International Legitimacy and the Politics of Security (eBook)

The Strategic Deployment of Lawyers in the Israeli Military

Alan Craig (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2013
274 Seiten
Lexington Books (Verlag)
978-0-7391-7147-9 (ISBN)

Infos

The politics of security is increasingly concerned with the legitimacy of military operations, demanding a political engagement with law and ethics that is empowering the lawyers through a continuing expansion of their operational and diplomatic role. Through a careful examination of recent Israeli military operations, this book examines the operational involvement of military lawyers to reveal the political content and consequences of their legal choices through their impact on the legitimacy of Israel’s security policy.

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Delegitimation has become the new battleground for Israel and the critics of Israeli military operations. But the Israeli experience reveals a more general engagement where all states act strategically to build legitimacy for their policies and all resist attempts at delegitimation. To understand these processes it is necessary to see how politicized moral and legal judgments shape both the use of force by states and our judgments about the means and the outcomes. This is a book about legitimacy, military lawyers, and security. More particularly, it is about how the legitimacy of Israel's asymmetric military operations cannot be detached from the politics of law and ethics. Sometimes it is enough that states respect the laws of armed conflict, but at other times they may be held to a higher standard. This does not happen in a vacuum. Rather it is the product of political engagement in the murky politics of international legitimacy where standards are negotiable and some states get a harder time than others. There is a strong theoretical analysis underpinning a discussion that constantly returns to the practical problems of modern armed conflict where combatants hide among civilians and states complain about the unrealistic expectations of human rights NGOs. Here, the law is unclear and there are choices to be made. The book presents new research into the involvement of Israeli military lawyers in operational targeting decision making that has life and death consequences. The case studies concern targeted killing during the Second Intifada, Israel's 2006 Lebanon War, the 2009 Operation Cast Lead in Gaza and, finally, the 2010 Israeli maritime interception of the ';Turkish Flotilla' to Gaza. The investigation identifies a struggle between the proponents of human rights in war and those who promote the rights of states to deploy military force for the security of their citizens. But not all parties to a military conflict are held to the same standards. In fact, the analysis maps a complex political deployment of law and ethics in the strategic calculation of legitimacy costs and the diplomatic processes whereby they are contested, with policy implications for those in charge of the design and execution of military operations.

Autor

Alan Craig is the Pears Lecturer in Israel and Middle East Studies, Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds. He practiced as a human rights lawyer in London and Leeds for twenty-five years before completing a PhD at Leeds and joining the faculty in 2010. His publications include several journal articles and he is a regular contributor to European TV and radio.

Inhalt

IntroductionPart 1: Legitimacy, Morality, and International LawChapter 1: International Law and legitimacy Chapter 2: Morality at War (1): Traditional Just War DoctrineChapter 3: Morality at War (2): Modern critiques of Just War TheoryChapter 4: Advising in the Grey AreaPart 2: The Israeli ExperienceChapter 5: The IDF’s legal environmentChapter 6: Case Study 1: The Second Intifada and the targeted killings of Salah ShehadehChapter 7: Case Study 2: The 2006 Lebanon WarChapter 8: Case Study 3: Operation Case LeadChapter 9: Case Study 4: The 2010 Turkish Flotilla- the Mavi Marmara AffairChapter 10: Conclusion and Policy ImplicationsBibliography

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 20.6.2013
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► EU / Internationales Recht
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Privatrecht / Bürgerliches Recht ► Berufs-/Gebührenrecht
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Europäische / Internationale Politik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie
• Schlagworte: Middle Eastern Studies
• ISBN-10: 0-7391-7147-X / 073917147X
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-7147-9 / 9780739171479