The Civilian Conundrum in War with Professor Beatrice Heuser

Chair: Professor Rachel Kerr, Deputy Head of the Department of War Studies and Director of Academic Staffing

Speaker: Professor Beatrice Heuser, Chair of International Relations at the University of Glasgow

Erasmus of Rotterdam complained that “the greatest part of the suffering falls on those who least deserve to suffer, namely on farmers, old people, wives, orphans, and young girls”. International Law has very slowly attempted to reduce such suffering of those who are innocent, meaning they do not directly contribute to harming the other side. The hatred aroused in any “war of the people”, however, when based on religious or nationalist or other ideologies, lends itself to see every member of an enemy nation as an enemy, something present in Europe’s confessional wars of Early Modern times, and taken to its extreme in the conduct of the Second World War.

The debate continues, however, on the responsibility of the individual citizens of voting age for what their government does, including of course the momentous decision to go to war, and how it conducts a war. This is of immediate relevance to our attitudes in response to the ongoing Russian war on Ukraine.

About the speaker

Beatrice Heuser holds the Chair in International Relations at the University of Glasgow. She holds degrees from the Universities of London (BA, MA) and Oxford (DPhil), and a Habilitation from the Philipps-University of Marburg. From 1991-2003 she taught at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, and from 2007-2017 she held the Chair of International Relations at the University of Reading. She has also taught at four French universities/higher education institutions (including the Universities Paris I and IV (Sorbonne), Sciences Po’, and at two German universities. From 1997-1998, she worked in the International Staff at NATO headquarters in Brussels. From 2003-2007 she worked as Director for Research at the Military History Research Office of the Bundeswehr in Potsdam. She is currently seconded to the Führungsakademie of the Bundeswehr to introduce the systematic teaching of Strategy there. Part of this is the Podcast series she is running with the Royal United Services Institution, Talking Strategy.

Beatrice Heuser initially worked on nuclear strategy, NATO, Transatlantic Relations, publishing NATO, Britain, France and the FRG: Nuclear Strategies and Forces for Europe (1997); Nuclear Mentalities? (1998); and The Bomb: Nuclear Weapons in their Historical, Strategic and Ethical Context (1999). Since then, she has worked more generally on the history of strategy, with major works on Reading Clausewitz (2002); and The Evolution of Strategy (2010) covering the period from Antiquity to the Present. She has also published widely on insurgencies and counter-insurgency. Her latest book is War: A Genealogy of Western Ideas and Practices (OUP 2022)

The is a School of Security Studies annual event that celebrates the dedication, collegiality, and achievements of Saki and Michael Dockrill.

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