Book review: War as Protection and Punishment: Armed International Intervention at the ‘End of History’ by Teresa Degenhardt

Mattia Pinto

doi:10.1177/14624745251326554

Book review: War as Protection and Punishment: Armed International Intervention at the ‘End of History’ by Teresa Degenhardt

Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review › peer-review

Abstract

Teresa Degenhardt's War as Protection and Punishment offers a crucial lens for understanding and critiquing how penal discourses animate the justification and operation of contemporary warfare. Examining three post-Cold War military interventions – in Kosovo, Iraq, and Libya – Degenhardt demonstrates that war, especially when waged to rescue victims of mass atrocities, embodies an unquestioned desire to punish and control the behaviour of perceived criminal groups within the international sphere. These insights remain strikingly relevant today, as political leaders and media outlets continue to justify military action – for example, Israel's campaign in Gaza or Russia's aggression against Ukraine – not only through the language of international law (e.g. self-defence) but also through the language of retribution. These punitive discourses, often invoking the necessity of collective punishment, reveal not only the violent intentions of those who articulate them but also how the emotional drive to punish wrongdoings is enacted through military intervention.

Original language	English
Journal	Punishment and Society
Early online date	18 Mar 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745251326554
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 18 Mar 2025

Bibliographical note

This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the University’s Research Publications and Open Access policy.

Access to Document

10.1177/14624745251326554

Book Review_War_as_protection_and_punishment - Accepted version
This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the University’s Research Publications and Open Access policy.
Accepted author manuscript, 146 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "Teresa Degenhardt's War as Protection and Punishment offers a crucial lens for understanding and critiquing how penal discourses animate the justification and operation of contemporary warfare. Examining three post-Cold War military interventions – in Kosovo, Iraq, and Libya – Degenhardt demonstrates that war, especially when waged to rescue victims of mass atrocities, embodies an unquestioned desire to punish and control the behaviour of perceived criminal groups within the international sphere. These insights remain strikingly relevant today, as political leaders and media outlets continue to justify military action – for example, Israel's campaign in Gaza or Russia's aggression against Ukraine – not only through the language of international law (e.g. self-defence) but also through the language of retribution. These punitive discourses, often invoking the necessity of collective punishment, reveal not only the violent intentions of those who articulate them but also how the emotional drive to punish wrongdoings is enacted through military intervention.",

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