War and genocide

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War and genocide studies is an interdisciplinary subject that identifies and analyzes the relationship between war and genocide, as well as the structural foundations of associated conflicts. Disciplines involved may include political science, geography, economics, sociology, international relations, and history.

Contents

There is general consensus among scholars that the problems of war and genocide are intimately linked as the two often accompany each other. However, there are varying thoughts and theoretical perspectives on the topic as it continues to be a subject of scholarly analysis and debate. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]

Description

Genocide is defined as the intentional destruction of people, a term coined in 1944 by Polish lawyer Rapheal Lemkin with the Greek word γένος (genos, “race, people”) and the Latin suffix -caedo (“act of killing”). The United Nations defines genocide in Article II of the Genocide Convention as:

Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. [12]

The Genocide Convention also observes that genocide can take place in contexts of peaceful situations as well as in contexts of armed conflict. The United Nations also emphasizes the aspect that victims are deliberately targeted and killed not as individuals but as members of the targeted group. Popular characterizations of genocide include elements of brutality, occurring on a large and systematic scale, and its carrying out by armies as first-line agents.

Historical Background

Norman Naimark writes:

throughout its history genocide has had a very close relationship to war. Even during periods of peace, the threat of war or the ostensible need to prepare for war can instigate genocidal situations. War is not a necessary precondition for genocide, and genocide does not necessarily occur during war. Still, genocide is most often associated with wartime intentions, policies, and actions. This is as true of ancient times as of the present. In fact, the general decrease in the incidence of war and civil conflict over the ages no doubt contributes to the decreasing incidence of genocide. [13]

Surveys of twentieth century cases, often considered the “Age of Genocide” identify that when genocide was committed it was alongside some form of armed conflict. [14] The Armenian Genocide, Jewish Holocaust, Genocide in East Pakistan, Mayan Genocide, Kurdish Genocide, Tutsi Genocide, and Bosnian Genocide are all respectively linked with the First World War, Second World War, Bangladesh Liberation War, Guatemalan Civil War, Iran-Iraq War, Rwandan Civil War, and the Bosnian War. Scholars further observe this trend going into the twenty-first century, as the Darfur Genocide and the Yazidi Genocide are also associated with ongoing conflict in Western Sudan and Iraq. These observations have led many to conclude that genocides generally occur in wartime or as a response to armed conflict. [15]

Scholars have also pointed to the introduction of concepts such as mass mobilization, mass political movements, mass media, and mass education [14] as being important precedents for the concept of twentieth century genocide. Paul Bartrop observes that all cases of twentieth century genocide are accompanied with an aggressor's long-standing obsession with the physical, social, or cultural differences of a victim group as a threat so great that the aggressor believes mass annihilation in the only solution. [14]

Human Toll

Together, War and genocide have historically amounted to the large-scale destruction and devastation of peoples as both involve the deployment of violence through killing and physical harming to destroy the power of the enemy that often includes economic, political, and ideological coercion. [16] An estimated 20 million people were killed as a result of the First World War with an additional 20 million wounded. [17] The Armenian genocide alone resulted in the death of 600,000 to one million Armenians directly targeted with violence. [18] By 1918, an estimated 90 percent of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire was either killed or displaced. In the Second World War, an estimated 66 million people were killed in total and upwards of 6 million Jewish people were killed as a result of targeted violence. [17]

Theoretical Perspectives

Jeffrey S. Bachman identifies a continuum for schools of thought considering the relationship between war and genocide identifying the War or Genocide school, that believes there is no direct relationship between war and genocide, and the War is Genocide school, that believes genocide is inseparable from war, as the two extremes. [17] Most scholars fall somewhere between these two positions.

The War is Genocide School

The War is Genocide school is one extreme end of the spectrum that contends, as its synonymizing suggests, that war and genocide are one in the same. There are no scholars that identify with this position, rather it is a purely theoretical designation for its use in contextualizing other schools of thought. Criticism's of a purely War is Genocide approach include the fact that it does not consider defensive violence as separate from aggressive violence.

The War or Genocide School

The War or Genocide school contends that the conduct of war should be wholly considered separately from genocide. Helen Fein insists that connecting mass killing to genocide conflates “war crimes and genocide without examining the pattern of destruction and the selection of victims,”. [19] Irving Horowitz and Mark Levene distinguishes between armed conflicts and genocide by the moment at which the aggressor's aim in an armed civil conflict turns from defeating the enemy to a systematic effort to destroy them. [20] Irving Horowitz also distinguishes war from genocide based on who is waging it: “democratic and libertarian states wage war as an instrument of foreign policy…genocide on the other hand, is the operational handmaiden of a particular social system, the totalitarian system,". [21]   Similarly, on the subject of nuclear war, Barbara Harff makes the distinction based on intent: “Whether or not nuclear strikes are genocidal depends on the intent of those who order them. Limited and defensive use of nuclear weapons are not inherently genocidal, even if they have the unwanted consequences of massive civilian deaths,". [22] Scholars in the War or Genocide school as a whole reject any fluidity between people killed in war and victims of genocide.

The War and Genocide School

The War and Genocide school of thought encompasses the vast majority of scholars and contends that those killed in war can be considered victims of genocide. Scholars in this school reference the genocidal capacities of certain methods of war, such as nuclear weapons, pattern-, fire-, and carpet-bombing, or other indiscriminate strategies, as the use of genocidal violence.

The War as Genocide School

Genocide has traditionally been distinguished by the innocent, defenseless, or civilian status of its victims. Manus Midlarsky defines genocide as “understood to be the state-sponsored systematic mass murder of innocent and helpless men, women, and children”. [23] Similarly Irving Horowitz defines genocide as “a structural and systematic destruction of innocent people by a state bureaucratic apparatus”. [24]   Finally, Kurt Jonassohn and Frank Chalk define genocide as “a form of one-sided mass killing”. [25]

However the War as Genocide school contends that other groups such as military personnel should also be designated victims of genocide, and do not resign their right to life when engaging in defensive violence. Israel Charny believes that “the definition of genocide adopted in law and by professional social scientists must match the realities of life, so that there should be no situation in which thousands and even millions of defenseless victims of mass murder do not ‘qualify’ as victims of genocide,”. [26] This school suggests that genocidal violence includes aggressive violence against armed victims, when the aim is to harm and kill a substantial number of people. The War as Genocide school does not necessarily equate war with genocide, as the War Is Genocide school does, but it does recognize a causal link between the two and acknowledges that aggressive violence may constitute genocide. This school also invites scholars to reconsider the use of war in international affairs as well as the concept of genocide as being based on the perceived innocence of those attacked. Some proponents of this school argue that some examples of twentieth century war is genocidal by nature, given the enormous number of deaths.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Democide</span> Legal murder of unarmed persons by government agents

Democide refers to "the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by government agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant to government policy or high command." The term was first coined by Holocaust historian and statistics expert, R.J. Rummel in his book Death by Government, but has also been described as a better term than genocide to refer to certain types of mass killings, by renowned Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer. According to Rummel, this definition covers a wide range of deaths, including forced labor and concentration camp victims, extrajudicial summary killings, and mass deaths due to governmental acts of criminal omission and neglect, such as in deliberate famines like the Holodomor, as well as killings by de facto governments, for example, killings during a civil war. This definition covers any murder of any number of persons by any government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genocide</span> Intentional destruction of a people

Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genocide denial</span> Attempt to deny the scale and severity of genocide

Genocide denial is the attempt to deny or minimize the scale and severity of an instance of genocide. Denial is an integral part of genocide and includes the secret planning of genocide, propaganda while the genocide is going on, and destruction of evidence of mass killings. According to genocide researcher Gregory Stanton, denial "is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres".

Mass killing is a concept which has been proposed by genocide scholars who wish to define incidents of non-combat killing which are perpetrated by a government or a state. A mass killing is commonly defined as the killing of group members without the intention to eliminate the whole group, or otherwise the killing of large numbers of people without a clear group membership.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genocidal massacre</span> Small-scale massacres with genocidal component

The term genocidal massacre was introduced by Leo Kuper (1908–1994) to describe incidents which have a genocidal component but are committed on a smaller scale when they are compared to genocides such as the Rwandan genocide. Others such as Robert Melson, who also makes a similar differentiation, class genocidal massacres as "partial genocide".

Decapitation is a military strategy aimed at removing the leadership or command and control of a hostile government or group. The strategy of shattering or defeating an enemy by eliminating its military and political leadership has long been utilized in warfare.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greek genocide</span> 1913–1922 genocide of Greek Christians in the Ottoman Empire

The Greek genocide, which included the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia which was carried out mainly during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) on the basis of their religion and ethnicity. It was perpetrated by the government of the Ottoman Empire led by the Three Pashas and by the Government of the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire. The genocide included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches through the Syrian Desert, expulsions, summary executions, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. Several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period. Most of the refugees and survivors fled to Greece. Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Androcide</span> Violence against men

Androcide is a term for the hate crime of systematically killing men, boys, or males in general because of their gender. Not all murders of men are androcides in the same way that not all murders of women are femicides. Androcides often happen during war or genocide. Men and boys are not solely targeted because of abstract or ideological hatred. Rather, male civilians are often targeted during warfare as a way to remove those considered to be potential combatants, and during genocide as a way to destroy the entire community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Armenian genocide denial</span> Fringe theory that the Armenian genocide did not occur

Armenian genocide denial is the claim that the Ottoman Empire and its ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), did not commit genocide against its Armenian citizens during World War I—a crime documented in a large body of evidence and affirmed by the vast majority of scholars. The perpetrators denied the genocide as they carried it out, claiming that Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were resettled for military reasons, not exterminated. In the genocide's aftermath, incriminating documents were systematically destroyed, and denial has been the policy of every government of the Republic of Turkey, as of 2023, and later adopted by the Republic of Azerbaijan, as of 1991.

Political cleansing of a population is the elimination of categories of people in specific areas for political reasons. The means may vary from forced migration to genocide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mass killings under communist regimes</span>

Mass killings under communist regimes occurred through a variety of means during the 20th century, including executions, famine, deaths through forced labour, deportation, starvation, and imprisonment. Some of these events have been classified as genocides or crimes against humanity. Other terms have been used to describe these events, including classicide, democide, red holocaust, and politicide. The mass killings have been studied by authors and academics and several of them have postulated the potential causes of these killings along with the factors which were associated with them. Some authors have tabulated a total death toll, consisting of all of the excess deaths which cumulatively occurred under the rule of communist states, but these death toll estimates have been criticized. Most frequently, the states and events which are studied and included in death toll estimates are the Holodomor and the Great Purge in the Soviet Union, the Great Chinese Famine and the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China, and the Cambodian genocide in Democratic Kampuchea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anti-communist mass killings</span> Politically motivated mass killings of communists

Anti-communist mass killings are the politically motivated mass killings of communists, alleged communists, or their alleged supporters which were committed by anti-communists and political organizations or governments which opposed communism. The communist movement has faced opposition since it was founded and the opposition to it has often been organized and violent. Many anti-communist mass killing campaigns waged during the Cold War were supported and backed by the United States and its Western Bloc allies. Some U.S.-supported mass killings, including the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 and the killings by the Guatemalan military during the Guatemalan Civil War, are considered acts of genocide by some scholars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Political violence</span> Violence conducted with political goals

Political violence is violence which is perpetrated in order to achieve political goals. It can include violence which is used by a state against other states (war), violence which is used by a state against civilians and non-state actors, and violence which is used by violent non-state actors against states and civilians. It can also describe politically motivated violence which is used by violent non-state actors against a state or it can describe violence which is used against other non-state actors and/or civilians. Non-action on the part of a government can also be characterized as a form of political violence, such as refusing to alleviate famine or otherwise denying resources to politically identifiable groups within their territory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genocidal rape</span> Mass sexual assault during wartime as part of a genocidal campaign

Genocidal rape, a form of wartime sexual violence, is the action of a group which has carried out acts of mass rape and gang rapes, against its enemy during wartime as part of a genocidal campaign. During the Armenian Genocide, the Greek genocide, the Assyrian genocide, the second Sino-Japanese war, the Holocaust, the Bangladesh Liberation War, the Bosnian War, the Rwandan genocide, the Congolese conflicts, the South Sudanese Civil War, the Yazidi Genocide, Rohingya genocide, and the Uyghur genocide, the mass rapes that had been an integral part of those conflicts brought the concept of genocidal rape to international prominence. Although war rape has been a recurrent feature in conflicts throughout human history, it has usually been looked upon as a by-product of conflict and not an integral part of military policy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin</span> Scholarly debate on deaths in the Soviet Union from 1921 to 1953

Estimates of the number of deaths attributable to the Soviet revolutionary and dictator Joseph Stalin vary widely. The scholarly consensus affirms that archival materials declassified in 1991 contain irrefutable data far superior to sources used prior to 1991 such as statements from emigres and other informants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genocide justification</span> Attempts to claim genocide is a moral action

Genocide justification is the claim that a genocide is morally excusable/defensible, necessary, and/or sanctioned by law. Genocide justification differs from genocide denial, which is the attempt to reject the occurrence of genocide. Perpetrators often claim that genocide victims presented a serious threat, justifying their actions by stating it was legitimate self-defense of a nation or state. According to modern international criminal law, there can be no excuse for genocide. Genocide is often camouflaged as military activity against combatants, and the distinction between denial and justification is often blurred.

Benjamin Andrew Valentino is a political scientist and professor at Dartmouth College. His 2004 book Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century, adapted from his PhD thesis and published by Cornell University Press, has been reviewed in several academic journals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Causes of the Armenian genocide</span> Differing views of what caused the Armenian genocide

Differing views of what caused the Armenian genocide include explanations focusing on nationalism, religion, and wartime radicalization and continue to be debated among scholars. In the twenty-first century, focus has shifted to multicausal explanations. Most historians agree that the genocide was not premeditated before World War I, but the role of contingency, ideology, and long-term structural factors in causing the genocide continues to be discussed.

References

  1. ↑ Cushman, Thomas (2000). "Genocide or civil War?: Human rights and the politics of conceptualization". Human Rights Review. 1 (3): 12–14. doi:10.1007/s12142-000-1018-7. S2CID   143325122.
  2. ↑ Alvarez, Alex (2016). "Genocide in the Context of War". The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and War. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 99–115. ISBN   978-1-137-43170-7.
  3. ↑ Hammond, Philip (2018). "When frames collide: 'Ethnic war' and 'genocide'" (PDF). Media, War & Conflict. 11 (4): 434–445. doi:10.1177/1750635218776994. S2CID   149712137.
  4. ↑ Nichols, Angela (2018). "The Origins of Genocide in Civil War". TRAMES. XXII (1): 89–101. doi: 10.3176/tr.2018.1.05 . ISSN   1406-0922.
  5. ↑ Bartov, Omer (2013). Germany's War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories. Cornell University Press. ISBN   978-0-8014-6882-7.
  6. ↑ Mulaj, Klejda (2017). "Genocide and the ending of war: Meaning, remembrance and denial in Srebrenica, Bosnia". Crime, Law and Social Change. 68 (1): 123–143. doi:10.1007/s10611-017-9690-6. hdl: 10871/27475 . ISSN   1573-0751. S2CID   149150324.
  7. ↑ Shaw, Martin (2015). War and Genocide: Organised Killing in Modern Society. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN   978-0-7456-9752-9.
  8. ↑ Bergen, Doris L. (2016). War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN   978-1-4422-4229-6.
  9. ↑ Straus, Scott (2015). Making and Unmaking Nations: The Origins and Dynamics of Genocide in Contemporary Africa. Cornell University Press. ISBN   978-0-8014-7968-7.
  10. ↑ Midlarsky, Manus I. (2019). Genocide and Religion in Times of War. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-022863-7.
  11. ↑ Uzonyi, Gary; Demir, Burak (2020). "Excluded Ethnic Groups, Conflict Contagion, and the Onset of Genocide and Politicide during Civil War". International Studies Quarterly. 64 (4): 857–866. doi:10.1093/isq/sqaa059.
  12. ↑ "United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect". www.un.org. Retrieved 2022-12-12.
  13. ↑ Naimark 2017, p. 16.
  14. 1 2 3 Bartrop, Paul (December 2002). "The relationship between war and genocide in the twentieth century: A consideration". Journal of Genocide Research. 4 (4): 519–532. doi:10.1080/146235022000000445. ISSN   1462-3528. S2CID   56874739.
  15. ↑ Straus, Scott (September 2012). ""Destroy Them to Save Us": Theories of Genocide and the Logics of Political Violence". Terrorism and Political Violence. 24 (4): 544–560. doi:10.1080/09546553.2012.700611. ISSN   0954-6553. S2CID   17685400.
  16. ↑ Shaw, Martin (24 June 2015). What is Genocide?. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN   978-0-7456-8710-0. OCLC   920908163.
  17. 1 2 3 Bachman, Jeffrey S. (2020-04-21). "Four Schools of Thought on the Relationship Between War and Genocide". Journal of Genocide Research. 22 (4): 479–501. doi:10.1080/14623528.2020.1756558. ISSN   1462-3528. S2CID   219093342.
  18. ↑ Stone, Dan (2015-07-23). ""They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else": A History of the Armenian Genocide. By Ronald Grigor Suny. pp. xxvi, 490. Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2015" . Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 26 (3): 517–518. doi:10.1017/s1356186315000413. ISSN   1356-1863. S2CID   164271764.
  19. ↑ J., Andreopoulos, George (1997). Genocide : Conceptual and historical dimensions. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN   0-8122-1616-4. OCLC   477131274.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  20. ↑ Louis., Horowitz, Irving (2017). Taking Lives. Taylor and Francis. ISBN   978-1-351-48706-1. OCLC   995558996.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  21. ↑ Horowitz, Irving L. (1999), "Science, Modernity and Authorized Terror: Reconsidering the Genocidal State", Studies in Comparative Genocide, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 15–30, doi:10.1007/978-1-349-27348-5_2, ISBN   978-1-349-27350-8 , retrieved 2022-12-12
  22. ↑ Harff, Barbara, "RECOGNIZING GENOCIDES AND POLITICIDES", Genocide Watch, Yale University Press, pp. 27–42, doi:10.2307/j.ctt1xp3t17.6 , retrieved 2022-12-12
  23. ↑ Midlarsky, Manus I. (2005-10-20). The Killing Trap. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511491023. ISBN   978-0-521-81545-1.
  24. ↑ Levitt, Cyril; Horowitz, Irving Louis (1998). "Taking Lives: Genocide and State Power". Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie. 23 (1): 113. doi:10.2307/3341667. ISSN   0318-6431. JSTOR   3341667.
  25. ↑ Palmer, Alison; Chalk, Frank; Jonassohn, Kurt (March 1993). "The History and Sociology of Genocide. Analyses and Case Studies". The British Journal of Sociology. 44 (1): 155. doi:10.2307/591693. ISSN   0007-1315. JSTOR   591693.
  26. ↑ Charny, Israel W (2020-01-29). Toward The Understanding And Prevention Of Genocide. doi:10.4324/9780429268250. ISBN   9781000003260. S2CID   219137941.

Sources

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