Introduction: Fellow Feeling and Estrangement—Approaching Enemy Encounters in Modern Warfare

This introduction to the volume explores the historical, political and personal complexities of enemy encounters. Starting with examples of friendly fraternisation over time, the editors consider the causes of feelings of commonality with the enemy and the instability of divisions between ally and enemy in modern warfare, questioning what effect this has on the experience of war. Drawing on literature on restraint and reciprocity in conflict, the chapter identifies a long history of intimacy and co-operation between warring sides that has often been no barrier to continuing violence, even enabling the continuation of war. It also highlights the exclusionary logics at work in enemy encounters, emphasising the global inequalities of grievability and precarity that structure them, and how nationhood and race inform differential valuations of enemy lives, often leading to extreme violence.