The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression

The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression
ISBN-10
1009028324
ISBN-13
9781009028325
Category
History
Pages
611
Language
English
Published
2021-02-04
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Author
A. Dirk Moses

Description

Genocide is not only a problem of mass death, but also of how, as a relatively new idea and law, it organizes and distorts thinking about civilian destruction. Taking the normative perspective of civilian immunity from military attack, A. Dirk Moses argues that the implicit hierarchy of international criminal law, atop which sits genocide as the 'crime of crimes', blinds us to other types of humanly caused civilian death, like bombing cities, and the 'collateral damage' of missile and drone strikes. Talk of genocide, then, can function ideologically to detract from systematic violence against civilians perpetrated by governments of all types. The Problems of Genocide contends that this violence is the consequence of 'permanent security' imperatives: the striving of states, and armed groups seeking to found states, to make themselves invulnerable to threats.

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