Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 War as peace, peace as pacification
- 2 War on waste; or, international law as primitive accumulation
- 3 ‘O effeminacy! effeminacy!’: martial power, masculine power, liberal peace
- 4 The police of civilisation: war as civilising offensive
- 5 Air power as police power I
- 6 Air power as police power II
- 7 Under the sign of security: trauma, terror, resilience
- Notes
- Index
1 - War as peace, peace as pacification
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 War as peace, peace as pacification
- 2 War on waste; or, international law as primitive accumulation
- 3 ‘O effeminacy! effeminacy!’: martial power, masculine power, liberal peace
- 4 The police of civilisation: war as civilising offensive
- 5 Air power as police power I
- 6 Air power as police power II
- 7 Under the sign of security: trauma, terror, resilience
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Don't forget the real business of the War is buying and selling. The murdering and the violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try ‘n’ grab a piece of that Pie while they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets.
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)The story of Henry Dunant is well known, but bears retelling. Dunant is famous for having founded the Red Cross in 1864, an international society to provide immediate care for those wounded in war, and for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. The story goes that Dunant's idea came to him in the aftermath of the battle of Solferino, where Napoleon was assisting the Italians in trying to drive the Austrians out of Italy. Having witnessed the scene of bloodshed, Dunant published Un Souvenir de Solferino (1862), in which he described in detail the misery of the battle and proposed a new society to alleviate the suffering of soldiers and to care for the wounded.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- War Power, Police Power , pp. 17 - 47Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2014