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Religion on the Battlefield. By Ron E. Hassner. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. 232 pp. $24.95 cloth
In his 2009 book War on Sacred Grounds (Ithaca, NY), Ron Hassner examined how sacred space generates Fearon-esque issue indivisibilities, inhibiting the bargaining for peaceful dispute resolution. He focused mainly on intra-state conflicts with overtly religious dimensions. Hassner's latest book, Religion on the Battlefield (Ithaca, 2016), represents his work's natural evolution. He widens the inquiry beyond the sacralization of space, adding time, persons, and rituals. He shifts the focus from nonstate actors in domestic/transnational conflict to state actors in interstate conflict. He examines religion's influence in conflicts in which belligerents’ primary goals are not overtly religious.
Hassner seeks to dispel, as he puts it, four “myths” (154). First, the myth that religion is a dichotomous variable, i.e. conflicts are either religious or secular. Second, that religion's role in the conflict is limited to promulgating ideas, i.e. religion influences only conflict causes, not outcomes. Third, that a religious sect's motivations and practices are predictable from its formal theology or scripture. Fourth, that religious ideas always influence combatants.
His modus operandi is to organize the elements of religion's effects into four ideal types, classified by the target (Self or Other) and religious environment (constraining or enabling), as shown in Table 1. In each case, the combination of target and environment results in religion acting as either a “force multiplier,” rendering one's own side more effective militarily thus raising the probability of victory, or a “force divider,” rendering one's side...