Chapter 4 Primary Lecture Series

4.1 Dirty Wars and Denials of Status

This week is a “gentle introduction” to the course. We’ll be covering course admin, as well as setting ground rules for learning/seminar discussions. This lecture introduces a couple of important frames: war and national security. This isn’t to say that these are the only frames with which to examine the kind of conflicts the course covers, but they are important in that they often guide state responses to threats.

This week’s lecture also serves as an introduction to the course itself, notably the frame that we’ll be using and examining over the first 11 weeks. This, in a nutshell, is my own definition of “dirty wars” and what makes them interesting to study:

Dirty wars are conflicts where one or more parties to the conflict denies the political, legal, and/or moral status of their opponents.

The importance of this definition is where the expectations of status and standing come from. We’ll discuss problems of objectivity and subjectivity, as well as where our baseline expectations may differ, and why.

• Discussion Questions:
  • What use is the concept of “dirty wars”?
  • Is the “War on Terror” a war? When did it start?
• Readings:
  • Smith, M. L. R., and Sophie Roberts. “War in the gray: exploring the concept of dirty war.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 31, no. 5 (2008): 377–398.
  • French, David. “Nasty not nice: British counter-insurgency doctrine and practice, 1945–1967.” Small Wars & Insurgencies 23, no. 4–5 (2012): 744–761.
  • Barkawi, Tarak. “Decolonising War.” European Journal of International Security 1, no. 2 (2016): 199–214.

4.2 Human Dignity and Political Community in War and National Security

This lecture explores the concept of human worth in war and national security. Simply put, why does it matter if a state (or a non-state actor) kills someone? This week we will be covering the emergence of ideas of universal moral standing, notably the concept of human dignity as an explanation of inherent moral standing. We will also cover the development of the idea of citizenship and political status, notably the development of ideas of universal political rights within a given state or political system, and cosmopolitan ideas of universal rights.

The importance of the above for the course is twofold. First is to place the course into historic context - at what point was political, legal, and/or moral status the expectation?1717 Spoiler alert: I’m going to say “After the Second World War at the earliest, and there’s a good case for starting in the 1970s.” The second is to provide an understanding of the role that these expectations play (or do not play) in judgements of right and wrong in international politics. This also provides a good point to consider the implications of the course, which is the function that normative judgements play in the judgement of, explanation of, and justification for political violence.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Are members of ISIS who have committed genocide, slavery, rape, and/or war crimes still “owed unconditional respect”? What would you say to someone who would deny them such respect?
  • Is it right or wrong for political leaders to value the lives of their own citizens above the lives of non-citizens?
• Readings:
  • Schabas, William A. “Origins of the genocide convention: From Nuremberg to Paris.” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 40 (2007): 35.
  • Van Schaack, Beth. “The Definition of Crimes Against Humanity: Resolving the Incoherence.” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 37 (1999): 787.

4.3 Regulating War and Warfare

An important class of constraints that are meant to protect individuals from harm derive from the laws of war, or the law of armed conflict. This class of legal status, however, is tied to the existence of a war or armed conflict. In this lecture, we’ll be covering three modes by which the protective aspect of the law of armed conflict can be denied: by denying the existence of a war, by categorising individuals as permissible targets, and via the internal logic of the law of armed conflict itself.1818 Notably proportionality calculations In addition we’ll be looking at the reverse: how the declaration of the existence of war, and reliance upon its permissive aspects, is used to override other statuses that protect against violence.

An important question, therefore, is when is a war not a war? For the course, the important question is who (or what) gets to make such judgements, and why. To help answer this, we’ll be covering the definition and criteria (or lack thereof) of war in a variety of disciplines (military theory, international law, ethics, social science). We’ll use this to look at “small wars” and wars of empire in the 18th/19th/20th centuries to think about whether war can ever be defined in an objective sense. We’ll look at how this features in debates about the changing character of war.1919 And also talk a bit about the people who get grumpy when someone says that the nature of war has changed/is changing

• Discussion Questions:
  • What theories explain the decision by participants to abide by a shared set of rules in war?
  • When, if ever, is the existence of war an objective fact?
• Readings:
  • Kaldor, Mary. New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era. 3rd ed. Polity Press, (2012). Chapter 2
  • Freedman, Lawrence. Strategy: A History. Oxford University Press, (2015). Chapter 7
  • Mary L. Dudziak, “Law, War, and the History of Time,” California Law Review 98, no. 5 (2010): 1669-1710

4.4 Reasons for Restraint: Humanity and Human Rights

This lecture covers the evolution of ideas that are now taken as standard — even self-evident — explanations for why dirty wars are wrongful by definition. We will pick over the origins of and differences between concepts like “humanity”, “humanitarianism”, and “human rights”. We will also look at two different logics of restraint in conflict as found in the ideas of Francis Lieber and Henri Dunant, in order to compare them to ideas of restraint that originate in human rights, and human rights law.

An important theoretical point that complements this discussion is the emergence of the individual-as-centre in the normative evaluation of war. The “individualisation of war” is a horrible phrase, but an important emerging field of interdisciplinary study. The importance of these ideas for this course is that the intersection of individual rights and categories of permission for/protection from violence arising from war is quite unsettled, and the analysis of dirty wars provides a means of thinking through these questions from an unusual perspective.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Do you agree more with Francis Lieber, or Henri Dunant? Why?
  • How should the law of armed conflict should interact with human rights law? Why?
• Readings:
  • Lubell, Noam. “Challenges in applying human rights law to armed conflict.” International review of the Red Cross 87, no. 860 (2005): 737–754.
  • Milanović, Marko. “A norm conflict perspective on the relationship between international humanitarian law and human rights law.” Journal of Conflict & Security Law 14, no. 3 (2009): 459–483.
  • Abresch, William. “A human rights law of internal armed conflict: the European Court of Human Rights in Chechnya.” European Journal of International Law 16, no. 4 (2005): 741–767.

4.5 Is Any War Clean? Sexual Violence in Conflict

Most conflicts feature some form of sexual violence. In this class we’ll cover the ongoing debates about defining sexual violence in conflict, as well as theories that seek to explain its causes. For the most part, we will focus on some wider questions, notably the role of power and politics in determining who gets to define wrongful action in conflict (or to ignore it), and the implications of this for the normative frameworks that legitimise violence in wars. Following from this, this lecture will examine the role gaps, lacunae, and silences play in the regulation of violence. In particular, we’ll be discussing the wider implications of this way of thinking, with reference to Miranda Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Are “normal” acts of violence commensurable with sexual violence?
  • Which of the descriptive, causal, and normative issues associated with sexual violence in conflict do you find most troubling? Why?
• Readings:
  • Grossmann, Atina. “A Question of Silence: The Rape of German Women by Occupation Soldiers.” October 72 (1995): 43–63.
  • Baaz, Maria Eriksson, and Maria Stern. “Why do soldiers rape? Masculinity, violence, and sexuality in the armed forces in the Congo (DRC).” International Studies Quarterly 53, no. 2 (2009): 495–518.
  • Gottschall, Jonathan. “Explaining wartime rape.” Journal of sex research 41, no. 2 (2004): 129–136.

4.6 Treason, Political Community and Political Enemies

National security presumes the existence of a nation, and these days, a nation state. This session looks at the connection between political authority, community, and coercive means of defending the former (supposedly on behalf of the latter) against internal threats. The reason this matters for this course is that we now pre-suppose the nation state as the standard type of polity in international politics, when empires dominated until the early-mid 20th century. We’ll look at what an “internal threat” looks like in the context of Empire, and how might this give us a better understanding of the concept of national security that is so important to the present day.

The second half of this lecture covers a range of explanations for rule-breaking hostility in conflict, primarily focused upon internal conflicts. These explanations range from those rooted in ideas and ideology, to power relations, to strategic dilemmas facing insurgents and underdogs in asymmetric conflicts. Two key ideas that this lecture will cover are political enmity, and political ethics that lead to dehumanisation and/or escalation. In particular we’ll be looking at the problem of political enmity involving a state’s own citizens.

• Discussion Questions:
  • What, if anything, do you owe to your fellow citizens that you don’t owe to people from another country?
  • Is revoking the citizenship of suspected terrorists an act of cowardice?
• Readings:
  • Osterhammel, Jürgen. The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. Vol. 15. Princeton University Press, (2015). Chapter 8
  • Schmitt, Carl. “Theory of the Partisan: Intermediate Commentary on the Concept of the Political” (2007).
  • Hack, Karl. “Everyone lived in fear: Malaya and the British way of counter-insurgency.” Small Wars & Insurgencies 23, no. 4–5 (2012b): 671–699.

4.7 Strategy and Population Control

This lecture covers population control as a way of thinking about the logic of dirty wars. This session revisits the concept of strategy, with a particular focus upon the problems of applying strategic theory to wars and conflicts without battles. We’ll cover how strategic theorists and practitioners have tackled this problem in the past.

The lecture is organised around the perceived problem of controlling populations, in particular drawing upon the ideas of John C. Wylie.2020 Fun fact: This emphasis is inspired by the PhD research of Dr Nick Prime, who took this course back in 2012/13. We will look at the tools of coercion that states use to control restive populations. This class primarily focuses upon physical control — notably driving people away, moving populations around, or corralling them into camps — whereas later weeks will cover forms of ideological control and political warfare. These obviously can’t be separated in theory or practice, but it’s necessary to focus like this for lectures to make the scope of topics manageable. In addition, we’ll look at the role that physical violence plays in producing conditions of fear and complicity in populations.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Is it possible to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable forms of population control? How?
  • Are there instances of individual extrajudicial detention, mass internment, or population control that you have encountered in your reading that you consider to be justifiable? Why?
• Readings:
  • Ucko, David H. “‘The People are Revolting’: An Anatomy of Authoritarian Counterinsurgency.” Journal of Strategic Studies39, no. 1 (2016): 29–61.
  • Smith, Iain R., and Andreas Stucki. “The Colonial Development of Concentration Camps (1868-1902).” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 39, no. 3 (2011): 417–437.
  • McCollum, James K. “The CORDS Pacification Organization in Vietnam: A Civilian-Military Effort.” Armed Forces & Society 10, no. 1 (1983): 105–122.

4.8 Political Warfare and Political Emergencies

A defining feature of many dirty wars is the way in which they blend into police action, or, more specifically, political repression under a “law enforcement” banner. Moreover, dirty wars are often characterised by the resort to emergency powers, and repressive legislation. This lecture examines the problem that subversion and insurgency poses to states, and explanations for the resort to emergency powers by government authorities. Specifically, we’ll focus on state security institutions that conduct counter-subversion and seek to identify/disrupt subversive political movements. We’ll look at common dilemmas present in democratic societies, notably relating to surveillance, and the political implications of this activity.

• Discussion Questions:
  • What types of political actors can/can’t commit political repression?
  • How open should democracies be about counter-subversion?
• Readings:
  • Earl, Jennifer. “Political Repression: Iron Fists, Velvet Gloves, and Diffuse Control.” Annual review of sociology 37 (2011): 261–284.
  • Davenport, Christian. “State Repression and Political Order.” Annual Review of Political Science 10 (2007b): 1–23.

4.9 Identity, Identification, and Intelligence Institutions

This week focuses on a key element of dirty wars — bureaucratic security institutions. These institutions, developed to monitor and combat internal threats, are key to understanding the types of violence that occur in dirty wars, so we’ll be looking at the connection between different types of polity, and the institutions that they developed to combat perceived threats. In particular, we will focus on the development of formal intelligence institutions, both domestic and foreign, as a response to perceived threats. This is important for a couple of reasons. One is that institutional perspectives shape state responses to threats, the second is that many dynamics of the conflicts covered in this course can’t be understood without reference to conflicts and competition between state security institutions.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Is intelligence ethics a contradiction in terms?
  • Why would a government tolerate or use death squads?
• Readings:
  • Clutterbuck, Lindsay. “Countering Irish Republican Terrorism in Britain: Its Origin as a Police function.” Terrorism and Political Violence 18, no. 1 (2006): 95–118.
  • Higgs, Edward. “The Rise of the Information State: the Development of Central State Surveillance of the Citizen in England, 1500-2000.” Journal of Historical Sociology 14, no. 2 (2001): 175–197.

4.10 Torture

You may be forgiven for wondering why torture features toward the end of the lecture series, not the start. My reason for placing it here is twofold. First, from experience, if torture features early in the course, then everyone focuses upon the topic of torture for essays, discussions, etc. As a topic, it tends to crowd everything out for the simple reason that it covers some of the most reprehensible things that humans do to each other. However, and secondly, you’ll have better discussions about the topic having spent the previous nine weeks discussing the wider aspects of the course. This class examines rationales for the use of torture, and the emergence of “torture for information” as a key debate in contemporary politics. The lecture will cover issues of definition, and “torture lite.” We will also look at the institutional context of torture, particularly in light of the idea of denial of standing — who decides whether a person should be tortured, how, and why? Such questions are key to understanding contemporary debates.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Can you define a particular element of torture that you find more disturbing than others?
  • Can you know if torture “works” or not? How would such knowledge alter your opinion of the use of torture?
• Readings:
  • Wolfendale, Jessica. “The Myth of “Torture Lite”.” Ethics & International Affairs 23, no. 1 (2009): 47–61.
  • David Luban, “Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb,” Virginia Law Review 91, no. 6 (2005): 1425-1462
  • Kennedy-Pipe, Caroline, and Andrew Mumford. “Torture, Rights, Rules and Wars: Ireland to Iraq.” International Relations 21, no. 1 (2007): 119–126.

4.11 Targeted Killing and One-Sided Violence

The home stretch. You made it. Time to talk about my book (just kidding, sorta). Again, this lecture may seem misplaced, but it’s here for a reason. We’ll be wrapping up the lecture series by examining the concept of one-sided violence and asymmetry in conflict. Here I’ll locate what is called targeted killing - the use of violence against specific individuals — in the wider context of asymmetric violence in war, and similar asymmetries found in terrorism and political repression.

We will discuss how and why are some people singled out for violent death in warfare, and how that relates to the normative frameworks we’ve encountered over the course. In particular, we will be drawing heavily from the seminar series of the course, and the relationship between individuals, social groups, and war/warfare. Targeted killings are important not because they kill many people (at least in comparison to what this course has covered), but because they draw attention to the processes of identification and categorisation that can be viewed as standard targeting practices, or extrajudicial death sentences.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Is there anything specific about the forms of killing found in “dirty wars”?
  • Is it more disturbing to intentionally kill people whose identities you know, or people you only know via their status?
• Readings:
  • Downes, Chris. “‘Targeted killings’ in an age of terror: the legality of the Yemen strike.” Journal of Conflict and Security Law 9, no. 2 (2004): 277–294.
  • McDonald, Jack. Enemies Known and Unknown: Targeted Killings in America’s Transnational Wars. Oxford University Press, (2017). Chapter 7