ABSTRACT
In protracted violence, non-combatants suffer most. Whether by rape, extreme poverty, displacement, or mass murder, the catastrophe of their suffering represents one of the great crises of our day. The twentieth century has witnessed willful destruction in staggering proportions; it is a century of unimaginable horror.1 From the perspective of military science non-combatants neither begin nor end war. Their plight has no impact on the dominant forces of war, and their fate is a consequence of the Realpolitik of statecraft. They are war’s survivors or its collateral damage, like the remains of a bombed city.
