Suchergebnisse

From Fidel Castro to Qassem Soleimani, the US government has been involved in an array of assassinations and assassination attempts against foreign leaders and officials. The President's Kill List reveals how the US government has relied on a variety of methods, from the use of poison to the delivery of sniper rifles, and from employing hitmen to simply laying the groundwork for local actors to do the deed themselves. It shows not only how policymakers decided on assassination but also the level of Presidential control over these decisions. Tracing the history of the US government's approach to assassination, the book analyses the evolution of assassination policies and, for the first time, reveals how successive administrations - through private justifications and public legitimations – ensured assassination remained an available tool.

Investigates the US government's involvement in the assassination of foreign officials from the early Cold War to the present dayTraces continuities in the conduct of US foreign policy and in the arguments used to justify and legitimate assassination plotsDetails the direct and indirect methods deployed by the US government to assassinate foreign officialsUtilises extensive and often recently declassified archival material to unveil new details of Cold War and post-Cold War plotsAnalyses the secretive decision-making surrounding assassination plots, as well as the extent, nature, and role of presidential orders to killExplores and exposes the euphemisms, innuendos, silences, and denials that have long characterised the US government's approach to assassinationFrom Fidel Castro to Qassem Soleimani, the US government has been involved in an array of assassinations and assassination attempts against foreign leaders and officials. The President's Kill List reveals how the US government has relied on a variety of methods, from the use of poison to the delivery of sniper rifles, and from employing hitmen to simply laying the groundwork for local actors to do the deed themselves. It shows not only how policymakers decided on assassination but also the level of Presidential control over these decisions. Tracing the history of the US government's approach to assassination, the book analyses the evolution of assassination policies and, for the first time, reveals how successive administrations - through private justifications and public legitimations – ensured assassination remained an available tool

1. Risk in international relations and foreign policy -- 2. A new framework : risk vs. risk trade-offs, crises and international relations -- 3. 'I should have said that we don't care' : the Kennedy administration and Cuba, 1961-1962 -- 4. 'We are sticking with the Shah' : the Carter administration and Iran, 1977-1979 -- 5. 'Why is this happening and we are not doing anything?' : the Clinton administration and the risky road to Srebrenica, 1992-1995.

Recent scholarship analyzes norm dynamics in the US context using the prohibition on assassination contained in Executive Order 12333 as the relevant norm. These studies argue that—before 9/11—the ban on assassination was largely uncontested and effectively constrained US foreign policy. In doing so, these studies overlook the impact of the Reagan administration on the evolution of the ban. This article establishes that the Reagan administration engaged in a concerted, and largely successful, effort to undermine the ban. The article relies on scholarship on norm contestation and norm robustness. The analysis identifies key features of the ban as a norm, including its ambiguity and executive character. It highlights the role and power of a cluster of US officials led by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director William Casey. Crucially, the analysis traces the prominence of dynamics of contestation of the ban in the context of unconventional warfare and counterterrorism. In line with existing scholarship, the analysis finds cases of validity contestation, meaning contestation, and applicatory contestation. Contrary to existing scholarship, however, the analysis stresses the radical nature of actors' attempts to shrink the remit of the ban through applicatory contestation. This contestation was often made superfluous by the blurring—through meaning contestation—of the expectations set by the norm. A historically grounded analysis of contestation during the Reagan years provides a better understanding of how US officials (re)shaped the ban, establishing precedents for the legal, political, and discursive conventions surrounding assassination deployed after 9/11.

AbstractStarting in 2010, the Obama administration engaged in an effort to justify drone strikes relying on the concept of 'imminence'. The aim of this article is to understand the reasons behind such insistence and to assess the administration's efforts at conceptual change. Building on Skinner's and Bentley's work, the article argues that the administration has followed an 'innovating ideologist' strategy. The analysis shows how waves of criticisms exposed the administration to a key contradiction between its rhetoric of change that emphasised international law and the need for aggressive counterterrorism. Reacting to this criticism, the administration has relied on imminence due to its connection with legitimate uses of force, while working to change the criteria for the concept, causing a shift away from imminent as 'immediate.' Reassessing Skinner's place in IR, the article identifies conceptual change as a lens to assess foreign policy rhetoric and practice. The analysis emphasises the connection between actors' intentions, beliefs, and practices. It highlights the importance of criticism in engendering contradictions, exploring why only some criticisms are confronted. Finally, the article develops an original typology of the limits confronted by the innovating ideologist and methods to assess whether the actor has respected them.