War Is Hell

Charles Douglas Lummis has written extensively on the topic of US foreign relations, and is a vocal critic of US foreign policy. His works include Radical Democracy, and A New Look at the Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Susan Sontag has called Lummis "one of the most thoughtful, honorable, and relevant intellectuals writing about democratic practice anywhere in the world,"while Karel van Wolferenhas referred to him as an "eminent observer of the American-Japanese vassalage relationship.”

Against the Hobbesian view that war is the original state of nature, Lummis argues in this provocative study of war that peace is the ordinary state of affairs for human beings, that violence is violence, and that the right of legitimate violence is “modern warfare’s grand enabling clause” (p. xiii). Historically grounded discussions fill in this framework, with attention given to a variety of war-related topics: the role of religion, the meaning of just war, the dehumanization of enemies, the role that rape and pillage play in gendered warfare, and post-traumatic syndrome as a consequence of authorized killing. In conversation with Aquinas, Machiavelli, Weber, and Arendt, Lummis offers an in-depth discussion of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which banned the right of belligerency, and then concludes with a discussion of Gandhi's vision of a radically different political configuration able to generate power and build community through nonviolent noncooperation. Lummis contends that the turn away from war requires collective action that withdraws consent to the right of belligerency. This well-researched, challenging, and original work should be of interest to students of history, international relations, political science, and ethics. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

• Preface/ AcknowledgementsIntroduction: HellChapter 1: Peace as The Original PositionThe Original PositionThe Right to Make PromisesThe Peaceful VillageThe Village (2): Enter the Robber BandThe Peace in Daily LifenotesChapter 2: The Violent StateThe Oxymoronic StateThe Magical StateLegitimate Violence: The HypothesisLegitimate Violence: The Grand ExperimentThe Phenomenon of ViolenceThe State as BlobMax Weber and the Evil Moment of the StatenotesChapter 3: Godlike ViolenceWhy Gods Can’t be HeroesHoly WarThe Gods vs GodThe Innocent WarriorChapter 4: Distance and Distance CollapseThe Art of DistancingOvercoming the Fear of KillingWhat Drill Instructors TeachTogether in the Bomb ShelterNativity in the War ZonePost-Traumatic Stress DisorderThe Enemy Most Dear to YouHeraclesian Syndrome“Or Has the Blood of Those You’ve Slain Made You Mad?”notesChapter 5: (Just) War is Hell, Part I“Violence Pushed to its Utmost Bounds”