Governing from the Skies: A Global History of Aerial Bombing

Resumen del libro

The twentieth century - a century of bombing

Ever since its invention, aviation has embodied the cosmopolitical dream of perpetual peace between the nations of the earth, yet the other side of this is the nightmare of an unprecedentedly deadly power. A power initially deployed on populations that the colonizers deemed rather too restive, before it struck the cities of Europe and Japan during the Second World War.

Air war definitively blurs the boundaries between war and peace. This blurring is a symptom of the 'democratization' of war. It is now the people who are directly taken as target, the people as support for the war effort, and the sovereign people identified with the state. This is the political shift that has led us today to a world governance under United States hegemony, defined as 'perpetual low-intensity war', which is presently striking regions such as Yemen and Pakistan, but which tomorrow could spread to the whole world population.

Air war thus brings together the major themes of the past century: the nationalization of societies and war, democracy and totalitarianism, colonialism and decolonization, Third World-ism and globalization, the welfare state and its decline in the face of neoliberalism. The history of aerial bombing offers a privileged perspective for writing a global history of the twentieth century.