The Ethics of Insurgency

Author: Michael L. Gross
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316194302
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Book Description
As insurgencies rage, a burning question remains: how should insurgents fight technologically superior state armies? Commentators rarely ask this question because the catchphrase 'we fight by the rules, but they don't' is nearly axiomatic. But truly, are all forms of guerrilla warfare equally reprehensible? Can we think cogently about just guerrilla warfare? May guerrilla tactics such as laying improvised explosive devices (IEDs), assassinating informers, using human shields, seizing prisoners of war, conducting cyber strikes against civilians, manipulating the media, looting resources, or using nonviolence to provoke violence prove acceptable under the changing norms of contemporary warfare? The short answer is 'yes', but modern guerrilla warfare requires a great deal of qualification, explanation, and argumentation before it joins the repertoire of acceptable military behavior. Not all insurgents fight justly, but guerrilla tactics and strategies are also not always the heinous practices that state powers often portray them to be.

Ethics of Armed Conflict

Author: John W. Lango
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748645764
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
Just war theory exists to stop armies and countries from using armed force without good cause. But how can we judge whether a war is just? In this original book, John W. Lango takes some distinctive approaches to the ethics of armed conflict. DT A revisionist approach that involves generalising traditional just war principles, so that they are applicable by all sorts of responsible agents to all forms of armed conflict DT A cosmopolitan approach that features the Security Council DT A preventive approach that emphasises alternatives to armed force, including negotiation, nonviolent action and peacekeeping missions DT A human rights approach that encompasses not only armed humanitarian intervention but also armed invasion, armed revolution and all other forms of armed conflict Lango shows how these can be applied to all forms of armed conflict, however large or small: from interstate wars to UN peacekeeping missions, and from civil wars counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations.

Soft War

Author: Michael L. Gross
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110713224X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Book Description
This collection focuses on non-kinetic warfare, including cyber, media, and economic warfare, as well as non-violent resistance, 'lawfare', and hostage-taking.

Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency

Author: John D. Kelly
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226429954
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 406

Book Description
Global events of the early twenty-first century have placed new stress on the relationship among anthropology, governance, and war. Facing prolonged insurgency, segments of the U.S. military have taken a new interest in anthropology, prompting intense ethical and scholarly debate. Inspired by these issues, the essays in Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency consider how anthropologists can, should, and do respond to military overtures, and they articulate anthropological perspectives on global war and power relations. This book investigates the shifting boundaries between military and civil state violence; perceptions and effects of American power around the globe; the history of counterinsurgency doctrine and practice; and debate over culture, knowledge, and conscience in counterinsurgency. These wide-ranging essays shed new light on the fraught world of Pax Americana and on the ethical and political dilemmas faced by anthropologists and military personnel alike when attempting to understand and intervene in our world.

Street Gangs

Author: Max G. Manwaring
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic government information
Languages : en
Pages : 68

Book Description
The primary thrust of the monograph is to explain the linkage of contemporary criminal street gangs (that is, the gang phenomenon or third generation gangs) to insurgency in terms f the instability it wreaks upon government and the concomitant challenge to state sovereignty. Although there are differences between gangs and insurgents regarding motives and modes of operations, this linkage infers that gang phenomena are mutated forms of urban insurgency. In these terms, these "new" nonstate actors must eventually seize political power in order to guarantee the freedom of action and the commercial environment they want. The common denominator that clearly links the gang phenomenon to insurgency is that the third generation gangs' and insurgents' ultimate objective is to depose or control the governments of targeted countries. As a consequence, the "Duck Analogy" applies. Third generation gangs look like ducks, walk like ducks, and act like ducks - a peculiar breed, but ducks nevertheless! This monograph concludes with recommendations for the United States and other countries to focus security and assistance responses at the strategic level. The intent is to help leaders achieve strategic clarity and operate more effectively in the complex politically dominated, contemporary global security arena.

The Routledge Handbook of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency

Author: Paul B. Rich
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136477659
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 569

Book Description
This new handbook provides a wide-ranging overview of the current state of academic analysis and debate on insurgency and counterinsurgency, as well as an-up-to date survey of contemporary insurgent movements and counter-insurgencies. In recent years, and more specifically since the insurgency in Iraq from 2003, academic interest in insurgency and counterinsurgency has substantially increased. These topics have become dominant themes on the security agenda, replacing peacekeeping, humanitarian operations and terrorism as key concepts. The aim of this volume is to showcase the rich thinking that is available in the area of insurgency and counterinsurgency studies and act as a further guide for study and research. In order to contain this wide-ranging topic within an accessible and informative framework, the Editors have divided the text into three key parts: Part I: Theoretical and Analytical Issues Part II: Insurgent Movements Part III: Counterinsurgency Cases The Routledge Handbook of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency will be of great interest to all students of insurgency and small wars, terrorism/counter-terrorism, strategic studies, security studies and IR in general, as well as professional military colleges and policymakers.

The Ethics of Insurgency

Author: Michael L. Gross
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107019079
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Book Description
The Ethics of Insurgency explains how guerrillas who pursue national self-determination may justly utilize many unlawful practices of war.

Insurgent Terrorism

Author: Victor Asal
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197607012
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
"Imagine getting on the bus to go from one major city to another. It had been a long week and all you wanted to do is get home and take a nap while doing that. Imagine falling asleep and enjoying the rest on the bus. Now imagine as the bus is driving up a mountain you wake to hearing someone scream out something incoherent and you can feel the bus swerve to the right and through a road barrier and over the side of the mountain. Some of the people you are with on the bus fly out the window as it crashes down the mountain into a ravine while others fly around the bus slamming into each other, into metal and into shattering glass. As the bus slams down you can feel parts of your body break and you see other people die in front of you. You then lose consciousness. When you wake, you are lying outside the bus with glass and screaming people around you just above a bus that is now with its roof on the ground. Besides your own pain you can see the dead, the dying and the broken people all around you and dozens of people streaming down the valley to come help you and the people around you"--

Networks of Rebellion

Author: Paul Staniland
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801471028
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Book Description
Insurgent cohesion is central to explaining patterns of violence, the effectiveness of counterinsurgency, and civil war outcomes. Cohesive insurgent groups produce more effective war-fighting forces and are more credible negotiators; organizational cohesion shapes both the duration of wars and their ultimate resolution. In Networks of Rebellion, Paul Staniland explains why insurgent leaders differ so radically in their ability to build strong organizations and why the cohesion of armed groups changes over time during conflicts. He outlines a new way of thinking about the sources and structure of insurgent groups, distinguishing among integrated, vanguard, parochial, and fragmented groups. Staniland compares insurgent groups, their differing social bases, and how the nature of the coalitions and networks within which these armed groups were built has determined their discipline and internal control. He examines insurgent groups in Afghanistan, 1975 to the present day, Kashmir (1988–2003), Sri Lanka from the 1970s to the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, and several communist uprisings in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. The initial organization of an insurgent group depends on the position of its leaders in prewar political networks. These social bases shape what leaders can and cannot do when they build a new insurgent group. Counterinsurgency, insurgent strategy, and international intervention can cause organizational change. During war, insurgent groups are embedded in social ties that determine they how they organize, fight, and negotiate; as these ties shift, organizational structure changes as well.

The Insurgents

Author: Fred Kaplan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451642660
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize The inside story of the small group of soldier-scholars who—against fierce resistance from within their own ranks—changed the way the Pentagon does business and the American military fights wars. The Insurgents is the inside story of the small group of soldier-scholars, led by General David Petraeus, who plotted to revolutionize one of the largest, oldest, and most hidebound institutions—the United States military. Their aim was to build a new Army that could fight the new kind of war in the post–Cold War age: not massive wars on vast battlefields, but “small wars” in cities and villages, against insurgents and terrorists. These would be wars not only of fighting but of “nation building,” often not of necessity but of choice. Based on secret documents, private emails, and interviews with more than one hundred key characters, including Petraeus, the tale unfolds against the backdrop of the wars against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the main insurgency is the one mounted at home by ambitious, self-consciously intellectual officers—Petraeus, John Nagl, H. R. McMaster, and others—many of them classmates or colleagues in West Point’s Social Science Department who rose through the ranks, seized with an idea of how to fight these wars better. Amid the crisis, they forged a community (some of them called it a cabal or mafia) and adapted their enemies’ techniques to overhaul the culture and institutions of their own Army. Fred Kaplan describes how these men and women maneuvered the idea through the bureaucracy and made it official policy. This is a story of power, politics, ideas, and personalities—and how they converged to reshape the twenty-first-century American military. But it is also a cautionary tale about how creative doctrine can harden into dogma, how smart strategists—today’s “best and brightest”—can win the battles at home but not the wars abroad. Petraeus and his fellow insurgents made the US military more adaptive to the conflicts of the modern era, but they also created the tools—and made it more tempting—for political leaders to wade into wars that they would be wise to avoid.