Martin Shaw chose the term "degenerate warfare" to describe how  a belligerent attacks the enemy's civilian population as part of a broader military campaign, as in aerial bombing of cities, but destroying it is not the ultimate goal: the enemy is the state, not the enemy's population.
According to Martin Shaw, the term "degenerate warfare" refers to a type of warfare where a combatant deliberately targets an enemy's civilian population as part of a broader strategy, with the ultimate goal of weakening or destabilizing the state, rather than destroying the civilians themselves in order to achieve that objective.