Chapter 6 Course Week-By-Week Guide

Introduction

This is the week-by-week guide to the course. Each section gives you a short outline of the lecture topic, and the seminar topic, for you to consider before watching the lecture material and reading for the week. The discussion questions are what we will be discussing during teaching sessions, so please consider your answers to these questions, alongside preparing for the teaching sessions as per chapter 2.

6.1 Week 0 (w/c September 28th)

Course Notes

• This week is dedicated to getting the technology right: There are no readings for this week.
• You are advised to spend the time that you would spend preparing for this session reading Mariah Zeisberg’s War Powers and Austin Carson’s Secret Wars in preparation for the coming seminars in weeks 1-7.
• The lecture will be a chance to practice using Teams for breakout rooms and small group discussions.
• The seminar will be a chance to introduce yourselves to your seminar groups, and practice small group discussions.

Lecture: Onboarding

There are no readings for this week. Please take the time to read through the handbook and come to class prepared with any questions about how the course operates. Dr Jack McDonald will give a short presentation about the course structure, as well as the group projects that form part of the learning in term 1. We will break into small groups to discuss some set questions, and to test out using MS Teams Channels for breakout rooms, as well as Padlet for feedback from small group sessions. The idea here is that we practice using the technology we’ll rely upon to learn without the pressure of missing out on course material if there are technical issues.

Please prepare for this session by ensuring that you have a working internet connection/mic, as well as having Teams loaded on your computer. Please check to make sure that you have access to the MS Teams page for the course. This session is likely to run for half the time of a full lecture session, but it is your chance to ensure that you are able to participate fully in the lectures for this course.

Seminar: Meet & Greet

Please attend your scheduled seminar session to practice the routine for seminars, as well as to meet your fellow seminar participants. We’ll be doing small group discussions so this is a chance to meet the members of your course. The session is likely to run for about half the time of a normal seminar session, but this is your chance to ensure that you’ll be able to participate fully in the seminars for the course.

6.2 Week 1 (w/c October 5th)

Course Notes

• This is the first week of the course that you need to read for.
• There are some additional videos about course administration to view this week at the end of the lecture material.

Problem: The Soleimani Strike

On January 3rd 2020 the US killed the Iranian General Qassim Soleimani in Iraq. You are probably familiar with this event, which resulted in retaliatory strikes by Iran against US forces stationed in Iraq. If not, read this article. This week’s lecture engages with the fundamental problem of evaluating violence in war and national security. What did you think about this event? How did you arrive at your opinion, and why? More importantly, and the question we’ll be discussing in the lecture: how should this strike be evaluated?

Lecture: War and Dirty Wars

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 week’s lecture also serves as an introduction to the course itself, notably the idea that we’ll be using and examining over the first two thirds of the course. 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 or standing of their opponents.

The importance of this definition is where the expectations of status and standing come from. In particular, this course will engage with the construction of necessity claims. That is, the reasons for which states (and their opponents) claim it is sometimes, or always, necessary to deny the status or standing of their opponents.

This lecture introduces a couple of important frames where necessity claims are an integral feature of the frame itself: 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.

• 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.

Seminar: Secrecy in International Security

This is the opening seminar for the seminar series, here we will be discussing different explanations for state behaviour in international politics. We’ll also discuss what we mean by “secret war” - particularly given the varieties of secretive conflict that exist in the present day. For this seminar, we’ll be considering these questions from a more abstract perspective - what kind of approach to the study of international politics might enable us to understand the occurance of secret wars in international politics?

• Discussion Questions
  • What defines and differentiates a secret war from a non-secret war?
  • Which of the approaches from the readings do you think is best suited to explain the relationship between secrecy and war?
• Readings
  • Fearon, James D. “Rationalist Explanations for War”. International Organization, 49 (1995): 379-414.
  • Finnemore, Martha and Sikkink, Kathryn. “TAKING STOCK: The Constructivist Research Program in International Relations and Comparative Politics”. Annual Review of Political Science, 4 (2001): 391-416.
  • Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce and Smith, Alastair. “Domestic Explanations of International Relations”. Annual Review of Political Science, 15 (2012): 161-181.

6.3 Week 2 (w/c October 12th)

Course Notes

• You are expected to do an article critique on the reading by Mary Dudziak this week.

Problem: Kosovo 1999

In 1999 NATO bombed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in response to the ethnic cleansing during the Kosovo War. This intervention was, famously, labelled as “illegal, but legitimate” since it violated international law against the use of force, but did so in order to protect civilians from harm. NATO’s intervention in Kosovo is emblematic of the fundamental problem of humanitarian intervention, which is the use of force justified for humanitarian reasons, in that there was an irreconcilable tension between international law and the moral views of much of the international community. This leads to the problem that we will discuss in this lecture: How do political orders legitimate the breaking of rules that in part constitute the order itself?

Lecture: War and Political Order

In this lecture we will examine the relationship between political orders and rules that govern political violence. 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.

• Discussion Questions:
  • How important are legal and moral rules to political orders?
  • 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
  • Tang, Shipin, “Order: A Conceptual Analysis.” Chinese Political Science Review 1, (2016): 30-46.
  • Mary L. Dudziak, “Law, War, and the History of Time.” California Law Review 98, no. 5 (2010): 1669-1710.

Seminar: Explaining Secret Wars

This seminar introduces the two texts that we will be reading in full over the coming weeks. These texts are paired to give alternate perspectives upon the rationale for decisions to use force in international politics. The seminar will be focusing upon the US, since Constitutional arrangements are a country-specific issue in decisions to go to war, however we can contrast this Constitutional approach with the wider model developed by Carson to explain state actions. In this seminar we will look at the absences of each text in the other.

• Discussion Questions
  • How important is the absence of secrecy in Zeisberg’s explanation of US war powers?
  • Does Carson’s model and explanation of secret wars underplay the importance of domestic politics?
• Readings
  • Zeisberg, Mariah. War Powers: The Politics of Constitutional Authority, Princeton University Press (2013). Chapter 1.
  • Carson, Austin. Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics, Princeton University Press (2018). Chapters 1 & 2.

6.4 Week 3 (w/c October 19th)

Course Notes

• The book reading task is this week. Please complete it by the time of the lecture.

Problem: The Highway of Death

The Highway of Death refers to Highway 80 that runs between Iraq and Kuwait. In the closing stages of the Persian Gulf War, Coalition forces obliterated Iraqi land forces retreating from Kuwait. As early strikes caused a traffic jam on the road, the aerial attacks destroyed swathes of Iraqi armour and military vehicles. This led to significant criticism of the attacks, not least because the visual imagery of destroyed vehicles and combatants burned alive were some of the most visually arresting imagery of the war on the ground to emerge from the conflict. At the same time, the attacks themselves were justifiable under the law of armed conflict. One of the key issues is who died - most of the slain were combatants. However some argue that just because a combatant is a member of state’s armed forces, they should not be killed at will. This raises the question: Why should a state restrain its military from killing members of opposing armed forces? Do some reasons transcend the existence of war?

Lecture: Restraint in War

This lecture examines theories of restraint in war in order to situate examinations of status in the following three weeks. The lecture will examine cover explanations of restraint in war and the core sets of rules that govern contemporary discussions of right and wrong conduct in war.

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:
  • What theories explain the decision by participants to abide by a shared set of rules in war?
  • Do you agree more with Francis Lieber, or Henri Dunant? Why?
• Readings:
  • Neff, Stephen C. Justice Among Nations: A History of International Law, Harvard University Press, (2014). (This reading is the basis of the book reading task described in full in Chapter 7)
  • 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.

Seminar: Presidential Discretion and Secrecy

In this seminar we’ll consider some of the wider questions raised by the texts, particularly how political leaders are able to exercise their discretion to commit a country to war, and whether or not this is a good thing. We’ll also look at an early example highlighted by Carson - foreign intervention in the Spanish Civil War - and discuss whether examples from this far back in history can help us to explain secret wars in the present day.

• Discussion Questions
  • To what extent should political leaders be able to exercise their discretion to ensure the security of their country?
  • What features of international intervention in the Spanish Civil War are relevant for today?
• Readings
  • Zeisberg, Mariah. War Powers: The Politics of Constitutional Authority, Princeton University Press (2013). Chapter 2.
  • Carson, Austin. Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics, Princeton University Press (2018). Chapters 3 & 4.

6.5 Week 4 (w/c October 26th)

Course Notes

Problem: Mask Laws

Should the state have the right to demand that citizens cover, or uncover, their face or head? This is big issue for democracies in the current Covid-19 epidemic, but it also touches upon significant long-running issues about the legal power of the state to enforce violations of religious practices (for example, demands to ban face coverings associated with the Islamic faith) in the name of public opinion and security concerns. For the problem this week, consider how and why your own country is seeking to enforce (or refuse to enforce) mask-wearing in response to the Covid-19 epidemic: What does that say about the nature of the country that you live in? (or lived in until moving to the UK to study).

Lecture: 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?²⁰ 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.

Seminar: The Cold War and Korea

The Korean War was a defining conflict of the early Cold War. At the same time, it is a conflict that is sometimes under-studied, compared to other conflicts in the Cold War such as those in South East Asia. In this seminar we will be looking at two different perspectives on the decision to use force in the Korean war, and how they might be important in the present day.

• Discussion Questions
  • How important is the absence of treaty commitments and international organisations in Carson’s account of escalation dynamics?
  • Why might the debates about the Korean War be relevant today?
• Readings
  • Zeisberg, Mariah. War Powers: The Politics of Constitutional Authority, Princeton University Press (2013). Chapter 3.
  • Carson, Austin. Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics, Princeton University Press (2018). Chapter 5.

6.6 Week 5 (w/c November 2nd)

Course Notes

Problem: “Horizontal Collaboration”

In the aftermath of liberation during World War 2, those who had collaborated with the Vichy Regime, and the German Occupiers, were often punished, exiled, or killed for their collaboration. One group that bore the brunt of these reprisals were women who had had, for one reason or another, sexual relations with Germans during the occupation. If this case of so-called “horizontal collaboration” is unfamiliar to you, then you can read this article by Anthony Beevor or this article by Ann Mah that give a good (and short) outline of the situation. The gendered nature of the violence and punishment inflicted upon women accused of collaboration is undeniable, but should this be classed as sexual violence in conflict?

Lecture: Status in War & Sexual Violence in Conflict

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.²¹ 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.

Building upon this, we’ll examine the recognition of sexual violence in conflict as a war crime to understand 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.” The Journal of Sex Research 41, no. 2 (2004): 129–136.

Seminar: The Vietnam Wars

The conflicts in and around Vietnam during the Cold War contained a significant mix of covert, semi-covert and open-secret violence alongside acknowledged conflicts. To what extent is it possible to classify these wars as secret or non-secret, and does this binary classification make sense? In this seminar we’ll lok at the relationship between the overarching construct of the Cold War and decisions to employ secret force. In particular, how can we consider the use of secret force in the present day which lacks such an overarching division in global politics.

• Discussion Questions
  • How important are Zeisberg’s ‘security orders’ to evaluating the potential escalation of conflicts?
  • Were there different degrees of secret war in the conflicts in South East Asia during the Vietnam War?
• Readings
  • Zeisberg, Mariah. War Powers: The Politics of Constitutional Authority, Princeton University Press (2013). Chapter 4.
  • Carson, Austin. Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics, Princeton University Press (2018). Chapter 6.

6.7 Week 6 (w/c November 9th)

Course Notes

Problem: Returning ISIS Members to Europe

Many members of ISIS are also European citizens. At the peak of ISIS’s terroritorial control in Syria and Iraq, numerous Europeans travelled to these countries to join Islamic State either as fighters, in support roles, or as citizens of the (failed, so far) attempt at carving out a new state in the Middle East. As the Islamic State crumbled, some of these citizens attempted to return home, others found themselves detained by parties to the conflict, or trapped in refugee camps in the region. This has led to debates across Europe over whether citizens who have repudiated their country retain a right to return home, and whether governments have a duty or obligation to accept the return of these people despite concerns that they may pose a threat to national security. Do states have an obligation to accept the return of citizens despite the potential threat they pose? Does this extend to a positive duty to proactively help these citizens to return home?

Lecture: Citizenship in War and National Security

A third kind of protective status or identity that we will consider in this course is citizenship. How does political and legal membership of a polity give individuals rights, and how do states explain the voiding of the protections of citizenship in conflict?

In this lecture we will examine the relationship between citizens, states, and state security institutions charged with ensuring national security. In particular we’ll be looking at the problem of political enmity involving a state’s own citizens. As such the lecture will cover a variety of issues, such as the unilateral removal of citizenship by state authorities, as well as the rule of law in political emergencies.

• 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. Princeton University Press, (2015). Chapter 8.
  • Hack, Karl. “Everyone lived in fear: Malaya and the British way of counter-insurgency.” Small Wars & Insurgencies 23, no. 4–5 (2012): 671–699.

Seminar: Legislative Politics and Secret War

In the second to last session for the seminar series we will look at a key issue in contemporary politics, which is the role of legislatures in holding governments to account. The ability of governments to withold information about military operations from political representatives is key to many instances of secret war and warfare as waged by democracies. In this seminar we will consider these issues in relation to observations by Carson and Zeisberg about American covert conflicts in the late 1970s and 1980s.

• Discussion Questions
  • How important is the control of information by the executive branch to the prosecution of secret wars?
  • How realistic is it to expect governments to be transparent about their use of force in international politics?
• Readings
  • Zeisberg, Mariah. War Powers: The Politics of Constitutional Authority, Princeton University Press (2013). Chapter 5.
  • Carson, Austin. Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics, Princeton University Press (2018). Chapter 7.

6.8 Week 7 (w/c November 16th)

Course Notes

Problem: Revenge in War

Political hatred is part and parcel of war. A key problem in internal conflicts are the cycles of revenge and political repression that follow from victory on the battlefield. Whereas European states are faced with the problem of returning ISIS members, Iraq is faced with the problem of eliminating ISIS on its own soil often with security forces prone to taking revenge on its supporters. If you’re not familiar with this aspect of the wars in Iraq and Syria, Ben Taub’s piece provides a good overview. This highlights a key problem: is it possible to commit the political repression that might eliminate an actor like ISIS without becoming trapped in cycles of revenge?

Lecture: Political Warfare and Political Repression

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.

Seminar: Contemporary Secret Wars

This seminar completes our reading of Carson and Zeisberg’s books, and we will be discussing how these can help us to understand conflict in the contemporary world. Please take some time before the seminar to consider some secret or secretive conflicts that interest you in the present day. In the seminar itself we will discuss our overall impression of the utility of these text for understanding secret war, and how they can help to explain contemporary wars.

• Discussion Questions
  • Which of the two approaches to explaining the use of force by states do you think best explains the resort to secret wars by states?
  • How might the work of Zeisberg and Carson be applied to contemporary conflicts?
• Readings
  • Zeisberg, Mariah. War Powers: The Politics of Constitutional Authority, Princeton University Press (2013). Chapter 6.
  • Carson, Austin. Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics, Princeton University Press (2018). Chapter 8.

6.9 Week 8 (w/c November 23rd)

Course Notes

• The intelligence ethics seminar series starts this week

Problem: Barriers and Walls

One response to political violence in counterinsurgency is to erect walls to separate communities or to control populations. Temporary solutions, such as the “peace walls” in Northern Ireland can end up becoming permanent features of life and re-shape society. Similar effects have been observed in Iraq, where American forces erected miles of concrete barriers dividing Baghdad as they attempted to defeat insurgents in the city. Yet these effects are necessarily unpredictable, leading to a problem of prediction: Is it possible for military planners to balance the short term utility of walls and barriers against their unknown long term impact on societies?

Lecture: 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.²² 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 Studies 39, 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.

Seminar: Intelligence Ethics

The first seminar in this series examines the concept of intelligence ethics. Is it possible to be ethical in the intelligence space? Or does the duty to collect and provide intelligence to decisionmakers outweigh moral concerns about the means of doing so? Intelligence ethics has emerged as a distinct field since 9/11, often drawing upon concepts from just war theory to understand and examine the moral issues involved in espionage and intelligence collection. Here we will examine two early works in this movement to look at how the field has established itself.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Is there a difference between the ethics of domestic intelligence and the ethics of foreign intelligence?
  • Do organisation types (police, military, intelligence agencies) matter in intelligence ethics?
• Readings:
  • Erskine, Toni. “‘As Rays of Light to the Human Soul’? Moral Agents and Intelligence Gathering.” Intelligence and National Security 19, no.2 (2004): 359-381.
  • Gendron, Angela. “Just War, Just Intelligence: An Ethical Framework for Foreign Espionage.” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 18, no.3 (2005): 398-434.

6.10 Week 9 (w/c November 30th)

Course Notes

Problem: Identity Cards

In some states identity cards are a legal requirement, in others, such as the UK, there are no central identity card systems, and strong political opposition to creating them. Identity registers, either centralised, or fragmented, required, or optional (such as driver’s licenses) enable states to exert power over populations. This week rather than discuss a problem, we’ll discuss whether you see identity cards (and like systems) as a problem: What is your opinion about mandatory identity cards, or national identity registers?

Lecture: Identity, Identification, and Intelligence Organisations

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:
  • To what extent do intelligence institutions shape government perceptions of conflict?
  • Why would a government tolerate or use death squads?
• Readings:
  • Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press, (1998). Chapter 3.
  • 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.

Seminar: Just and Unjust Intelligence

In this seminar we will be looking at two works that compare the evolution of contemporary work on just war theory and intelligence ethics. Importantly, we’ll look at how intelligence ethics has drawn concepts from just war theory. In so doing, we’ll discuss the promise and pitfalls of interdisciplinary research, as well as the issues of drawing concepts into new fields of inquiry.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Does just war theory make sense as a basis for intelligence ethics?
  • How different are the depictions of what constitutes just war theory between the two readings?
• Readings:
  • Lazar, Seth. “Just War Theory: Revisionists Versus Traditionalists.” Annual Review of Political Science 20, no. 1 (2017): 37–54. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-060314-112706.
  • Ronn, Kira Vrist. “Intelligence Ethics: A Critical review and Future Perspectives.” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 29, no.4 (2016): 81-102.

6.11 Week 10 (w/c December 7th)

Course Notes

Problem: The Five Techniques

The five techniques - referring to interrogation techniques of stress positions, hooding, exposure to loud noise, limiting food/drink, and limiting sleep - were used by British forces in Northern Ireland against men suspected of belonging to the Provisional IRA. In an important 1978 case before the European Court of Human Rights, the court held that the use of these techniques breached prohibitions against inhuman and degrading treatment, but did not amount to torture. This was controversial at the time, and campaigners have sought to overturn this ruling ever since, arguing that the use of these techniques by British forces constituted torture. This touches upon a key issue with torture - how do you define torture? With this in mind, do you think the use of the five techniques for interrogation purposes amount to torture? Why/Why not?

Lecture: 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.

Seminar: Intelligence Harms

In this seminar we will discuss the notion of harm, and the harms caused by intelligence collection and surveillance. Here we will examine the analysis of harm internal to the field of intelligence ethics, as well as what gets included in the scope of intelligence activity.

• Discussion Questions:
  • What is the harm of intelligence collection?
  • Is it possible to distinguish between different classes of harms caused by intelligence collection?
• Readings:
  • Bellaby, Ross. The Ethics of Intelligence: A New Framework. Routledge, (2014). Chapter 1.
  • Pfaff, Tony and Tiel, Jeffrey R. “The Ethics of Espionage.” Journal of Military Ethics 3, no. 1 (2004): 1-15.
  • Johnson, Loch K. “National Security Intelligence.” In The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence, edited by Loch K. Johnson, 3-32. Oxford University Press, (2010).

6.12 Week 11 (w/c December 14th)

Course Notes

• Literature review will be due this week
• Research Design Prototyping Project due next year, January 18th

Problem: Asymmetric Killing

Some campaigners and academics argue that the use of drones for killing in war is wrong because of the extreme asymmetry involved. That is, pilots of a Reaper drone can use lethal force and kill their targets without the possibility of harm to themselves since they can pilot vehicles from thousands of miles away. At the heart of this issue is the idea that war involves the possibility of reciprocal violence - that what justifies a combatant’s use of force is their acceptance of the possibility that harm may be done to them in return. Without the possibility of such harm, some argue, killing via drone is inherently wrongful. What do you think about this? Is it possible for the risks of harm in war to become so asymmetric that violence ceases to be justifiable? Why?

Lecture: 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:
  • Carvin, Stephanie. “The Trouble with Targeted Killing” Security Studies 21, no. 3 -carvin2012: 529–555.
  • McDonald, Jack. Enemies Known and Unknown: Targeted Killings in America’s Transnational Wars. Oxford University Press, (2017). Chapter 7

Seminar: Privacy and Intelligence

Privacy harms are a key issue in intelligence ethics. At the same time, the very definition of privacy is often hard to agree upon. In this seminar we will look at the work of two key authors to examine different conceptualisations of privacy, and what these differences might mean for how we think of both privacy harm, and for the use of privacy within the field of intelligence ethics.

• Discussion Questions:
  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of Solove’s approach to the concept of privacy?
  • How well is privacy theorised in intelligence ethics?
• Readings:
  • Solove, Daniel J. “A Taxonomy of Privacy.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 154, (n.d.): 477.
  • Nissenbaum, Helen. “Privacy as Contextual Integrity.” Washington Law Review 79, (2004): 119-158.

6.13 Week 12 (w/c January 18th)

Course Notes

• There is no problem/seminar this week
• Please ensure that your group’s research prototype is submitted by the 18th of January
• The lecture session this week will involve discussion of, and feedback on, the research prototype projects

Lecture: Research Projects Workshop

In this session we will be discussing the case study projects and research essay assessment. This lecture focuses upon the development of research projects from the identification of interesting research problems and puzzles. The session will start by going over the recorded material about research skills, and then there will be some feedback about the case study projects. We will use these projects to protoype a research design that would make for a good research essay, and discuss any questions about the essay assessment.

• Discussion Questions:
  • What makes an academic research project worth doing?
  • To what extent is a “research puzzle” necessary for the research essay that you wish to do?
• Readings:
  • Gustafsson, Karl, and Linus Hagström. “What Is the Point? Teaching Graduate Students How to Construct Political Science Research Puzzles.” European Political Science 17, no. 4 (2018): 634–48.
  • Bennett, Andrew, and Colin Elman. “Case Study Methods in the International Relations Subfield.” Comparative Political Studies 40, no. 2 (February (2007)): 170–95.

6.13.1 Seminar: No Seminar This Week

6.14 Week 13 (w/c January 25th)

Course Notes

• This is the first week of the lecture series on Interdependent Warfare

Lecture: Interdependent Warfare

In this lecture we will examine two aspects of warfare that have been re-shaped by digital technologies: interoperability between security institutions, and interdependence in warfare. Many of the legal, political, and moral quandaries of contemporary conflict arise from the fact that domestic and foreign institutions can collaborate in ways that, to some, enable them to circumvent political or legal limitations on action. For example, remote piloted vehicles can be turned over to the control of pilots from another state while flying, and data streams that enable such operations pass through allied countries, giving rise to questions of responsibility when mistakes are made.

Over the next four lectures we will be examining these issues, and related ones such as proxy warfare, through the lens of interdependence. The new interdependence approach, a theory advanced by political scientists, provides a good way of thinking through many of the issues discussed in the first term of the course. In this lecture, we’ll look at how we can apply these ideas to the conduct of war.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Are proxy wars another way of describing interdependence in war?
  • To what extent are Western members of the Coalition responsible for the civilian casualties inflicted in the Battle of Mosul by their Iraqi allies?
• Readings:
  • Farrell, Henry and Newman, Abraham L. “Domestic institutions beyond the nation-state: Charting the new interdependence approach”, World Politics 66, no.2 (2014): 331-363.
  • One of:
    • Oakford, Samuel. Credibility Gap – UK Civilian Harm Assessments for the Battles of Mosul and Raqqa. Airwars, (2018). https://airwars.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/UK-Inquiry-into-Mosul-and-Raqqa-2018.pdf.
    • Woods, Chris. Limited Accountability: A Transparency Audit of the Coalition Air War Against so-Called Islamic State. Airwars, (2016). https://airwars.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Airwars-report_Web-FINAL1.compressed.pdf.

Seminar: Intelligence and Self Defence

In this seminar we’ll look at the concept of self defence in just war theory, and its applicability to intelligence ethics. As a reason for performing intelligence activities, self defence, or the defence of a political community, seems to be an adequate justification. At the same time, the definition and meaning of self defence in just war theory contains some restrictive constraints that limit the applicability of the concept to pre-emptive or proactive uses of force. Therefore, is it possible to use this idea to justify intelligence activities?

• Discussion Questions:
  • Is the use of force justifiable beyond self-defence? Why?
  • To what extent can self defence justify the harms of intelligence activities?
• Readings:
  • Frowe, Helen. The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction. Routledge, (2015). Chapters 1 and 2
  • Diderichsen, Adam and Rønn, Kira Vrist. “Intelligence by consent: on the inadequacy of Just War Theory as a framework for intelligence ethics.” Intelligence and National Security 32, no. 4 (2017): 479-493.

6.15 Week 14 (w/c February 1st)

Course Notes

• Please take time to consider what you would like to do for your final assessment prior to attending this class.

Lecture: Twilight Conflicts

This lecture will draw together discussions of secrecy and warfare throughout the course to examine open-secret conflicts in the present day. We will be looking at the history of secrecy in war, and theories that explain the use of non-acknowledged military force by states. Building upon this we will consider how many of the issues covered in this course can enable us to analyse the epistemic dimensions of war itself. Lastly the lecture will look at some emerging bodies of work on proxy warfare and surrogates, as well as the key issue of regulating secret warfare in democracies.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Would you support the use of special forces to detain war crimes suspects wanted by international courts?
  • How does the interdependence of surrogate warfare affect accountability mechanisms in democracies?
• Readings:
  • Van Veeren, Elspeth. “Secrecy’s subjects: Special operators in the US shadow war”. European Journal of International Security, 4, no. 3 (2019): 386-414.
  • Farrell, Henry, and Abraham L. Newman. Of Privacy and Power: The Transatlantic Struggle Over Freedom and Security. Princeton University Press, (2019). Chapter 1.

Seminar: War and Privacy

In this seminar we’ll reverse the way we have been examining intelligence ethics, and look at the non-existence of privacy rights in war. Examining how and why just war theory explains the ethics of killing combatants in war, we will be discussing whether the conceptual scheme of jus in bello can accomodate concepts such as privacy and issues such as privacy harm.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Would any account of justifiable physical harm in Frowe’s work prohibit prior privacy harm to the same person?
  • Do combatants have privacy rights?
• Readings:
  • Frowe, Helen. The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction. Routledge, (2015). Chapters 5 and 6.
  • McDonald, Jack. _Information, Privacy, and Just War Theory." Ethics & International Affairs, forthcoming (2020b).

6.16 Week 15 (w/c February 8th)

Course Notes

6.16.1 Lecture: Remote Warfare

This lecture returns to the concept of asymmetric violence discussed throughout the first term of the course. Here we will engage with the concept of remote warfare, and examinations of extreme asymmetry in warfare. As such the class will examine the relationship between differing conceptions of distance in war and warfare, as well as the way in which the study of dirty wars can help clarify the debates about the relationship between international partnerships, jurisdictional overlaps and accountability for killing in war. In particular, this lecture will focus upon conflicts such as Libya and Yemen, and civil wars that are sustained through the engagement of outside actors confronting one another through proxies or direct military assistance.

• Discussion Questions:
  • How responsible are Western states for the actions of Saudi Arabia in Yemen?
  • Is “remote warfare” coherent enough to be useful as a way of understanding and analysing contemporary warfare?
• Readings:
  • McDonald, Jack. “Closeness in Remote War and Warfare: Interdependence in Contemporary Conflict”, Working Paper (2020a).
  • Knowles, Emily and Watson, Abigail. “Lawful But Awful? Legal and political challenges of remote warfare and working with partners”, Remote Warfare Programme, May (2018). Available here

Seminar: Immunity to Intelligence Harms

In this seminar we will be discussing what I consider to be the key difference between intelligence ethics and just war theory, namely the fact that intentional harm (however defined) towards civilians is a normal feature of intelligence activities, yet in just war theory it is something to be avoided at all costs. Partly, this derives from ontological differences, namely that the difference between intelligence targets and civilians does not appear to be quite the same as that between combatants and non-combatants.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Can non-combatant immunity exist in the intelligence space?
  • How should we theorise intentional privacy harms to non-targets that are integral to some forms of surveillance and intelligence collection?
• Readings:
  • Frowe, Helen. The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction. Routledge, (2015). Chapters 7 and 8.
  • Omand, David and Phythian, Mark. Principled Spying: The Ethics of Secret Intelligence, Oxford University Press, (2018). Chapter 5.

6.17 Week 16 (w/c February 15th)

Course Notes

Seminar series on ‘Savage Warfare’ starts this week with Dr Mark Condos

Lecture: War in a Goldish Bowl

Following from examinations of secrecy, technology and contemporary warfare, this lecture examines some of the current and future strategic consequences of improved and distributed information processing. In particular, we will focus upon the relationship between smartphones and covert means of warfare. We’ll look at cases like Ukraine, to consider how the increased observability of armed conflict is reshaping the conduct of warfare in the present day. We will cover the consequences of civilian casualties in contemporary operations, and the changes wrought by the rise of digital crowdsourced journalism and open source intelligence. Lastly we will discuss the strategic implications of automated and autonomous recognition systems, for both conventional military forces as well as insurgencies.

• Discussion Questions:
  • What might be the negative consequences of “war in a goldfish bowl”?
  • What role does silence play in contemporary debates about civilian casualties?
• Readings:
  • Aronson, Jay D. “The Politics of Civilian Casualty Counts.” In Counting Civilian Casualties: An Introduction to Recording and Estimating Nonmilitary Deaths in Conflict, edited by Taylor B. Seybolt, Jay D. Aronson, and Baruch Fischhoff. Oxford University Press, (2013).
  • McDonald, Jack. “Rational Nescience or Strategic Ignorance? Epistemic Approaches to Civilian Casualty Reporting in Contemporary Conflicts.” Working Paper, (2019).

Seminar: ‘Savage Warfare’

We start by looking at a very recent debate about the historiography of the British Empire, racialized violence, and the legacy of its numerous ‘small wars’ fought across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In so doing, we will examine the dynamics of colonial violence and ‘savage’ warfare, and consider their influence upon contemporary practices of counterinsurgency across the globe.

• Discussion Questions:
  • What are Wagner's key methodological critiques of military history? Do you find them persuasive? Or do you find Bennet et. al more convincing?
  • To what extent can we draw useful connections between the ‘savage wars’ of empire and modern counterinsurgency practices?
• Readings:
  • Wagner, Kim A. ‘Savage Warfare: Violence and the Rule of Colonial Difference in Early British Counterinsurgency’. History Workshop Journal 85 (2018): 217-237.
  • Bennett, Huw, Michael Finch, Andrei Mamolea, and David Owen-Morgan. ‘Studying Mars and Clio: Or How Not to Write about the Ethics of Military Conduct and Military History’, History Workshop Journal 88 (2019): 274-280.
  • Wagner, Kim A. ‘Expanding Bullets and Savage Warfare’. History Workshop Journal 88 (2019): 281-87.

6.18 Week 17 (w/c February 22nd)

Course Notes

Lecture: The Shock of the Old

This lecture examines the continued use of raids, sieges, starvation, and slaughter in contemporary warfare. In this session we will examine attacks upon infrastructure as a means of warfare and its continuing relevance for contemporary conflict. The lecture will focus upon the conflicts in Iraq and Syria to examine the degree to which modern-day attacks upon civilian infrastructure differ from those of the past.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Is coercion possible without implicitly threatening civilians?
  • How does focusing upon infrastructure change our view of destruction in war?
• Readings:
  • Howe, Cymene, Jessica Lockrem, Hannah Appel, Edward Hackett, Dominic Boyer, Randal Hall, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, et al. “Paradoxical Infrastructures: Ruins, Retrofit, and Risk.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 41, no. 3 (May (2016)): 547–65.
  • Thomas, Claire. “Civilian Starvation: A Just Tactic of War?”, Journal of Military Ethics 4, no. 2 ((2005)): 108-118.
  • Power, Susan. “Siege Warfare in Syria: Prosecuting the Starvation of Civilians,” Amsterdam Law Forum 8, no. 2 ((2016)): 1-22.

Seminar: The French Conquest of Algeria

The French invasion of Algeria was one of the most disproportionately brutal acts of aggression in the annals of nineteenth-century European imperialism. The conduct of the French soldiers set a new standard of ruthlessness when it came to colonial warfare, so much so that some scholars now suggest that the scale and logic of the violence reached genocidal levels. One of the most terrifying characteristics of the French conquest and occupation of Algeria was the erosion of the distinction between civilians and combatants, in which violence was often directed against entire ‘tribes’ or ‘populations’, rather than armies or other groups of armed combatants. This week we consider the forms and functions of French colonial violence, with specific reference to the razzia and the infamous Dahra Caves Massacre in 1845.

• Discussion Questions:
  • In what ways were French methods of colonial violence a reaction to the demands of ‘savage warfare’?
  • Can we usefully consider the French conquest and pacification of Algeria as an ‘absolute’ or even ‘total war’?
• Readings:
  • Gallois, William. ‘Dahra and the History of Violence in Early Colonial Algeria’. In The French Colonial Mind: Volume 2: Violence, Military Encounters, and Colonialism, edited by Martin Thomas, 3-25. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska, (2011)
  • Rid, Thomas. ‘Razzia: a Turning Point in Modern Strategy’. Terrorism and Political Violence 21 (2009): 617-635

6.19 Week 18 (w/c March 1st)

Course Notes

• Please have your research question for your research essay finalised by this week
• This is the start of the lecture series on War and Digital Rights

Lecture: War and Digital Rights

In the second half of this term we will be looking at the applications of the first term’s concepts to contemporary conflicts. Specifically, we will be engaging with the problems of conflict in the digital age, characterised by densely connected communications infrastructures that have significantly reduced the costs of mass communication. A good way of thinking about this is “war in the age of the smartphone.”

In particular, we will be looking at how the development of communications infrastructure collapses context for action in war and national security. The cryptography that enables online banking, and private communications between citizens also serves to protect the communications of terrorists. Efforts to stifle terrorist propaganda on the internet cannot be disconnected from free speech debates and political repression.

In this lecture we will revisit some of the themes found earlier in the course, but we will primarily be examining the concept of repression through the lens of technology. How and why does technology matter in the use of repression, or the avoidance of repression? In particular we will be looking at the role that information processing plays in political repression, as well as the definitions of surveillance technologies. In particular, we will look at technologies of identification, and the development of biometric identity and identification systems.

This lecture will also introduce the concept of digital repression, and run through some of the history of battles over freedom and privacy on the internet. We’ll also be looking at the (connected) history of technology and surveillance, and some of the key technical/policy issues associated with the regulation of surveillance in an era where almost all communication relies upon, or is co-located with, digital devices. Lastly, we will be looking at these issues in the context of China, and introducing the case study of Xinjiang.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Why is Xinjiang almost non-existent in the academic literature on surveillance studies?
  • What types of surveillance do you think constitute repression?
• Readings:
  • Breckenridge, Keith. Biometric State. Cambridge University Press, (2014). Chapter 1.
  • Goede, Marieke de, and Gavin Sullivan. “The Politics of Security Lists.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 34, no. 1 (2016): 67-88. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775815599309.
  • Agar, Jon. The Government Machine: A Revolutionary History of the Computer. MIT Press, (2003). Chapter 4.
  • Pfaff, Steven. “The Limits of Coercive Surveillance.” Punishment & Society 3, no. 3 (2001): 381–407. https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474501003003003.

Seminar: The Indian Uprising, 1857

The Indian Uprising of 1857 (known in the UK as ‘the Mutiny’ and in India as the ‘First War of Independence’), was the largest anti-colonial revolt of the nineteenth century, and almost resulted in the complete annihilation of British power in the Indian subcontinent. The Uprising unleashed extreme forms of violence, and widespread atrocities were committed by both rebels and colonial soldiers. These included mass summary executions, the indiscriminate destruction of entire villages, and the slaughter of women and children. This week examines one of the most notorious incidents of the Uprising, the Cawnpore Massacre, from the perspective of the Indian rebels and seeks to understand how extreme violence was justified on both sides of this bitter conflict.

• Discussion Questions:
  • What is the logic behind exemplary spectacles of punishment?
  • Whose interpretation of the massacre at the ghat do you find more convincing? Mukherjee, or English?
  • Do you agree with English that Mukherjee is ‘glorifying’ the massacre and anti-colonial violence more generally?
• Readings:
  • Mukherjee, Rudrangshu. ‘“Satan Let Loose Upon Earth”: The Kanpur Massacres in India in the Revolt of 1857’. Past & Present 128 (1990): 92-116.
  • English, Barbara. ‘The Kanpur Massacres in India in the Revolt of 1857: Debate’. Past & Present 142 (1994): 169-78.
  • Mukherjee, Rudrangshu. ‘Reply’. Past & Present 142 (1994): 178-89.

6.20 Week 19 (w/c March 8th)

Course Notes

Lecture: Information Warfare and Disinformation

Continuing from last week, this lecture examines differing conceptions of information warfare, and what “weaponised” information, or disinformation, means. This lecture will focus upon election interference, drawing again on some of the issues regarding censorship discussed in previous weeks. Continuing the theme of collapsing context, we will look at the role that disinformation campaigns play in contemporary conflicts and domestic politics, and the significant challenges facing democratic states as they seek to limit such efforts while preserving values such as free speech and attribute campaigns to hostile political actors. The lecture will point to how much of what we have learned over the course, in a variety of contexts, can better enable us to understand these issues, and provide a guide for thinking through this topic conscious of competing sets of political values.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Do you support the censorship of information identified as disinformation for the purposes of electoral interference or Covid-19 denialism?
  • How central are information operations to contemporary conflict?
• Readings:
  • Fallis, Don. “What Is Disinformation?” Library Trends 63, no. 3 (2015): 401-426. doi:10.1353/lib.2015.0014.
  • Buchanan, Ben. The Hacker and The State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics, Harvard University Press (2020). Chapter 10.

Seminar: The Boxer Rebellion

In 1899, an anti-foreign, anti-imperialist uprising erupted across parts northern China in response to growing resentment over increasing Western influence in China. At the height of the uprising, Boxer insurgents and their supporters even laid siege to the foreign diplomatic legations in Beijing, and killed Western diplomats. Following the attack on the legations and a formal declaration of war by the Qing state, Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Russia, Japan, and the United States joined together to send an international relief force to rescue the besieged legations and ‘punish’ China for its ‘crimes’. The suppression of the Boxer Rebellion by the Western powers was unquestionably brutal, and saw widespread reprisals against Chinese civilians that systematically violated many of the principles of international law set down in the recently-inked Hague Convention of 1899. This week we consider the logic of Western retributive violence, with particular reference to the conduct of the German forces, and the ways the Western powers ultimately sought to justify their actions in China.

• Discussion Questions:
  • How can we explain the excessive violence committed by German soldiers in China?
  • Were the Germans unique among the allied powers when it came to retributive violence?
  • Was the Boxer War a ‘total war’?
• Readings:
  • Kuss, Susanne. German Colonial Wars and the Context of Military Violence. Translated by Andrew Smith. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, (2017). Chapter 1.
  • Dabringhaus, Sabine. ‘An Army on Vacation? The German War in China, 1900-1901’. In Anticipating Total War: the German and American Experiences, 1871-1914, edited by Manfred M. Boemeke, Roger Chickering, and Stig Förster, 459-476. Cambridge: CUP, (1999).

6.21 Week 20 (w/c March 15th)

Course Notes

Lecture: Guns, Smartphones, and Liability to Attack

In the final three lectures on the course, we’ll be looking at how the study of dirty wars can help to improve our analysis of key issues in contemporary warfare. This lecture examines the role of information processing in contemporary armed conflict. We will be examining the contribution of of intelligence to military operations, and the status of informational “work” in war. This highlights some key contemporary issues, for example civilian contributions to military operations via digital platforms, as well as the impact of open source investigations on contemporary conflict. Linking back to prior discussions about categorising participation in war and terrorism, we will look at the problems and pitfalls faced in regulating participation in armed conflict mediated by digital ICTs.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Is it ever reasonable to attack civilians for passing information to belligerents?
  • Can social media platforms ever stay neutral in contemporary conflicts?
• Readings:
  • Fabre, Cécile. “Guns, Food, and Liability to Attack in War”, Ethics 120, no.1 (2009): 36-63.
  • Crawford, Neta. Accountability for Killing: Moral Responsibility for Collateral Damage in America’s Post-9/11 Wars. Oxford University Press, (2013). Introduction and chapter 1.

Seminar: The Herero and Nama Wars

In January of 1904, the German colony of Southwest Africa (modern day Namibia) was rocked by a rebellion of the local Herero people as they rose up against their German colonial overlords. Germans insisted that this revolt represented a grave insult to their national honour, and the alleged atrocities committed by the Herero people against German settlers and soldiers in the colony served as a rallying cry for one of the most brutal episodes of colonial warfare of the twentieth century. German reinforcements under the command of General Lother von Trotha descended upon the colony, and following an unsuccessful attempt to annihilate the Herero in a pitched battle at Waterberg, resorted to a programme of mass incarceration which saw the systematic enslavement, torture, and killing of Herero people in what some scholars have characterized as the twentieth century’s first genocide. This week we examine the logic of German military violence, and interrogate the position of the Herero genocide within the context of other instances of mass violence and genocide.

• Discussion Questions:
  • How were German ideas about Herero racial and cultural differences used to justify colonial violence?
  • What are the key differences between Kuss and Hull's approach to understanding German colonial violence in Namibia? Which do you find more persuasive?
  • Is it possible to draw useful connections between the German use of concentration camps in Namibia and the Holocaust?
• Readings:
  • Kuss, Susanne. German Colonial Wars and the Context of Military Violence. Translated by Andrew Smith. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, (2017). Chapter 2.
  • Hull, Isabel V. Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, (2006). Chapter 1.

6.22 Week 21 (w/c March 22nd)

Course Notes

Lecture: The State/Platform/Copyright Nexus of Repression

This lecture looks at a core value that is usually threatened by political repression, freedom of speech, and the role of censorship in war and political repression. We’ll use censorship, in broad terms, as a way of thinking about the interactions between states and corporations in the digital age. We will look at the span of ideals and policy options associated with the regulation of published works and speech, and how the underlying technological base of the internet and digital platforms messes with this.²³

The interesting feature of digital censorship is the degree to which it can be repurposed. In short, the technical and social systems that suppress child pornography on the internet can also be used to keep mention of the 1989 Beijing massacre from the internet in a given country. The lecture then look at key motivators for regulation and control built into digital platforms like YouTube created by law and policy. Here we will focus on copyright and content moderation as a key issue. We can, say, contrast the development of country-wide internet filters (they exist in the UK as well as China) with the development of private regimes of content moderation in response to pre-existing law.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Do you support or oppose the decision by social mdeia companies to remove President Donald Trump’s accounts in early 2021?
  • Should governments and corporations err on the side of over-censoring or under-censoring when seeking to eliminate terrorist propaganda from the internet?
• Readings:
  • Schulze, Matthias. “Clipper Meets Apple Vs. FBI—a Comparison of the Cryptography Discourses from 1993 and 2016.” Media and Communication 5, no. 1 (2017). https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v5i1.805.
  • Edwards, Lilian. “Pornography, Censorship and the Internet.” In Law and the Internet, edited by Lilian Edwards and Charlotte Waelde, Third Ed. Hart Publishing, (2010).
  • Maréchal, Nathalie. “Networked Authoritarianism and the Geopolitics of Information: Understanding Russian Internet Policy.” Media and Communication 5, no. 1 (2017). https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v5i1.808.

Seminar: The Mau Mau Rebellion

In October 1952, the Governor of the British settler colony of Kenya, Evelyn Baring, declared a state of emergency in response to a growing nationalist uprising known as the Mau Mau. Baring and his officers used this state of emergency to prosecute a brutal counterinsurgency campaign against Mau Mau rebels fighting in the forests, while also incarcerating the entire Kikuyu population of Kenya in a network of concentration camps that saw mass forced labour, systemic torture, and incidents of killing. Following the British withdrawal from Kenya in 1963, the British government ordered the systematic destruction of the records of these camps in an attempt to cover up this history, the details of which are still being unearthed by scholars and journalists. This week we ask how it was the British were able to justify the use of concentration camps so soon after the horrors of the Holocaust, while also positioning this within the wider histories of colonial repression or violence.

• Discussion Questions:
  • How did the British justify the use of concentration camps in Kenya to fight an anti-colonial insurgency so soon after the horrors of the Holocaust and the Second World War?
  • Is it useful comparing the British camps in Kenya to the Nazi concentration camps or Stalinist gulags?
  • Why is the treatment of the Kikuyu people during the Mau Mau Revolt still such an important political issue today?
• Readings:
  • Elkins, Caroline. Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. London: Pimlico, (2005).
  • Bennett, Huw. Fighting the Mau Mau: the British Army and Counter-insurgency in the Kenya Emergency. Cambridge: CUP, (2013).

6.23 Week 22 (w/c March 29th)

Course Notes

• Well done, you made it!
• Please note that you will need to view the Battle of Algiers for the seminar.
• Don’t forget that your research essay is due on March 31st.

Lecture: Exporting Repression

This lecture will cover the international trade in digital surveillance technology, particularly the kind of stuff that can track (now somewhat ubiquitous) mobile phones, or access communications between activists. In particular, we’ll be looking at how and why states help other states out with surveillance technology. There are a couple of narratives at work. One is that China wants to make the world “safe for authoritarianism” and the other is that digital surveillance technology appears to be a growth export market for companies based in liberal democracies. One of the key fears is that authoritarian states armed with this kind of surveillance technology might ultimately check the social movements that challenge them. We will be looking at recent controversies in this area, and fundamentally asking how and why liberal democracies can justify the export of technologies to authoritarian and non-democratic regimes. We will be looking at export controls on arms and other kinds of restricted technologies involved in political repression to ask how and why digital surveillance technologies might fit.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Is the export of surveillance technologies to authoritarian states different from the export of crowd control technologies (tear gas, etc)?
  • Can you reconcile your opinion about the regulation of surveillance technology with your answer to last week’s second discussion question?
• Readings:
  • Bohnenberger, Fabian. “The Proliferation of Cyber-Surveillance Technologies: Challenges and Prospects for Strengthened Export Controls.” Strategic Trade Review 4 (2017): 81-102.
  • Parsons, Christopher, Adam Molnar, Jakub Dalek, Jeffrey Knockel, Miles Kenyon, Bennett Haselton, Cynthia Khoo, and Ronald Deibert. “The Predator in Your Pocket: A Multidisciplinary Assessment of the Stalkerware Application Industry,” Citizenlab, (2019). Read chapters 1, 2 & 6.

Seminar: The Algerian War of Independence

The Algerian War of Independence (1954-62) was one of the most brutal wars of decolonization of the twentieth century. This conflict, fought between the Algerian National Liberation Force (Front de Libération Nationale aka the FLN) and the French Army, saw atrocities committed on both sides, and remains a bitter source of contention between France and Algeria today. This was a guerrilla war spilled over both the countryside and urban centres, most notably in the capital of Algiers. Here, the violence of decolonization was brought forth in vivid relief to audiences in France and around the world in unprecedented ways. This week, we will look at the history of this conflict, with particular reference to the ways it was represented in Gillo Pontecorvo’s classic 1966 film, The Battle of Algiers.

• Discussion Questions:
  • Do they think The Battle of Algiers is an ‘accurate’ film? What does it get right? What does it get wrong?
  • How did the French justify the use of torture against Algerian insurgents?
  • What are the limits of acceptable violence in an anti-colonial freedom struggle?
• Readings:
  • Pontecorvo, Gillo The Battle of Algiers. (1966).
  • Lazreg, Marina. Torture and the Twilight of Empire: from Algiers to Baghdad. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, (2007).

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20. 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.”↩︎

21. Notably proportionality calculations↩︎

22. Fun fact: This emphasis is inspired by the PhD research of Dr Nick Prime, who took this course back in 2012/13.↩︎

23. For example, do you “speak” through ICQ or other platforms like Facebook Messenger, or are you endlessly publishing?↩︎