War and
crime are cascade phenomena. War cascades across space and time to more war;
crime to more crime; crime cascades to war; and war to crime. As a result,
war and crime become complex phenomena. That does not mean we cannot
understand how to prevent crime and war simultaneously. This book shows, for
example, how a cascade analysis leads to an understanding of how refugee
camps are nodes of both targeted attack and targeted recruitment into
violence. Hence, humanitarian prevention also must target such nodes of risk.
This book shows how non-violence and non-domination can also be made to
cascade, shunting cascades of violence into reverse. Complexity theory
implies a conclusion that the pursuit of strategies for preventing crime and
war is less important than understanding meta strategies. These are meta
strategies for how to sequence and escalate many redundant prevention
strategies. These themes were explored across seven South Asian societies
during eight years of fieldwork.