War and Ideology

Abstract

Looking across a number of societies, Eric Carlton investigates why men and women go to war and how they are able to commit atrocities against their enemy. He believes that central to these issues is the perception of the enemy and the ways in which this is "converted" - consciously or unconsciously - into an ideology of aggression. Military training and ideology are based upon the definition of the enemy as "the other", and studies in the text reveal the importance of the stereotyped image of the enemy when soldiers carry out atrocities. Dr Carlton explores the underlying problem of how and why societies resort to war, by analyzing the motivations, usually religious and ideological, which legitimize war-like policies and activities. A wide range of case studies consider the ways in which the enemy has been seen in various historical and comparative contexts: for instance, to ancient Egyptians the enemy were non-people, to Romans uncouth barbarians, to Maoists class antagonists. These studies underline the single fact that perceptions of the adversary determine the nature of warfare more than any single factor.