Dead Wrong?: Battle Deaths, Military Medicine, and Exaggerated Reports of War's Demise

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanisha M. Fazal
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Military Medicine ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Protective Equipment ◽  
Conflict Zones ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Battle Deaths ◽  
The Military

Is war in decline? Recent scholarship suggests that it is. The empirical basis for this argument is a decline in battle deaths over the past several centuries, a standard metric for counting wars and armed conflicts. Dramatic improvements in medical care in conflict zones—in preventive medicine, battlefield medicine, evacuation, and protective equipment—have raised the likelihood of surviving battle wounds today compared with past eras. Thus the fact that war has become less fatal does not necessarily mean that it has become less frequent. Original data on wounded-to-killed ratios, supplemented by medical research and interviews with physicians from the military and nongovernmental communities, is used to advance this claim. The results show that the decline in war is likely not as dramatic as some scholars have argued. These findings question the foundation of existing datasets on war and armed conflict. They also highlight the growing need for policy focused on the battle wounded.

Современный образ войны и проблема ее трасформации

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
D. A. Abgadzhava ◽  
A. S. Vlaskina
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
The Political ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
The Past ◽  
Advanced Technologies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
Modern War

War is an essential part of the social reality inherent in all stages of human development: from the primitive communal system to the present, where advanced technologies and social progress prevail. However, these characteristics do not make our society more peaceful, on the contrary, according to recent research and reality, now the number of wars and armed conflicts have increased, and most of the conflicts have a pronounced local intra-state character. Thus, wars in the classical sense of them go back to the past, giving way to military and armed conflicts. Now the number of soldiers and the big army doesn’t show the opponents strength. What is more important is the fact that people can use technology, the ideological and informational base to win the war. According to the history, «weak» opponent can be more successful in conflict if he has greater cohesion and ideological unity. Modern wars have already transcended the political boundaries of states, under the pressure of certain trends, they are transformed into transnational wars, that based on privatization, commercialization and obtaining revenue. Thus, the present paper will show a difference in understanding of terms such as «war», «military conflict» and «armed conflict». And also the auteurs will tell about the image of modern war and forecasts for its future transformation.

Re-membering Syria’s Traumatic Past: Gender, Poetics, and Loss in Manhal al-Sarrāj’s As a River Should

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 202-227
Author(s):  
Linda Istanbulli
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Traumatic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The City

Abstract In a system where the state maintains a monopoly over historical interpretation, aesthetic investigations of denied traumatic memory become a space where the past is confronted, articulated, and deemed usable both for understanding the present and imagining the future. This article focuses on Kamā yanbaghī li-nahr (As a river should) by Manhal al-Sarrāj, one of the first Syrian novels to openly break the silence on the “1982 Hama massacre.” Engaging the politics and poetics of trauma remembrance, al-Sarrāj places the traumatic history of the city of Hama within a longer tradition of loss and nostalgia, most notably the poetic genre of rithāʾ (elegy) and the subgenre of rithāʾ al-mudun (city elegy). In doing so, Kamā yanbaghī li-nahr functions as a literary counter-site to official histories of the events of 1982, where threatened memory can be preserved. By investigating the intricate relationship between armed conflict and gender, the novel mourns Hama’s loss while condemning the violence that engendered it. The novel also makes new historical interpretations possible by reproducing the intricate relationship between mourning, violence, and gender, dislocating the binary lines around which official narratives of armed conflicts are typically constructed.

scholarly journals Armed conflicts as a source of new formations in the Russian language (on material of the armed conflict in Donbass)

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
The South ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Russian Language

The vocabulary of a language is a variable quantity, it is constantly changing, responding to the needs of life and reflecting its new realities. The events taking place in the South-East of Ukraine since March 2014 have significantly changed the usual picture of the world of the parties involved in this conflict, led to a new interpretation of reality, the emergence of new mental constructs, objectified in the language using a number of lexical innovations, most of which fall under the definition of „hate speech”. The purpose of this article is to try to examine the impact of the armed conflict in the South-East of Ukraine on the emergence of lexical innovations in the Russian language, to identify ways of forming new units and their main thematic clusters. The material for the work was neoplasms recorded in electronic Russian and Russian-speaking Ukrainian mass media, as well as selected from social networks and videos. The analysis showed that in the context of the armed conflict in the South-East of Ukraine, the characteristic manifestations of „hate speech” are mainly numerous new categories-labels with a pronounced conflict potential. The priority in this regard is offensive and derogatory nominations of representatives of the opposite camp, taking into account their worldview / ideological, national / ethnic, territorial / regional characteristics. The military jargon has also undergone a significant update, incorporating not only the reactualized slangisms of the era of the Afghan campaign of 1979-89, but also lexical innovations caused by the military and political realities of the current armed conflict in the Donbas. Neologisms are formed in accordance with the existing methods in the Russian language (word formation, semantic derivation, borrowing). At the same time, non-standard word-forming techniques are also used (language play, homophony, etc.).

scholarly journals Dilemmas in Military Medical Ethics: A Call for Conceptual Clarity

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiane Rochon
Keyword(s):  
Medical Ethics ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Military Medicine ◽  
Codes Of Ethics ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Ethical Conflicts ◽  
Military Medical Ethics ◽  
The Military ◽  
Military Physicians

Despite the increase in and evolving nature of armed conflicts, the ethical issues faced by military physicians working in such contexts are still rarely examined in the bioethics literature. Military physicians are members of the military, even if they are non-combatants; and their role is one of healer but also sometimes humanitarian. Some scholars wonder about the moral compatibility of being both a physician and soldier. The ethical conflicts raised in the literature regarding military physicians can be organized into three main perspectives: 1) moral problems in military medicine are particular because of the difficulty of meeting the requirements of traditional bioethical principles; 2) medical codes of ethics and international laws are not well adapted to or are too restrictive for a military context; and 3) physicians are social actors who should either be pacifists, defenders of human rights, politically neutral or promoters of peace. A review of the diverse dilemmas faced by military physicians shows that these differ substantially by level (micro, meso, macro), context and the actors involved, and that they go beyond issues of patient interests. Like medicine in general, military medicine is complex and touches on potentially contested views of the roles and obligations of the physician. Greater conceptual clarity is thus needed in discussions about military medical ethics.

scholarly journals Predatory Government and the Feasibility of Rebellion: A Micro Logic of the Capitalist Peace

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Indra de Soysa
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Conflict Zones ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
Wide Acceptance ◽  
Battle Deaths ◽  
Dominant State ◽  
Specific Capital

The idea that civil war has to be feasible to occur, and that feasibility is largely a function of the availability of lootable income has gained wide acceptance in the specialized literature on civil war. A parallel debate exists on whether or not liberal, capitalist economies produce a lower risk of domestic conflict. A micro logic for why capitalist economies are less likely to break down in armed conflict is offered to bridge these two literatures. It argues that autarchic economic policies often associated with predatory states drive investment in the shadows for capturing rents from market-constraining policies. The survivability of groups is based on infrastructures of violence and escape rather than simply the availability of lootable income. Free-market economies are far less likely to generate investment in this form of rebellion-specific capital that ultimately facilitates an open challenge of predatory states. Such a view of conflict is able to reconcile why internal conflicts last long, how narratives of greed and grievance coexist in conflict zones, why dominant state forces fail to stamp out insurgency, and why autarchic states are highly militarized. Any theory focused on grabbing to explain the onset of conflict should endogenize the causes of survivability, which ultimately determines how many battle deaths get generated to meet the threshold for becoming a civil war.

scholarly journals Traducción e Interpretación en Zonas de Conflicto en Colaboración con las Fuerzas Armadas

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-204
Author(s):  
Paula Asensi
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Conflict Zones ◽  
Codes Of Practice ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Military

Resumen: La motivación y finalidad principal de este proyecto comprende dar más visibilidad a la figura del traductor o intérprete de guerra en zonas de conflicto armado, principalmente en el territorio de África del Norte y Asia Menor. Se trata de una figura no solo útil sino imprescindible en zonas lingüística y culturalmente dispares de la española, en este caso. Gracias al sustento de un trabajo empírico detallado, mediante entrevistas a intérpretes, cuestionarios a militares y encuestas a estudiantes de Traducción, se han analizado los distintos tipos de perfil según los requisitos de la misión, los cuales se analizan y comentan en este trabajo; así como la perspectiva de las Fuerzas Armadas Españolas en cuanto a la figura del intérprete y su relevancia en el contexto de mediación. También se tiene en cuenta la ética del intérprete y cómo esta se ve afectada por factores externos, pudiendo dar lugar a errores de interpretación que resultan negativos para la misión. Mediante todo este análisis, se busca recalcar la necesidad de invertir en una formación de calidad para los intérpretes de guerra, de establecer un sistema de reservas de intérpretes con experiencia dispuestos a acompañar a contingentes españoles al extranjero, y de ampliar el contenido de los códigos deontológicos para que estos sean más específicos y contemplen una mayor cantidad de situaciones y enfoques, con el fin de proporcionar al intérprete un apoyo institucional a la hora de resolver una situación sin verse desamparado. Por último, se realizan propuestas con el único fin de buscar mejoras en la situación de los estudiantes interesados en los perfiles de traductores e intérpretes de guerra de cara al futuro.Abstract: The motivation and aim behind this project is to give more visibility to the figure of the war translator or interpreter (T/I) in armed conflict zones, especially in Northern African territory and Middle Asia. The presence of the war T/I is not only useful but indispensable in areas linguistically and culturally distant from the Spanish one, in our case. We supported the entire project on a detailed empirical study comprising interviews to linguists, questionnaires to members of the military, and a survey conducted on Translation students; thanks to all of which we were able to clarify the diverse profiles of T/Is according to the requirements of the mission; as well as the perspective of the Armed Forces on the presence and relevance of T/Is in these peculiar contexts as mediators. We also considered the ethics of the T/I and how it can be influenced by external factors, thus resulting in misinterpretations with negative consequences for the mission. Through this entire analysis we wish to stress the need of investing in a good quality academic and professional training for war T/Is, as well as the establishment of an official pool of interpreters to travel with the Spanish contingent overseas, and finally, to broaden the content of codes of practice in order to comprise possible scenarios and give specific guidelines to interpreters in need of settling a situation without being distraught. Finally, we venture into several proposals addressed to those Translation students who may be interested in the figure of the war T/I in the future.

Women, Gender, and Contemporary Armed Conflict

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan MacKenzie
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Multiple Roles ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
The Many

More than twenty years ago, feminist scholars began challenging conventional approaches to the study of war that they accused of being gender blind and excluding women’s involvement and experience of conflict. This feminist critique was articulated by Cynthia Enloe in her question “Where are the women?” in reference to the study of conflicts. Since then, numerous scholars have produced works that not only include women in existing accounts of war but also offer radical alternative approaches to the study of war. This body of feminist scholarship has sought to deconstruct and challenge three foundations of mainstream scholarship on armed conflict: equating gender with women or women’s issues; conflating women and children together as victims of war; and narrowly defining war as a masculine, public activity with a clear time frame. Feminist scholars such as Judith Butler theorized the concepts of gender and sex in order to complicate feminism beyond “women’s studies.” Despite these inroads into the way conflict is conceptualized and researched, mainstream approaches to the study of war in the past decade remain resistant to systematic and comprehensive considerations of gender. Recent scholarship presents a broader picture of women’s relationship to international conflicts. Feminist scholars demonstrate women’s multiple roles within, and impacts on, war; disrupt stereotypes and gendered norms associated with “women’s place” during war; and highlight some of the many different ways that women—as soldiers, rebels, and as perpetrators of violence—perform in, and influence war.

Of Questionable Legality: The Military Use of Cluster Bombs in Iraq in 2003

2004 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 143-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Hulme
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Biological Weapons ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cluster Bombs ◽  
High Propensity ◽  
Chemical And Biological Weapons ◽  
The Military ◽  
New Instruments

SummaryOver the past century, the laws of armed conflict have limited or prohibited the use of a number of weapons, principally due to their cruel effects or indiscriminate nature. Among the examples are chemical and biological weapons, anti-personnel mines, and blinding laser weapons. In recent years, one of the most controversial armaments used by states has been the cluster bomb. Cluster weapons are inexpensively produced area weapons with a high propensity for failure. The source of constant condemnation since the Vietnam conflict, the legality of cluster weapons remains highly questionable. With such weapons, the question is not so much whether there is a need to create new instruments of limitation, or indeed prohibition, but whether the existing laws of armed conflict are already sufficient to address any human and environmental concerns.

Twenty years on: International humanitarian law and the protection of civilians against the effects of cyber operations during armed conflicts

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-48
Author(s):  
Laurent Gisel ◽  
Tilman Rodenhäuser ◽  
Knut Dörmann
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
International Committee ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Cyber Warfare ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
The Past ◽  
Humanitarian Organizations ◽  
Medical Facilities

Abstract The use of cyber operations during armed conflicts and the question of how international humanitarian law (IHL) applies to such operations have developed significantly over the past two decades. In their different roles in the Legal Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the authors of this article have followed these developments closely and have engaged in governmental and non-governmental expert discussions on the subject. In this article, we analyze pertinent humanitarian, legal and policy questions. We first show that the use of cyber operations during armed conflict has become a reality of armed conflicts and is likely to be more prominent in the future. This development raises a number of concerns in today's increasingly cyber-reliant societies, in which malicious cyber operations risk causing significant disruption and harm to humans. Secondly, we present a brief overview of multilateral discussions on the legal and normative framework regulating cyber operations during armed conflicts, looking in particular at various arguments around the applicability of IHL to cyber operations during armed conflict and the relationship between IHL and the UN Charter. We emphasize that in our view, there is no question that cyber operations during armed conflicts, or cyber warfare, are regulated by IHL – just as is any weapon, means or methods of warfare used by a belligerent in a conflict, whether new or old. Thirdly, we focus the main part of this article on how IHL applies to cyber operations. Analyzing the most recent legal positions of States and experts, we revisit some of the most salient debates of the past decade, such as which cyber operations amount to an “attack” as defined in IHL and whether civilian data enjoys similar protection to “civilian objects”. We also explore the IHL rules applicable to cyber operations other than attacks and the special protection regimes for certain actors and infrastructure, such as medical facilities and humanitarian organizations.

Examining the Use of Amnesties and Pardons as a Response to Internal Armed Conflict

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew G Reiter
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Internal Armed Conflict ◽  
The Past ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
Lasting Peace ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Internal Armed Conflicts

The use of amnesty for human rights violations has been heavily criticised on legal, ethical and political grounds. Yet amnesties have been the most popular transitional justice mechanisms over the past four decades, particularly in the context of internal armed conflict. States justify these amnesties by claiming they are important tools to secure peace. But how successful is amnesty in accomplishing these goals? This article seeks to answer this question by analysing the use and effectiveness of 236 amnesties used in internal armed conflicts worldwide since 1970. The article first creates a typology of the use of amnesty in the context of internal armed conflict. It then qualitatively examines the impact on peace of each type of amnesty. The article finds that most amnesties granted in the context of internal armed conflict have no demonstrable impact on peace and security. Yet amnesties granted as carrots to entice the surrender of armed actors occasionally succeed in bringing about the demobilisation of individual combatants or even entire armed groups. More importantly, amnesties extended as part of a peace process are effective in initiating negotiations, securing agreements, and building the foundation for long-lasting peace.

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