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Reviewed by:
  • The Image Before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction Between Combatant and Civilian
  • David P. Forsythe, Emeritus University Professor and Charles J. Mach Distinguished Professor (bio)
Helen M. Kinsella , The Image Before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction Between Combatant and Civilian (Cornell University Press, 2011), 260 pages, ISBN: 978-0-080144903-1.

In this insightful and well researched book, Helen M. Kinsella, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, addresses the history of the important distinction between civilian and combatant in the laws of war. The study was her dissertation at the University of Minnesota and unfortunately it still reads like one. It is to be regretted that the editors at Cornell University Press did not produce a book written in a more fluid style. Kinsella's analysis deserves wide readership but this is unlikely to happen given the dense social science jargon, drawn from the currently faddish constructivist theory that characterizes the book. Nevertheless, all those interested in protecting human dignity in violent conflicts, whether academics or those in a position to affect law and policy, can benefit from her analysis. Those interested in human rights law need to understand the complicated subject of humanitarian law, because the two are intermingled in many situations today. [End Page 646]

Her twin starting points make eminent sense. First, the distinction between civilian and combatant is one of the most important factors, if not the crucial factor, in the laws of war, now often called international humanitarian law (IHL). Take away this distinction, and along with it the obligation of fighting parties to avoid attacks on civilians and objects essential to the civilian population, and one has something close to total war—the avoidance of which is the central purpose of IHL. After all, the purpose of IHL is an oxymoron: to humanize war. This it attempts by imposing restraints on the violence, trying to minimize military necessity and maximize a zone of humanitarian protection. Second, the law that has emerged over considerable time is a reflection of the values in broader society. Kinsella's study is about the civilizational "discourses" mostly in the powerful Western societies that greatly shaped the law.

In a preliminary view, this book most fundamentally is a very sophisticated reiteration of two basic points. All Western societies in the past were racist and patriarchic. It is therefore not so very surprising that in the history of IHL's theory and practice, an early preferential status was accorded to (Christian) Europeans when engaged in battle with "others." Also unsurprising is the assumption that honorable combatants were (Christian and upper class) males, while females (and children and the aged) constituted the great bulk of "innocent" civilians worthy of protection. Kinsella, accurately understanding that IHL was originally grounded in European, Christian, and chivalric codes of honor, insightfully traces the law of war ramifications and from these societal values—from early legal theorists like Vitoria and Grotius, through the negotiation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and 1977 Protocols, to the bloody conflicts in El Salvador and Guatemala.

In simple and policy relevant terms, Kinsella's analysis shows first of all that one side in many violent conflicts often assumes that it is the representative of civilization and that the other side is made up of barbarians or savages who are beyond the pale. It follows that the laws of war, and particularly legal norms about who are honorable combatants or innocent civilians, are interpreted so as to exclude certain persons. During the Crusades and from the European perspective, the laws of war of the time did not apply to non-believers. Their Islamic opponents responded in kind, articulating an unlimited Jihad against non-believers. (This dynamic played out as late as the Crimean War, with Russia seeing itself as expanding Christian civilization against the inferior Ottoman Turks, the latter responding with calls for total Jihad.1 As Kinsella shows, in Guatemala after 1954 the governmental elites, of Iberian descent, regarded the indigenous Indians, even when apparent civilians, as of inferior status and unworthy of protection—unless they could prove their innocence by totally submitting in a passive way to governmental...

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