The [F]utility of Barbarism: Assessing the Impact of the Systematic Harm of Noncombatants in War

Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, Pa

Abstract

Under what conditions does barbarism — a state or non-state actor’s deliberate and systematic injury of non-combatants during a conflict — help or hinder its military and political objectives? In this essay I isolate a “pessimist” answer, which holds that barbarism is (a) an inevitable adjunct of organized violence, and (b) that it has a positive utility (e.g. it makes wars shorter or allows the actor who uses it to win with fewer costs and risks). I derive four hypotheses and then offer a preliminary test in the form of (1) a statistical analysis of all interstate and colonial wars in Singer & Small’s Correlates of War dataset; and (2) two synoptic historical case studies (the German occupation of the Balkans, 1941–1943, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s invasion of Kosovo from 1998–1999). I conclude that in general, war crime doesn’t pay: barbarism increases the costs and risks of military operations, and poisons chances for peaceful post-war occupation and development.