War and Genocide
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The triptych of war–degenerate war–genocide is the principal issue of Martin Shaw’s book. In this historical sociological account of the social institution of war, the author highlights the issue from three different perspectives. By identifying characteristics of various categories of political violence, Shaw first analyses relations between war, degenerate war and genocide. He then examines how society is involved in organized crime and, finally, looks into how societies can escape from the vicious circle of killing. For a substantial period of time war was considered a legitimate instrument for pursuing a state’s political objectives, at least as long as the killing was restricted to combatants and followed the prescribed rules of war. As such, war was conventionally understood as categorically distinct from genocide and its practice of illegitimate, criminal killing. The present book rejects this division as partial, artificial and archaic since it does not correspond to modern society and the types of political violence it produces. Embedded in a wider social structure, these types can hardly be considered as given but are rather subject to continuous change. Modern wars with their everyday practice of killing civilians, non-combatants and combatants beyond military necessity, have surpassed their legitimate limits. For such a deliberate and systematic extension of war against an organized armed enemy to war against a predominantly unarmed civilian population, Shaw (p. 5) introduces the concept of degenerate war. This degenerate war is a side effect of military technical development that enabled killing on a mass scale and thinking that on behalf of military necessity a particular society as a whole should be identified as an enemy. Instead, the book asserts that the definition of genocide as acts ‘committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such’ (p. 34) itself points to a certain connection with war in general and with degenerate war in particular. Moreover, not only the theory but also experiences from modern armed conflicts show that genocide usually occurs in the context of war, is intertwined with other forms of war and uses Journal of International Relations and Development, 2005, 8, (417–420) r 2005 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1408-6980/04 $30.00
www.palgrave-journals.com/jird
Journal of International Relations and Development Volume 8, Number 4, 2005
418
the logic and instruments of war. Therefore, it can either be perceived as an extension of degenerate war or, according to Shaw, as a distinctive form of war in which ‘(s)ocial groups are the enemies’ (pp. 44–45). In this connection, Shaw further problematizes the concept of genocide as follows from the 1948 Genocide Convention. He considers it groundless to exclude from the definition certain groups such as political groups or social classes and finds the notion of the intentional and deliberate, whole or partial, destruction of group, equally problematic. Although reflecting the correc
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