Rethinking Violence: States and Non-State Actors in Conflict

2. Targeting Civilians to Win? Assessing the Military Effectiveness of Civilian Victimization in Interstate War

Targeting Civilians to Win? Assessing the Military Effectiveness of Civilian Victimization in Interstate War Alexander B. Downes and Kathryn McNabb Cochran Chapter 2 War, as Clausewitz argued long ago, is an act of violence in which actors attempt to impose their will on each other. Although Clausewitz depicted war as a duel on a larger scale that is most frequently won when one side or the other captures the enemy’s capital or destroys its army in battle, the impact of war is rarely confined to the military sphere. Civilians sometimes suffer in wartime even when combatants do not intend to harm them. Epidemics of typhus and cholera have often followed in the wake of marching armies, and civilians fleeing from the battle area are subject to hunger and privation. Moreover, in many cases munitions meant for enemy combatants hit civilians instead, resulting in what we now euphemistically call “collateral damage.” Finally, in certain instances belligerents set their sights on civilians on purpose, targeting them as a means to achieving their military or political goals in the war. Unfortunately, this third type of violence against noncombatants is not uncommon. Various studies have found that states adopt strategies that target civilians or inflict mass killing on noncombatants (50,000 or more dead) in one-fifth to one-third of all wars.1 Despite a fruitful literature that has arisen in the last decade to explain the causes of civilian targeting, the effectiveness of civilian victimization for achieving belligerents’ war objectives remains an open question. Much of this new literature on the 1. Ivan Arreguín-Toft, “How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict,” International Security, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Summer 2001), pp. 93–128, and Ivan Arreguín-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Benjamin Valentino, Paul Huth, and Dylan Balch-Lindsay, “‘Draining the Sea’: Mass Killing and Guerrilla Warfare,” International Organization, Vol. 58, No. 2 (April 2004), pp. 375–407; and Alexander B. Downes, “Desperate Times, Desperate Measures: The Causes of Civilian Victimization in War,” International Security, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Spring 2006), pp. 152–195. Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the International Studies Association annual meeting, San Francisco, Calif., March 26–29, 2008, and the Association for the Study of Nationalities annual meeting, New York, N.Y., April 10–12, 2008. For helpful comments and suggestions, the authors would like to thank Ana Arjona, Charli Carpenter, Erica Chenoweth, Matthew Fuhrmann, Matthew Kocher, Adria Lawrence, and Jason Lyall. 24 | rethinking violence causes of civilian victimization suggests that war participants implement these strategies because they believe that targeting civilians will help them accomplish their military or political goals.2 In some wars, for instance, national leaders adopt strategies of civilian victimization because they believe that targeting civilians will terrorize the enemy population into pressuring its government to concede. In other wars, leaders target civilians to enhance the likelihood of military victory by preventing the emergence of fifth columns that could aid their enemy on the battlefield. The logic of civilian victimization is different for each type of war, but each type of logic assumes that belligerents make a strategic choice to target civilians because leaders believe that doing so increases the likelihood that they will achieve their objectives. This begs the question: does killing civilians enable leaders to achieve their wartime goals? Is targeting noncombatants an effective military strategy? The answer to this question is both policy-relevant and normatively important. Although war is never something to be undertaken lightly, and it has many other ill effects besides killing civilians, the death and destruction visited upon noncombatants is one of the worst consequences of armed conflict. Efforts to minimize the harm inflicted on non-participants in armed conflict have a long (if not always successful) pedigree, dating back to the Peace of God in the tenth century and culminating in today’s formal international treaties. Furthermore, modern public opinion—not just in the United States, but in many countries around the world—opposes the targeting of civilians, and agrees that belligerents should go to great lengths to protect noncombatants from harm.3 If civilian victimization rarely delivers tangible benefits in wartime, then there is not a conflict between strategy and morality because doing the morally correct thing— that is, avoiding harm to noncombatants—is also the strategically wise course of action. The “problem of dirty...