divergence reveals some limitations. Slim’s philosophical commitments to mercy and restraint, while deeply humane, lack the causal rigor to explain when and why those ideals fail. Downes, on the other hand, may understate the role of ideology and identity in initiating violence, even as he convincingly argues that such factors often follow rather than precede strategic decisions. Furthermore, Downes’s presumption of a clear civilian category contrasts sharply with Slim’s more nuanced view of identity, leaving an unresolved tension between theoretical clarity and lived complexity.

The value of reading these two works in tandem lies in precisely this tension. Downes offers a realist corrective to the moral exceptionalism often attributed to liberal democracies and international norms, showing how even “just wars” can devolve into strategic civilian slaughter. Slim, by contrast, insists on the importance of norms, compassion, and the ethical imagination, without which any hope of limiting war’s destructiveness would be vain. If Downes explains why atrocities happen, Slim helps us understand why they should not, and what must be done to stop them. Targeting Civilians in War and Killing Civilians are both essential texts for any one interested in the evolving ethics and strategies of modern warfare. Each book stands on its own as a significant contribution to the study of civilian suffering, but together they offer a powerful framework for understanding—and perhaps someday preventing—the horrors and atrocities that continue to define too many armed conflicts.

Targeting Civilians in War; By Alexander B. Downes. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8014-4634-4. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Pp. ix, 315. $29.95.

Killing Civilians: Method, Madness and Morality in War, Hugo Slim (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 300 pp., $29.95.