Genocide is not only a problem of mass death but also of how as a relatively new idea and law
it organizes and distorts thinking about civilian destruction. Taking the normative perspective
of civilian immunity from military attack A. Dirk Moses argues that the implicit hierarchy of
international criminal law atop which sits genocide as the 'crime of crimes' blinds us to
other types of humanly caused civilian death like bombing cities and the 'collateral damage'
of missile and drone strikes. Talk of genocide then can function ideologically to detract
from systematic violence against civilians perpetrated by governments of all types. The
Problems of Genocide contends that this violence is the consequence of 'permanent security'
imperatives: the striving of states and armed groups seeking to found states to make
themselves invulnerable to threats.
