Download or read book The Image before the Weapon written by Helen M. Kinsella and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-02 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since at least the Middle Ages, the laws of war have distinguished between combatants and civilians under an injunction now formally known as the principle of distinction. The principle of distinction is invoked in contemporary conflicts as if there were an unmistakable and sure distinction to be made between combatant and civilian. As is so brutally evident in armed conflicts, it is precisely the distinction between civilian and combatant, upon which the protection of civilians is founded, cannot be taken as self-evident or stable. Helen M. Kinsella documents that the history of international humanitarian law itself admits the difficulty of such a distinction. In The Image before the Weapon, Kinsella explores the evolution of the concept of the civilian and how it has been applied in warfare. A series of discourses—including gender, innocence, and civilization—have shaped the legal, military, and historical understandings of the civilian and she documents how these discourses converge at particular junctures to demarcate the difference between civilian and combatant. Engaging with works on the law of war from the earliest thinkers in the Western tradition, including St. Thomas Aquinas and Christine de Pisan, to contemporary figures such as James Turner Johnson and Michael Walzer, Kinsella identifies the foundational ambiguities and inconsistencies in the principle of distinction, as well as the significant role played by Christian concepts of mercy and charity. She then turns to the definition and treatment of civilians in specific armed conflicts: the American Civil War and the U.S.-Indian wars of the nineteenth century, and the civil wars of Guatemala and El Salvador in the 1980s. Finally, she analyzes the two modern treaties most influential for the principle of distinction: the 1949 IV Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War and the 1977 Protocols Additional to the 1949 Conventions, which for the first time formally defined the civilian within international law. She shows how the experiences of the two world wars, but particularly World War II, and the Algerian war of independence affected these subsequent codifications of the laws of war. As recognition grows that compliance with the principle of distinction to limit violence against civilians depends on a firmer grasp of its legal, political, and historical evolution, The Image before the Weapon is a timely intervention in debates about how best to protect civilian populations.
Download or read book The Image Before the Weapon written by Helen Kinsella and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The evolution of the legal, military, and historical concept of the civilian during warfare.
Download or read book Naming Violence written by Mathias Thaler and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much is at stake when we choose a word for a form of violence: whether a conflict is labeled civil war or genocide, whether we refer to “enhanced interrogation techniques” or to “torture,” whether a person is called a “terrorist” or a “patriot.” Do these decisions reflect the rigorous application of commonly accepted criteria, or are they determined by power structures and partisanship? How is the language we use for violence entangled with the fight against it? In Naming Violence, Mathias Thaler articulates a novel perspective on the study of violence that demonstrates why the imagination matters for political theory. His analysis of the politics of naming charts a middle ground between moralism and realism, arguing that political theory ought to question whether our existing vocabulary enables us to properly identify, understand, and respond to violence. He explores how narrative art, thought experiments, and historical events can challenge and enlarge our existing ways of thinking about violence. Through storytelling, hypothetical situations, and genealogies, the imagination can help us see when definitions of violence need to be revisited by shedding new light on prevalent norms and uncovering the contingent history of ostensibly self-evident beliefs. Naming Violence demonstrates the importance of political theory to debates about violence across a number of different disciplines from film studies to history.
Download or read book First Contracts written by Jason Melzer and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2013-09-06 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mankind is about to rise as a boarder world in a galactic cold war between the Telshean Union and the Republic Combine. Since the nineteen forties Combine treaties have formed shadow governments that now reverse engineer, steal and kill for technology in the race to produce the first human advanced tech patent. Fighting to fulfill their treaty with a patent they aim for the rights to form Earths first representative government. Our emerging heros in the contractor guild are caught in a torrent of new alliances as Daniel Young; Earths first contractor fulfills the American treaty. The shadow governments end their secret operations while the Republic Combine and surprisingly Telshean Union reveal themselves to Earth. Political dialog takes place as the cold war heats up before Daniel secures Combine support to defend mankind from the Telshean Symbiote protocol. Fulfilling the deal with his new technology he leads combine forces in the retaking of anothers home world lost to the Telshar and leaves the Symbiotes undergoing reversion to find the war surrounds Earth. Earths emerging Terran Council is born as Union and Combine forces are destroying each other in the system. Mankinds first leader Althea Jefferson is elected from the American organization and rises to be the first Terran Chancellor. As the council starts to function Althea must preserve the council so their treaties may preserve them from the war. As war engulfs Earth, hopes lay with a Telshean prophet and a former Telshean politician.
Download or read book The Weapons State written by David Mutimer and published by Lynne Rienner Publishers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proliferation of all kinds of weapons is a focal point for international security. This work shows how both the language used to talk about weapons proliferation and the practices adopted to respond to it serve to define the problem in ways that promote policy responses doomed to failure.
Download or read book Twenty First Century Military Innovation written by Marcus Schulzke and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2022-09-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary war is as much a quest for decisive technological, organizational, and doctrinal superiority before the fighting starts as it is an effort to destroy enemy militaries during battle. Armed forces that are not actively fighting are instead actively reengineering themselves for success in the next fight and imagining what that next fight may look like. Twenty-First Century Military Innovation outlines the most theoretically important themes in contemporary warfare, especially as these appear in distinctive innovations that signal changes in states’ warfighting capacities and their political goals. Marcus Schulzke examines eight case studies that illustrate the overall direction of military innovation and important underlying themes. He devotes three chapters to new weapons technologies (drones, cyberweapons, and nonlethal weapons), two chapters to changes in the composition of state military forces (private military contractors and special operations forces), and three chapters to strategic and tactical changes (targeted killing, population-centric counterinsurgency, and degradation). Each case study includes an accessible introduction to the topic area, an overview of the ongoing scholarly debates surrounding that topic, and the most important theoretical implications. An engaging overview of the themes that emerge with military innovation, this book will also attract readers interested in particular topic areas.
Download or read book Targeting in International Law written by Amin Parsa and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about how distinctions are drawn between civilians and combatants in modern warfare and how the legal principle of distinction depends on the technical means through which combatants make themselves visibly distinguishable from civilians. The author demonstrates that technologies of visualisation have always been part of the operation of the principle of distinction, arguing that the military uniform sustained the legal categories of civilian and combatant and actively set the boundaries of permissible and prohibited targeting, and so legal and illegal killing. Drawing upon insights from the theory of legal materiality, visual studies, critical fashion studies, and a dozen of military manuals he shows that far from being passive objects of regulation, these technologies help to draw the boundaries of the legitimate target. With its attention to the co-productive relationship between law, technologies of visualisation and legitimation of violence, this book will be relevant to a large community of researchers in international law, international relations, critical military studies, contemporary counterinsurgency operations and the sociology of law
Download or read book Making Endless War written by Brian Cuddy and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2023-08-17 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making Endless War is built on the premise that any attempt to understand how the content and function of the laws of war changed in the second half of the twentieth century should consider two major armed conflicts, fought on opposite edges of Asia, and the legal pathways that link them together across time and space. The Vietnam and Arab-Israeli conflicts have been particularly significant in the shaping and attempted remaking of international law from 1945 right through to the present day. This carefully curated collection of essays by lawyers, historians, philosophers, sociologists, and political geographers of war explores the significance of these two conflicts, including their impact on the politics and culture of the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America. The volume foregrounds attempts to develop legal rationales for the continued waging of war after 1945 by moving beyond explaining the end of war as a legal institution, and toward understanding the attempted institutionalization of endless war.
Download or read book Nightshadow Chronicles written by Christopher Scott and published by Booktango. This book was released on 2016-05-20 with total page 1 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is set in a seemingly normal part of New York. However all is not as it seems as a object of incredible magical power is stolen. A group of warriors known as the Nightshadows are tasked with finding and retrieving the object with help from the high races. By accident Katarina, is thrust into this world after a post concert attack by something. With a chance two Nightshadows manage to save her from the attack. Purposefully given something that would make her forget. An accidental encounter a few days later, after she recognizes one her saviors at a record store. She takes an exciting and dangerous journey, into the world just beneath our own.
Download or read book Weapon written by Richard Holmes and published by DK Publishing (Dorling Kindersley). This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ultimate record of arms and armour through the ages – in a new compact edition An epic 4,000-year illustrated story of weaponry. From stone axes to heavy machine-guns, swords to sniper rifles, discover the innovative design, range, lethal function and brutal history of arms and armour, and meet the warriors who wielded them.Includes all the important arms through the ages, covering edged weapons, clubs, projectiles and firearms. From ancient Egyptian axes, through traditional bows and spears of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, to the machine-guns and missiles of modern infantry. Key weapons from every era are presented in sharp detail and the mechanisms that operate them are displayed and explained.Top fighting forces, from the Greek hoplite to the Navy Seal are profiled, revealing the weapons they have wielded and the tactics and fighting methods they’ve used.
Download or read book US Small Arms in World War II written by Tom Laemlein and published by Osprey Publishing. This book was released on 2011-05-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the humorous to the poignant, this incredible collection of wartime images reveals ordinary GIs on the frontline. From the deserts of North Africa to Normandy and from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima, every theater of war is covered and each image details the small arms that the average GI carried with him to wage war and win an historic victory. All the key small arms, from the commonplace 3Grease Gun2 to the rare Johnson rifle, and including pistols, rifles, carbines, combat shotguns, automatic rifles and machine guns are included. Tom Laemlein has created a unique photo study that draws together a rare collection of classic images (many never before seen). These images together with a short introduction to each weapon tells the combat story of the US Army at war.
Download or read book The Coloniality of Humanitarian Intervention written by Patrick J. Vernon and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-05-28 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book scrutinises the practice of humanitarian intervention to explore the extent to which racism and heteronormativity, rooted in colonial understandings of time and space, are enacted through the UK’s responses, failed responses and non-responses to atrocity crimes. Taking humanitarian intervention as its central focus, the book uses queer international relations scholarship to draw the ongoing coloniality of the Western state into stark relief. In particular, it highlights the ways in which dominant logics in these debates invoke subject-positions of extreme selfhood or otherness. These are identified as ‘The Brutal Dictator’, ‘The ISIL Terrorist’ and ‘The British Self’, framed as existing at various steps on ‘The Universal Path to Democracy’. In studying these extreme cultural figures of selfhood and/or otherness, the book examines the ways in which racism and heteronormativity work together to dehumanise certain populations under coloniality, and the ways in which this can be resisted. By studying the UK’s response to mass atrocities in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Myanmar between 2011 and 2018, it uncovers the extent to which these debates continue to operate through a colonial script. The book notably studies failed interventions (Syria) and non-interventions (Myanmar) as significant objects of study which, alongside the comments of UK legislators opposing the case for violence, help to expose the ongoing impact of colonial identities in the formulation of contemporary foreign policy. As well as looking at the British case, the book reflects upon changing norms of humanitarian intervention from the 1990s to the present day, including what might be understood as the rise and fall of R2P. The book also makes a distinct contribution to queer international relations scholarship, broadening what Vernon calls ‘the homonormative turn’ with a renewed focus on heteronormativity as a racist and globally-dominant episteme. Offering both a theoretically informed analysis of humanitarian intervention and a practical guide for possible strategies to resist future iterations of liberal violence, this book will appeal to scholars, students, policy-makers and NGOs interested in R2P/humanitarian intervention, queer/decolonial/feminist international relations, and British politics.
Download or read book The Weapon Wizards written by Yaakov Katz and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A lively account of Israel's evolving military prowess...if The Weapon Wizards were a novel, it would be one written by Horatio Alger; if it were a biblical allegory, it would be the story of David and Goliath." —The New York Times Book Review From drones to satellites, missile defense systems to cyber warfare, Israel is leading the world when it comes to new technology being deployed on the modern battlefield. The Weapon Wizards shows how this tiny nation of 8 million learned to adapt to the changes in warfare and in the defense industry and become the new prototype of a 21st century superpower, not in size, but rather in innovation and efficiency—and as a result of its long war experience. Sitting on the front lines of how wars are fought in the 21st century, Israel has developed in its arms trade new weapons and retrofitted old ones so they remain effective, relevant, and deadly on a constantly-changing battlefield. While other countries begin to prepare for these challenges, they are looking to Israel—and specifically its weapons—for guidance. Israel is, in effect, a laboratory for the rest of the world. How did Israel do it? And what are the military and geopolitical implications of these developments? These are some of the key questions Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot address. Drawing on a vast amount of research, and unparalleled access to the Israeli defense establishment, this book is a report directly from the front lines.
Download or read book Aviation Safety and Aircraft Piracy Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Transportation and Aeronautics and the Committee 91 1 91 2 on Matters Relating to Aviation Safety and Aircraft Piracy Feb 5 6 19 20 1969 and Dec 3 1970 written by United States. Congress. House. Interstate and Foreign Commerce and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Global Governance Futures written by Thomas G Weiss and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global Governance Futures addresses the crucial importance of thinking through the future of global governance arrangements. It considers the prospects for the governance of world order approaching the middle of the twenty-first century by exploring today’s most pressing and enduring health, social, ecological, economic, and political challenges. Each of the expert contributors considers the drivers of continuity and change within systems of governance and how actors, agents, mechanisms, and resources are and could be mobilized. The aim is not merely to understand state, intergovernmental, and non-state actors. It is also to draw attention to those underappreciated aspects of global governance that push understanding beyond strictures of traditional conceptualizations and offer better insights into the future of world order. The book’s three parts enable readers to appreciate better the sum of forces likely to shape world order in the near and not-so-near future: “Planetary” encompasses changes wrought by continuing human domination of the earth; war; current and future geopolitical, civilizational, and regional contestations; and life in and between urban and non-urban environments. “Divides” includes threats to human rights gains; the plight of migrants; those who have and those who do not; persistent racial, gender, religious, and sexualorientation-based discrimination; and those who govern and those who are governed. “Challenges” involves food and health insecurities; ongoing environmental degradation and species loss; the current and future politics of international assistance and data; and the wrong turns taken in the control of illicit drugs and crime. Designed to engage advanced undergraduate and graduate students in international relations, organization, law, and political economy as well as a general audience, this book invites readers to adopt both a backward- and forward-looking view of global governance. It will spark discussion and debate as to how dystopic futures might be avoided and change agents mobilized.
Download or read book International Origins of Social and Political Theory written by Tarak Barkawi and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2017-04-12 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This special issue is animated by the necessary entanglement of theory and history, the cortical relationship between theory and practice, and the transboundary relations that help to constitute systems of thought and practice.
Download or read book The Civilianization of War written by Andrew Barros and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-09 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are civilian populations targeted in modern wars despite laws and ethical claims insisting on civilian protections? This book offers answers.
