Civilian Immunity

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 […]