4
two case studies, each depicting the key points in the British and German decisions to target civilians via
naval blockade. The conclusion summarizes the arguments and evidence.
CIVILIAN VICTIMIZATION DEFINED
The dependent variable in this paper is civilian victimization: a policy or strategy in wartime that targets
noncombatants intentionally or indiscriminately with deadly force. Civilian victimization comes in a variety
of forms: aerial, naval, or artillery bombardment of civilians; sieges, naval blockades, or economic sanctions
that deprive noncombatants of food; massacres; forced movements or concentrations of populations; even
the intentional spread of disease. Civilian victimization as I conceive of it is a campaign: not one or two
atrocities by a rogue unit or commander, but a campaign of repeated, systematic, and centrally directed
attacks on a noncombatant population.
8
These campaigns must either target civilians as civilians on purpose,
or employ force so indiscriminately as to inflict large amounts of damage and death on noncombatants. I
define civilians/noncombatants as that portion of the population that by its actions does not pose a direct
threat of immediate harm to the enemy. This category, therefore, includes children, the elderly, homemakers
(historically women, but not exclusively anymore), and all those not in the armed forces, state security
services, or employed in war production. Noncombatants thus consist of the bulk of the population of even
a highly industrialized state.
9
Not all campaigns of civilian victimization actually kill anyone. This paper includes one such campaign:
German unrestricted submarine warfare in World War I. One might question the inclusion of campaigns like
these, arguing that the dependent variable we really care about is noncombatant fatalities. Campaigns that—
try as they might—fail to kill any civilians would be disqualified. I disagree. Particularly (but not exclusively)
in interstate wars, where belligerents sometimes are physically removed from each other, fatalities are an
outcome that cannot be assumed because geography or prevailing technology might prevent states from
doing much harm to an adversary’s general population. German aerial bombing in the First World War, for
example, killed fewer than 1,500 British noncombatants, while the British and French air forces managed to
kill only about half that many German civilians.
10
In other conflicts, however, such as guerrilla wars or wars
of territorial acquisition, using force against noncombatants is unproblematic. I argue, therefore, that it is the
choice to target civilians with intentional or indiscriminate violence that is the relevant decision, and thus the
proper dependent variable.
THE COSTS OF WAR AND CIVILIAN VICTIMIZATION
This section develops a theory of the conditions under which belligerent governments target civilians
purposefully in war. I argue that civilian victimization is a function of the costliness of war, which in turn is a
function of the extent to which battlefield conditions favor the defender, increases in war aims, or an
invader’s view of the reliability of the enemy population. I define military costs as the casualties or time it
takes, or which an actor expects it to take, to attain his war objectives. The argument is that civilian
victimization in war is more likely when military costs are high (or exceed a belligerent’s initial expectations)
along one of these axes. In sum, governments are more likely to employ violence against enemy
noncombatants when they become involved in protracted, costly wars of attrition with expansive objectives,
8
In this respect, the definition is similar to how Ivan Toft defines barbarism; see Ivan Arreguin-Toft, “How the Weak
Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict,” International Security 26, no. 1 (Summer 2001): 93-128.
9
One study estimates that 75 percent of the population of an industrial country does not work in war-related industries,
and that 66 percent of even an industrial city should be considered immune. See John C. Ford, “The Morality of
Obliteration Bombing,” in War and Morality, ed. Richard A. Wasserstrom (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1970),
22-26.
10
George H. Quester, Deterrence Before Hiroshima: The Airpower Background of Modern Strategy (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1966), 28, 42, and Christian Geinitz, “The First Air War Against Noncombatants: Strategic Bombing of German
Cities in World War I,” in Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914-1918, ed. Roger
Chickering and Stig Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 207.
Convention