To be or not to be. . .

During a recent conversation with a friend I was asked: “What are the necessary/sufficient conditions for a conflict to be considered genocide?” Upon further consideration, I realized this was an excellent question, which I had not thoroughly pondered. Was the bombing of Dresden, Tokyo or Hiroshima genocidal? My intuitive answer is no. Buy why? Immediately I am in danger of doing something I detest: arguing backwards from my conclusion. I should start instead with examples of genocide and ask why are they examples of genocide? What are the shared characteristics that qualify these events for the appellation genocide?

While the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide—I chose these particular cases because they are the ones with which I am most familiar—are geographically and temporally remote from each other, they do share defining characteristics:

1. Thoroughly unwarranted (essentialist) claims about identity


2. Identity politics as a means to acquisition/maintenance of political power


3. The vilification and persecution of a minority (power) group (a grouping that could be essentially arbitrary and externally imposed)


4. Political organization (which is necessary for sustaining the killing)


5. Geopolitical and economic stressors


6. Systematized mass killing based on (essentialist) identity claims with the ultimate purpose of eliminating in whole or in part the target group

In my studies (which are admittedly limited) genocidal events share all six of these characteristics. I have had these characteristics floating in mind for some time. However, it was my friend’s question that pushed me to put them down in words. I have organized the list in roughly the order in which I think genocide as a social machine for killing operates, although number five could also fall between one and two as well as four and six.

So, why is the wanton bombing of civilians in the cases cited above not genocide? Or as my friend asked (in response to a somewhat different context) why are all military conflicts not considered genocide? That is still a difficult question to answer. The explicit targeting of civilians is without question horrible. These acts may in fact qualify as war crimes (a phrase with its own definitional issues)—as some have suggested. However, one clear difference is that the deaths of civilians in Dresden, Tokyo or Hiroshima were not ends in themselves. While genocidal killing is a means to political ends, the extermination of the target group is also an end in itself: it is seen/claimed as desirable based on the unwarranted essentialist claims about the identity of the target group. That does not diminish the atrocity involved in the targeting and mass killing of civilians as a means to military victory.