This book examines how image affects war and whether image affects our understanding of war. Crucially, how can moving-image representation of conflict affect the legitimacy, conduct and outcome of contemporary warfare? The collapsing Twin Towers of September 11; the hooded figure at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq; the images of beheadings on the internet; the emaciated figure in a Bosnian-Serb concentration camp; the dancing flashes across the skylines of Baghdad as US-led air bombardment deals blows to another ‘rogue’ regime: such images define contemporary conflict. Drawing on a wide range of examples from fiction and factual film, current affairs and television news, as well as new digital media, this book introduces the notion of moving images as the key weapons in contemporary armed conflict. The authors make use of information about the US, the UK, the ‘War on Terror’, the former Yugoslavia, former Soviet states, the Middle East and Africa. War, Image and Legitimacy will be of great interest to students of war and security studies, media and communication studies, and international relations in general.
Since at least the Middle Ages, the laws of war have distinguished between combatants and civilians under an injunction now formally known as the principle of distinction. The principle of distinction is invoked in contemporary conflicts as if there were an unmistakable and sure distinction to be made between combatant and civilian. As is so brutally evident in armed conflicts, it is precisely the distinction between civilian and combatant, upon which the protection of civilians is founded, cannot be taken as self-evident or stable. Helen M. Kinsella documents that the history of international humanitarian law itself admits the difficulty of such a distinction. In The Image before the Weapon, Kinsella explores the evolution of the concept of the civilian and how it has been applied in warfare. A series of discourses—including gender, innocence, and civilization—have shaped the legal, military, and historical understandings of the civilian and she documents how these discourses converge at particular junctures to demarcate the difference between civilian and combatant. Engaging with works on the law of war from the earliest thinkers in the Western tradition, including St. Thomas Aquinas and Christine de Pisan, to contemporary figures such as James Turner Johnson and Michael Walzer, Kinsella identifies the foundational ambiguities and inconsistencies in the principle of distinction, as well as the significant role played by Christian concepts of mercy and charity. She then turns to the definition and treatment of civilians in specific armed conflicts: the American Civil War and the U.S.-Indian wars of the nineteenth century, and the civil wars of Guatemala and El Salvador in the 1980s. Finally, she analyzes the two modern treaties most influential for the principle of distinction: the 1949 IV Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War and the 1977 Protocols Additional to the 1949 Conventions, which for the first time formally defined the civilian within international law. She shows how the experiences of the two world wars, but particularly World War II, and the Algerian war of independence affected these subsequent codifications of the laws of war. As recognition grows that compliance with the principle of distinction to limit violence against civilians depends on a firmer grasp of its legal, political, and historical evolution, The Image before the Weapon is a timely intervention in debates about how best to protect civilian populations.
Through a careful examination of religious and philosophical literature, the contributors to the volume analyze, compare and assess diverse Western, Islamic, Hindu and East Asian perspectives concerning the appropriate criteria that should govern the decision to resort to the use of armed force and, once that decision is made, what constraints should govern the actual conduct of military operations. In doing so, the volume promotes a better understanding of the various ways in which diverse peoples and societies within the global community approach the question of what constitutes the legitimate use of military force as an instrument of policy in the resolution of conflicts.
Just War scholarship has adapted to contemporary crises and situations. But its adaptation has spurned debate and conversation—a method and means of pushing its thinking forward. Now the Just War tradition risks becoming marginalized. This concern may seem out of place as Just War literature is proliferating, yet this literature remains welded to traditional conceptualizations of Just War. Caron E. Gentry and Amy E. Eckert argue that the tradition needs to be updated to deal with substate actors within the realm of legitimate authority, private military companies, and the questionable moral difference between the use of conventional and nuclear weapons. Additionally, as recent policy makers and scholars have tried to make the Just War criteria legalistic, they have weakened the tradition's ability to draw from and adjust to its contemporaneous setting. The essays in The Future of Just War seek to reorient the tradition around its core concerns of preventing the unjust use of force by states and limiting the harm inflicted on vulnerable populations such as civilian noncombatants. The pursuit of these challenges involves both a reclaiming of traditional Just War principles from those who would push it toward greater permissiveness with respect to war, as well as the application of Just War principles to emerging issues, such as the growing use of robotics in war or the privatization of force. These essays share a commitment to the idea that the tradition is more about a rigorous application of Just War principles than the satisfaction of a checklist of criteria to be met before waging “just” war in the service of national interest.
Would the 'real' IRA please stand up? Why, and how, the IRA splintered. The Real IRA, the Continuity IRA, the Irish National Liberation Army, the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA have all assumed responsibility for the struggle for Irish freedom over the course of the late-20th century. Yet as recently as 1969 there was only one Irish Republican Army trying to unify Ireland using physical force., Andrew Sanders explains how and why the transition from one IRA to several IRAs occurred, analysing all the dissident factions that have emerged since the outbreak of the Northern Ireland troubles. He looks at why these groups emerged, what their respective purposes are, and why, in an era of relative peace and stability in Northern Ireland, they seek to prolong the violence that cost over 3500 lives.
This book applies the concept of mediatization to the contemporary dynamic between war, media and society, with a focus on the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Since the beginning of the 21st century the IDF has undergone an intensive process of mediatization that has transformed the media into an interpretative grid for many of its military activities and increasingly utilized media to garner public support and construct civilian perceptions of conflict and security through media activity and strategy. This process can be divided into four distinct chronological phases in accordance with the operational challenges confronted by the IDF during this period, from the Al-Aqsa Intifada of 2000, through Israeli unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005, and the second Lebanon war of 2006, to the series of Gaza confrontations of 2008-2014. The work shows how the IDF’s media policy evolved from a narrow perception of its role, and separation between operational and media actions to a cohesive and coherently articulated media strategy that is increasingly intertwined with military action and operational strategy and a vital component of strategic military aims and objectives. This strategic stance has led the IDF to adopt a global media perspective using the most advanced new media platforms, designed to influence public opinion and improve national narratives, both in Israel and the international community. By applying the concept of mediatization to the Israeli case, this book fills a research lacuna and offers a new prism for the study of media-military relations in contemporary conflicts. The book will be of much interest to students of civil-military relations, strategic studies, Middle Eastern Studies, media and communication studies, sociology and IR, in general.
What qualities make an ally useful in coalition warfare, and when is an ally more trouble than it’s worth? Allies That Count analyzes the utility of junior partners in coalition warfare and reaches surprising conclusions. In this volume, Olivier Schmitt presents detailed case-study analysis of several US allies in the Gulf War, the Kosovo campaign, the Iraq War, and the war in Afghanistan. He also includes a broader comparative analysis of 204 junior partners in various interventions since the end of the Cold War. This analysis bridges a gap in previous studies about coalition warfare, while also contributing to policy debates about a recurring defense dilemma. Previous works about coalition warfare have focused on explaining how coalitions are formed, but little attention has been given to the issue of their effectiveness. Simultaneously, policy debates, have framed the issue of junior partners in multinational military operations in terms of a trade-off between the legitimacy that is allegedly gained from a large number of coalition states vs. the decrease in military effectiveness associated with the inherent difficulties of coalition warfare. Schmitt determines which political and military variables are more likely to create utility, and he challenges the conventional wisdom about the supposed benefit of having as many states as possible in a coalition. Allies That Count will be of interest to students and scholars of security studies and international relations as well as military practitioners and policymakers.
This book explores the intended and unintended impact of international criminal justice on the legitimacy of quasi-state entities (QSEs). In order to do so, the concept of ‘quasi-state entity’ is introduced to distinguish actors in statehood conflicts that aspire to statehood, and fulfil statehood functions to a greater or lesser degree, including the capacity and willingness to deploy armed force, but lack the status of sovereign statehood. This work explores the ability of QSEs to create and maintain legitimacy for their actions, institutions and statehood projects in various constituencies simultaneously. It looks at how legitimacy is a prerequisite for success of QSEs and, using critical legitimacy theory, assesses the legitimating narratives of QSEs and their statehood adversaries. The book links international criminal justice to statehood projects of QSEs and their success and legitimacy. It looks at the effects of international criminal justice on the ability to create and maintain legitimacy of QSEs, an approach that leads to new insights regarding international courts and tribunals as entities competing with states over statehood functions that increasingly have to take the legal implications of their actions into consideration. Most important, a close assessment of the legitimising narratives of QSEs, counter narratives, and the messages sent by international criminal justice with which QSEs have to deal, and their ability to overcome legitimacy crises, provides insight on QSEs and the complex processes of legitimation. This book will be of much interest to students of international criminal justice, political violence, security studies and IR.
Communication is central to how we understand international affairs. Political leaders, diplomats, and citizens recognize that communication shapes global politics. This has only been amplified in a new media environment characterized by Internet access to information, social media, and the transformation of who can communicate and how. Soft power, public diplomacy 2.0, network power – scholars and policymakers are concerned with understanding what is happening. This book is the first to develop a systematic framework to understand how political actors seek to shape order through narrative projection in this new environment. To explain the changing world order – the rise of the BRICS, the dilemmas of climate change, poverty and terrorism, the intractability of conflict – the authors explore how actors form and project narratives and how third parties interpret and interact with these narratives. The concept of strategic narrative draws together the most salient of international relations concepts, including the links between power and ideas; international and domestic; and state and non-state actors. The book is anchored around four themes: order, actors, uncertainty, and contestation. Through these, Strategic Narratives shows both the possibilities and the limits of communication and power, and makes an important contribution to theorizing and studying empirically contemporary international relations. International Studies Association: International Communication Best Book Award
This book explores ‘lessons learned’ from the military intervention in Libya by examining key aspects of the 2011 NATO campaign. NATO’s intervention in Libya had unique features, rendering it unlikely to serve as a model for action in other situations. There was an explicit UN Security Council mandate to use military force, a strong European commitment to protect Libyan civilians, Arab League political endorsement and American engagement in the critical, initial phase of the air campaign. Although the seven-month intervention stretched NATO’s ammunition stockpiles and political will almost to their respective breaking points, the definitive overthrow of the Gaddafi regime is universally regarded as a major accomplishment. With contributions from a range of key thinkers and analysts in the field, the book first explains the law and politics of the intervention, starting out with deliberations in NATO and at the UN Security Council, both noticeably influenced by the concept of a Responsibility to Protect (R2P). It then goes on to examine a wide set of military and auxiliary measures that governments and defence forces undertook in order to increasingly tilt the balance against the Gaddafi regime and to bring about an end to the conflict, as well as to the intervention proper, while striving to keep the number of NATO and civilian casualties to a minimum. This book will be of interest to students of strategic studies, history and war studies, and IR in general.
