Axel Springer Lecture

Is Culture Worth Saving? Art, Monuments, and Modern Warfare

In the eighty years since the end of World War II, it has become a principle of international law that belligerents in armed conflict must avoid attacks on art and monuments. And yet, from Syria to Ukraine, this has been flouted repeatedly. Worse, international efforts to enforce the prohibition have been mocked as instances Western elites privileging World Heritage Sites above human life. What has been lost in this false choice, argues Hugh Eakin, is the extent to which culture itself has become a central domain of contemporary warfare. If we recognize that assaults on cultural heritage often serve as harbingers of, or concomitants to, atrocities against human populations, we can also see that protecting it can be a potent form of preventing conflict — and brokering peace.