The Civilian Conundrum in War with Professor Beatrice Heuser
Channel: War Studies KCL
Date: 2023-02-02

Professor Beatrice Heuser, Chair of International Relations at the University of Glasgow, led the Seminar 'The Civilian Conundrum in War' on 24 January 2023 at the Department of War Studies of King's College London. 

Erasmus of Rotterdam complained that “the greatest part of the suffering falls on those who least deserve to suffer, namely on farmers, old people, wives, orphans, and young girls”. International Law has very slowly attempted to reduce such suffering of those who are innocent, meaning they do not directly contribute to harming the other side. The hatred aroused in any “war of the people”, however, when based on religious or nationalist or other ideologies, lends itself to see every member of an enemy nation as an enemy, something present in Europe’s confessional wars of Early Modern times, and taken to its extreme in the conduct of the Second World War.

The debate continues, however, on the responsibility of the individual citizens of voting age for what their government does, including of course the momentous decision to go to war, and how it conducts a war. This is of immediate relevance to our attitudes in response to the ongoing Russian war on Ukraine.