Wars in the post-Cold War era are overwhelmingly internal or civil. These wars are also defined by a high level of barbarity, indicated by the violent persecution of the majority of their victims: women, children, and the elderly. This has convinced the world's premier war-relief organization, the Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), to take on a new, unspoken mission: to make these wars dysfunctional and end them.

Because this mission, if proclaimed, would complicate the Red Cross' main mission of war relief and the protection of war victims, the ICRC has proceeded with little fanfare. Nevertheless, it has developed an intricate and ambitious strategy to accomplish its goals. War and the Red Cross: The Unspoken Mission describes that strategy and shows how it has been put into operation in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, the Sudan, Afghanistan, and Guatemala.

Concluding with an analysis of the tragic slayings in 1996 of Red Cross personnel in Chechnya, Nicholas Berry offers a ground breaking vision of the Red Cross at the end of the twentieth century.