Although the metaphor of war (e.g., the war on terror, war on crime, war on drugs) figures prominently in contemporary criminological discourse, criminologists have generally lagged behind other disciplines in studying the reality of war and its implications for crime, punishment, and ideology. In this essay, I first consider potential reasons for criminology's limited role in studying war and make the case for why war warrants a more central place in criminological discourse. Subsequently, I trace some of criminology's early contributions to the study of war in two domains-(a) legal responses to war and (b) the link between war and crime-and reflect upon ways in which the discipline can both broaden its purview and draw from its own intellectual history to engage more critically with the subject of war. KEYWORDS conflict, crime & deviance, criminal law, epistemology, peace, sociology of war 1 | THE CURIOUS ABSENCE OF WAR IN CRIMINOLOGICAL DISCOURSE The year 2015 was a poignant one in the annals of war and crimes against humanity. 1 It marked the 100-year anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian genocide, which claimed more than a million lives between 1915 and 1923, the 40 th anniversary of Kmer Rouge's takeover of the Cambodian government, 25 years since the onset of the civil war inRwanda, and the 20 th anniversary of the genocidal massacre in Srebrenica, Bosnia, during which more than 8,000Muslims-the lion's share of which were men and boys-were executed. Whereas the study of wars past and present occupies a central place in many disciplines (e.g., history, anthropology, political science), criminologists have historically lagged behind in making war and its implications a focal point of intellectual inquiry (see, e.g.