class: center, middle, inverse, title-slide # Dirty Wars ## War and Dirty Wars ### Jack McDonald --- class: inverse # Outline .pull-left[ Welcome to the course! In future lectures there will be some main overarching point in this bit for reference. ] .pull-right[ - Where This Course Comes From - Course Design - War and Dirty War: What's the Problem? - Evaluating Dirty War and National Security ] ## Main Points The course is designed in an odd way for a reason It is designed to help you develop your own research interest relevant to the course We'll be sketching out some basic concepts in this lecture that will be analysed in much further depth in later lectures ??? 1. Okay, so there's a couple of goals for this week 2. First is to get you to understand the theme of the course - the topics we will be studying 3. Second is to explain how and why we'll be looking at dirty war through a set of disciplinary lenses 4. So I'll walk you through some basics of war, and political repression, then we'll pan out to put the course in a more abstract context 5. Lastly I'll go over the meta-structure of the course, how we get from A to B, so to speak. --- class: inverse # Part 1: Where This Course Comes From ??? --- # Where This Course Comes from .left-column[ .pic80[ ![My books](../img/2020/book1.jpg) ![My books](../img/2020/book2.jpg) ] ] .right-column[ How and why did the Obama administration start justifying American targeted killings? How do ideas about law and war constitute war and warfare? Bridging both: Who gets to determine that a war does, or does not, exist? Bridging both: How do we make sense of multiple overlapping identities and categories of status in war and armed conflict? ] ??? Four Perspectives - War - National Security - Ideas - Underlying Dillemmas and so on 1. asd 2. asd 3. asd 4. asd 5. asd --- class: inverse # Active Learning: Discussion Slides - You will see a number of slides like this during lectures - This indicates a group discussion - About 6-8 minutes discussing your thoughts/answers in a group of 3-5 people - Whole class discussion follows for another 5-10 minutes - If your entire group agrees at any point: what is the strongest argument against your consensus? There will usually be a discussion slide right at the start of lectures: when you arrive sit down and start talking! For lectures: use padlet link to note down 1-2 key points, using the first name of the person who is okay to speak for your group .large[.black[[https://www.jackmcdonald.org/padlet](https://www.jackmcdonald.org/padlet)]] ??? --- class: inverse # Small Group Discussion .large[ Is the "War on Terror" a war? When did it start? Has it ended? .black[[https://www.jackmcdonald.org/padlet](https://www.jackmcdonald.org/padlet)] ] ??? --- # The Global War on Terror .pic80[![Global War on Terror pics](../img/2020/gwot.png)] ??? 1. Key issue the global war on terror is it all? More warfare who gets to say it's a war? How does empirical violence fit with its classification as a conflict? Role of law in the constitution of the war-constitutional law and international lawn how do we fit bad conduct in detention and torture targeted killings how do you relate between actual conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and overarching concept of the war on terror? --- class: inverse # Part 2: Course Design ??? --- # Learning and Teaching Effective Learning: - Retrieval practice - _Spaced_ retrieval practice - Interleaving problem types Activities: - Reflection (Returning to ideas) - Elaboration (Making connections between ideas) - Generation (Attempting to solve problems prior to being shown answer) - Calibration (Aligning self-judgement of ability with objective feedback) - Mneumonic devices (Creating mental structures to aid memory) Brown, Roediger III, and McDaniel, _Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning_ ??? --- # How Learning Works > - Some kinds of difficulties during learning help to make the learning stronger and better remembered. > - When learning is easy, it is often superficial and soon forgotten. > - Learning isn't hardwired, effortful learning changes the brain. > - You learn better attempting problems, not working towards solutions. > - Excellence requires drive to surpass current level of ability. > - Striving often results in setbacks, setbacks provide information to adjust learning strategies. Brown, Roediger III, and McDaniel, _Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning_ Teachers should: - Explain how learning works - Teach students how to study - Create desirable difficulties in the classroom - Be transparent ??? --- # Course Design .pull-left[ > Here we will define 'tacit knowledge' as 'knowledge or abilities that can be passed between scientists by personal contact but cannot be, or have not been set out or passed on in formulae, diagrams, or verbal descriptions and instructions for action'. H.M. Collins, _Tacit Knowledge, Trust and the Q of Sapphire_ As I see it, you're here to develop the knowledge and skills you need to tackle the problems that you're interested in. ] .pull-right[ ## Literature Review How do you go about identifying important and interesting research gaps from academic debates and/or real world problems? ## Research Essay How do you design and conduct a small personal research project that addresses an answerable research question? ## Research Communication How do you best communicate either of the above to an intelligent academic lay-reader? ] ??? --- # Learning Activities .pull-left[ - Lectures - Active learning - Flipped classrooms for case studies - Seminars - Research Projects Workshop - Assessments - Literature review - Research essay - Projects - Processing books - Designing research projects (group) ] .pull-right[ .pic70[![Your lecturer, looking like a lemon](../img/2021/lectureonline.png)] Normal Lecture: Read the assigned readings, watch the short video (if applicable), attend the lecture Case Study Lectures: Watch the online lecture material, have a think about the reflection questions, read the reading, attend the lecture ] ??? --- # Course Intensity .pull-left[ 30 credit modules are designed for 300 hours of work | Activity | Hours | |---------------------|-----------| | Teaching Sessions | 52.5 | | Session Preparation | 63 | | Group Project | 2.5 | | Literature Review | 40 | | Research Essay | 80 | | Independent Reading | 62 | | **Total:** | **300** | ] .pull-right[ This course is designed for blended learning Online video material is deducted from the Session Preparation column - reading load is lighter in weeks with case studies Workload is front-loaded in each term so that you have less to do at the end of term when assessments bunch up I'll be taking feedback mid-term and adjusting as necessary ] ??? --- # Roadmap .pull-left[ ## Term 1 1. War and Dirty Wars [V] 1. War and Political Order [V] [V] [Task] 1. Restraint in War [V] 1. Strategy and Population Control [CS] 1. Historicising Dirty Wars [V] 1. Political Warfare and Political Repression [CS] 1. Half Light Wars and Clandestine Warfare [V] 1. Human Dignity and Political Community in War and National Security [CS] 1. Citizenship in War and National Security 1. Status in War & Sexual Violence in Conflict 1. The Shock of the Old ] .pull-right[ ## Term 2 12. Identity, Identification, and Intelligence Organisations [CS] 1. Detention [V] 1. Torture [CS] 1. Targeted Killings 1. Research Projects Workshop [Task] 1. Myanmar: Legitimacy, Authority and State Violence [Guest] 1. Revenge, Retribution, and Reciprocity in War [Guest] 1. War and Slavery [Guest] 1. War Powers and Contemporary Warfare 1. Urban Warfare ] --- # Seminars/Meet the Team! .pull-left[ ## Dr Jack McDonald - Weeks 1-4 | Categorising war and warfare - Weeks 9-12 | Intelligence ethics and just war theory ## Dr Mark Condos - Weeks 5-8 | Colonial Violence ] .pull-right[ ## Dr David Bicknell - Weeks 13-16 | Self Defence in Concept and Practice ## Dr Anna Plunkett - Weeks 17-20 | Sovereign Violence and Legitimacy in Myanmar ] ??? --- # Learning Expectations .pull-left[ .large[ My starting premise is that everyone here is an adult, and here to learn.] That said, there are a few rules: - Turn up to all lectures and seminars, or let me know if you can't attend - If you have a question about the course, please check the handbook first - Be excellent to each other* ] .pull-right[ ![Bill and Ted](../img/1/billandted.png) *This course may feature pop-culture references that indicate I am no longer "down with the kids" ] ??? 1. asd 2. asd 3. asd 4. asd 5. asd --- # How to Ace this Module .pull-left[ - Read the handbook - (Turn up), tune in, engage - Apply the theories/debates from your core module to this course - Leave 1 week to edit your assessed work before submission - Avoid topics in assessments that you might want to do for your dissertation - If you commit plagiarism, I cannot help you - Read the official student handbook - If in doubt, ask prior to submission of work - Never cut and paste anything into a document ] ??? 1. asd 2. asd 3. asd 4. asd 5. asd --- class: inverse # Small Group Discussion .question[ Why did you pick this module? What do you want to learn about? ] ??? --- class: inverse # Part 3: War and Dirty War: What's the Problem? ??? 1. What is "a dirty war" 2. Relationship between war and political repression 3. What do we mean by war and what we mean by political repression? 4. How do these relate to rules and political order? 5. In national security, how do you go from observations of political behaviour to subjective interpretations of what should be done? --- # What is a "Dirty War"? .left-60[![Book covers of dirty war books](../img/1/dwbooks.png)] .right-60[ Widely-used to describe huge variety of conflicts and wars > ...dirty war can be defined as a systematic campaign of violence directed against a portion of the civil populace where the perpetrators aim to conceal both the extent of the violence and the true extent of their involvement for the primary purpose of creating fear for political purposes. M.L.R. Smith and Sophie Roberts, _War in the Gray_ ] ??? 1. Definition is key issue, dirty war is a sometimes rhetorical term term used to denote wars that are not good wars 2. In another sense dirty war is a category of conflict, there are types of conflicts/political violence that can be categorised as dirty war 3. How might, or should, you go about constructing such category and what might that reveal about war and warfare? 4. We are going to start with this article, and Tarak Barkawi's work on war and political repression, to think about the relationship between war and political order more generally 5. What we are primarily concerned with in this course is the relationship between war, rules, political repression, and political order 6. A close reading of this article helps us to understand how our starting point might be a problem - if you expect a certain set of relations between these at the outset (nation states, rule of law) then many of the things you see as aberrations are aberrations 7. If on the other hand you do not take these things as priors these may be entirely logical consequences. --- # The Problem of War Studies .pull-left[ ![Strategy > Politics > International relations > Security studies > strategy...](../img/1/escherstairs.jpg) ] .pull-right[ ![War is weird, no matter how you look at it](../img/1/escherrelativity.jpg) ] ??? 1. this is how I would approach a car in Brighton's problems depending upon your starting discipline war occupies a different focus, alongside this, disciplines relate to one another differently depending upon the disciplines hence in America international relations a subdiscipline of political science and Security studies is a subfield of international relations and strategy strategic studies is a subfield of security sites but if you were to say started strategy you would say politics as an aspect of strategic studies and the international relations is just one of those aspects of politics and security as one of those aspects and so I hope you can see how and this can of cycle can convertible a second thing is that my view of the war can never be studied from a definitive point of view that is going to this Escher relativity thing what war is depends upon how you look attached this this means disciplines are important because disciplines are the way in which we see more rural warfare Civil War says a subfield essentially proxy answer to Colin Brian thing is to really think about the relations between the underlying object as they are perceived from competing disciplined --- # Dirty War: A Description .left-33[ Dirty war as "strategic practice" No formal declaration of hostilities "Rule by law" Distinction between combatant/non-combatant not observed Internal conflict ] .right-33[ > ...dirty war is the logical expression of certain forms of intelligence-related activities, which occur in conditions where a political actor seeks to deal with threats, real or imagined, that are believed to represent an extreme threat to established authority. M.L.R. Smith and Sophie Roberts, _War in the Gray_ > ...dirty war can be defined as a systematic campaign of violence directed against a portion of the civil populace where the perpetrators aim to conceal both the extent of the violence and the true extent of their involvement for the primary purpose of creating fear for political purposes. M.L.R. Smith and Sophie Roberts, _War in the Gray_ ] ??? 1. This is description of MR Smith and Sophie Roberts Four key components strategic practice decoration hostilities rule by law distinction and internal conflicts Can see how this reflects inherent biases for example do all hostilities have formal declarations? Also where do we get these distinctions between combatants and noncombatants? Are they natural? Third issue, restricting to internal conflict is this too restrictive? In this version of dirty war we have a subcategory of war, is that the right way to think about what dirty warfare is? --- # Is it War? > What we tend to perceive as war… is, in fact, a specific phenomenon which took shape in Europe somewhere between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries Mary Kaldor, _New and Old Wars_ > [war] is always an expression of culture, often a determinant of cultural forms, in some societies the culture itself John Keegan, _A History of Warfare_ > contemporary "strategic" thought... is fundamentally flawed; and, in addition, is rooted in a "Clausewitzian" world-picture that is either obsolete or wrong. We are entering an era... of warfare between ethnic and religious groups... In the future, war will not be waged by armies but by groups whom we today call terrorists, guerrillas, bandits, and robbers, but who will undoubtedly hit on more formal titles to describe themselves. Martin van Creveld, _The Transformation of War_ ??? Old New Wars, MVC Oxford CCW Nature/character CWS 1. One thing is it important to understand about the study of war is that it's been in flux for quite some time and particularly in the post-Cold War era 2. Discuss quotes: Kaldor 3. Challenge from historian John Keegan - war is cultural and fundamentally mutable as a concept 4. Debate over nature of war - is it mutable? --- # Is it Political Repression? > Political repression consists of government action which grossly discriminates against persons or organizations viewed as presenting a fundamental challenge to existing power relationships or key governmental politicies, because of their perceived political beliefs. Robert J. Goldstein, _Political Repression in Modern America_ > Political repression is the use or threat of coercion in varying degrees applied by government against opponents or potential opponents to weaken their resistance to the will of the authorities. Conway W. Henderson, _Conditions Affecting the Use of Political Repression_ ??? Goldstein quote, p.xxviii Conway quote p.121 https://www.jstor.org/stable/174207?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents 1. By the same token and we should see that our we need touch understand what is meant by political repression before we start using it 2. One important feature - political repression as it is often state centric: we look at political repression by governments of populations 3. political repression is fundamentally tied to things like social movement theory which is the study of change within societies often driven by large-scale social movements that seek to change their political environment 4. One of the things that we need to consider is essentially symmetry in the study of political repression - we have to consider how nonstate actors can actually be repressive actors 5. When we are looking at revolutionary warfare and we are looking at actors are seeking to create a new political order in society and part of that and involves political oppression of the population they are trying to mobilise --- # War and/or/in Political Repression? .left-33[ ![Correlates dataset](../img/1/correlates.jpg) ![Escher pic, again. Sorry about that.](../img/1/hands.png) ] .right-33[ > War therefore is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfil our will. > ...war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means. Carl von Clausewitz, _On War_ (Trans: Jolles) > This involves critiquing the main building blocks of Eurocentric war studies, that is, war studies based on categories derived from Western experience. These are the war/peace binary; an international system of sovereign and national states; and the consequent categorization of war into international and civil war (with residual categories involving "nonstate actors"). Tarak Barkawi, _Decolonizing War_ Is war constituted by battles and fighting, or one-sided violence? ] ??? Original COW dataset category of imperial wars 1. the key point from the car we is about the war peace binary big challenge prefers wall first battle repression as a binary these kinder categories matter and they shape how large typologies of war have been constructed e.g. correlates of Warm what I think brings together political repression and war is one-sided violence or these coercion And and I think this is going to be one of the more challenging things this course of study logics of one-sided violence in war national security and political repression --- # Ways of Seeing War .pull-left[ ![Disciplines do create our worldview](../img/1/historybooks.png) ] .pull-right[ ![Ways of seeing war](../img/1/waysofseeing.png) ] ??? 1. so one might think about this course is an interrogation not only of the concept of war but in the way in which this concept has been constructed within disciplines one thing we find in the study of war is typically the privileging of interstate war and the construction of narratives about the role of war in history so Carl sets and she were a fair bit on irregular warfare but the way in which clouds fits is usually used as in terms of colour Michael ignore that and in strategic studies for example in strategic studies for example we can find the construction of concepts like an American way of war which make strong predictions about how and why the American state wages on conflict but this largely ignores American history of wars that on the course and this is important because this frames discussion of how and why the American way of war is changing the present fights lots of irregular What as regards the heart of say bomb left rockets including the military history and what gets left outline how do histories of irregular warfare intersect with histories of regular warfare but also how when we study regular warfare such as John Gray nears the first way of war we find attitudes towards war and violence that seem quite at odds with the stories about attitudes toward violence based around regular interstate warfare Sophie turned to right the page Rorschach tests highway of death and Barack and John Berger what do you see when you look at the highway of death how is that much of that is a reflection of your personal views what do you do when you take examples from their context and put them together in narratives? --- class: inverse # Part 4: Evaluating Dirty War and National Security ??? Defining Dirty Wars 1. Key issue finding a definition of dirty warfare definitions are the foundation of social science political science without definitions it's hard to do analysis fundamentally what we do on this course is examine competing definitions of war and political repression and how these concepts relate one another in this section we will look at description dirty war some methodological questions about studying war the relationship through more political repression the definition of dirty war abusing in this course are and how I got That --- # Rules, Norms, and Law .pull-left[ ![Emperor's new clothes](../img/2020/clothes.jpg) ] .pull-right[ > Norms are intersubjective beliefs about the social and natural world that define actors, their situations, and the possibilities of action. Norms are intersubjective in that they are beliefs rooted in and reproduced through social practice. Theo Farrell, _Constructivist Security Studies_ ] ??? 1. and when we look back to IR theory and we can see why this might be important because what will be looking at is the construction of sets of practices and sets expect ideals with institutions within governments within conflicts micro dynamics of conflict and how they relate to wider global standards of governance And we'll also be considering how they relate to say international law but also morality and practical ethics practical reality And and I think the kind of the very interesting thing that we do when we start to look at this as we start to find influences of ideas of normative ideas in areas that most prima facie seem lawless or immoral spaces. So one of the things will be doing on this course essentially turning some of the normative structures of international society on their head. Will be looking at how things like international law and just war theory and reality what have you enable and escalate violence rather than constrain --- # Is/Ought Problems in War and National Security > In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with… the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation… David Hume, _A Treatise of Human Nature_ ??? 1. and thus we arrive at one of the central methodological challenges the we will be Preoccupied in this course which is the fundamental difference between description cause analysis and normative judgement but also the relationship between the there that is we could describe how political order works how a government and its institutions use law to enforce or protect a given political order and its citizens, we could analyse causal relations between say strong adherence to the rule of law and perhaps low instances of violent or coercive political repression (in theory we like to think this), and we could analyse how and why you arrive at what should be the case, that is the judgements we have for what should be normatively good or positive as a political orders one of the really interesting things I find about study of war is we use multiple disciplines to essentially evaluate good conduct and each of these arrive at different conceptions of what ought to be denote we don't think of strategic studies as a normative discipline, but fundamentally it is it is about ascertaining what a government should do given a set of circumstances it is about evaluating how well or badly government handled the given situation as such what we find and is Hume's problem, threaded through which is how do you go from observations of the world to normative evaluations of the world normative judgements how you go from some is to ought --- class: inverse # Small Group Discussion: The Soleimani Strike .pull-left[![Qassem Soleimani, Tasnim News Agency, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License](../img/2020/soleimani.jpg)] .pull-right[ Major General Qassem Soleimani, killed January 3rd 2020 in Iraq by a US drone - How can this be evaluated? - How _should_ this be evaluated? ] ??? 1. You've probably heard of this. 2. In January 3rd 2020, the US killed the Iranian General Qassim Soleimani, while Soleimani was in Iraq 3. So, was that the right thing to do? Or was it the wrong thing to do? 4. There were arguments about whether or not it was lawful, moral, politically astute, or strategically ignorant. 5. I'm picking the Soleimani strike here as an example, but if we pan out, it illustrates a basic problem in the study of war, security studies, and IR - on what basis should actions be judged? By whom or what? 6. If something is ethical but illegal, does that make it the wrong thing to do? 7. Why is it that some instances of political violence are "bad" but others are "good"? --- # Judgments of Right and Wrong in War and National Security .pull-left[ There are many ways in which people evaluate wars as "good" or "bad" - Law - International law - Domestic law - Ethics - Just war theory - Political Theory - Strategic Studies Key Concepts: War, Political Order, Political Repression, Rules ] .pull-right[ > Concept formation lies at the heart of all social science endeavours... Concepts are integral to every argument for they address the most basic question of social science research: what are we talking about? > If concepts allow us to conceptualize, it follows that creative work on a subject involves some reconceptualizing of that subject. John Gerring, _Social Science Methodology_ ] ??? Sometimes sides disagree about the appropriate label for a given conflict Some wars feature significant amounts of political repression Internal conflicts are often brutal Who should make the hard decisions, and why? --- # Focus: Hard Problems and Harsh Choices .pull-left[ ![Control Photo](../img/1/control.jpg) ] .pull-right[ > Our policies are peaceful, but our methods can't afford to be less ruthless than those of the opposition, can they? ...You can't be less wicked than your enemies simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you? Control, _The Spy Who Came in from the Cold_ (1965) ] ??? --- # Perspective: As Above, So Below .pic70[![Yep, The Matrix](../img/1/matrix2.jpg)] > That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. Morpheus, _The Matrix_ (1999) ??? 1. asd 2. asd 3. asd 4. asd 5. asd --- # Teitgen’s Warning .pull-left[ .pic60[![Paul Teitgen](../img/2020/teitgen.jpg)] >All our so-called civilisation is covered with a varnish. Scratch it, and underneath you find fear. The French... are not torturers by nature. But when you see the throats of your copains slit, then the varnish disappears. Paul Teitgen ] .pull-right[ ![Cofer Black](../img/2020/cofer.png) > When we're through with them they will have flies walking across their eyeballs. Cofer Black ] ??? 1. and I think that's kind of the key thing when we say look at our cover black and the CTC after 9/11 what we find in the war on terror many actions which should be roundly condemned things like waterboarding and extrajudicial detention detention without trial for extended periods for people picked up in places like Afghanistan around the world and held in runtime about and we find many people quite unrepentant about their involvement in this activity we going to be looking at their arguments and keeping our kind of critical eye open because some of the really important issues about this course revolve around perceptions of necessity and how necessity is constructed by governments within institutions such intelligence agencies and the military and I don't expect anyone to jump to their defence but why do expect you to do on this course is to attempt comprehend the problems as they were perceived by the agents themselves in essence we are going to be reconstructing logics of Wharton Logic's national security that led to perhaps reprehensible action not to justify an but so that we can understand what we are doing when we render judgement upon its --- # Dirty War: My Description .pull-left[ > Dirty wars are conflicts where one or more parties to the conflict denies the political, legal, and/or moral status of their opponents. Or: You are how you kill, and why you kill Or: Wars without cooperation, wars without respect It's not what you do and why, but where the expectations of conduct come from The importance of ideas: Explanations, justifications, excuses, denials, and silences ] .pull-right[ > ...once we look for them, European wars contain many underappreciated "subaltern" characteristics, that is, they have much in common with Small War. Tarak Barkawi, _Decolonizing War_ You don't have to agree with postcolonial theory to see elements of war within political repression, and elements of political repression in war. ] ??? 1. this is my description dirty waters couple really important things status corporation respect this is why expectations of conduct and thus also important so part of the story ofThus this dirty war is not dirty wars as an objective category by the construction of this category in light of changing is an international