Overview
Documents the political ecosystem that legitimized violent military action against military-age males in US military operations after September 11, 2001
Introduces the military-age male as a category used by defense and intelligence professionals to identify insurgent combatants who have blended into civilian environments
Argues that the military-age male category contributed to the deterioration of civilian protection
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Table of contents (5 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book documents the political ecosystem that legitimized violent military action against military-age males in US military operations after September 11, 2001. It first introduces the military-age male as a category used to identify insurgent combatants who have blended into civilian environments. Though US officials maintained that military-age males were not automatically assumed to be combatants, defense and intelligence professionals nevertheless used biases related to gender, age, religion and race to interpret the battlespace. Based on an analysis of the Obama administration’s decision to exclude adolescent boys and men from drone warfare’s collateral damage count, and an examination of similar problems with combatant identification under the Bush administration, the author argues that the military-age male category contributed to the deterioration of civilian protection. The concluding chapters discusses the link between counterinsurgency, drone warfare, and emerging trends in artificial intelligence and autonomy in weapons systems, highlighting the relation between algorithmic discrimination and the misidentification of civilians as combatants.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Dr. Sarah Shoker is Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Waterloo, Canada.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Military-Age Males in Counterinsurgency and Drone Warfare
Authors: Sarah Shoker
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52474-6
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-52473-9Published: 19 October 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-52476-0Published: 20 October 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-52474-6Published: 05 September 2020
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 266
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Military and Defence Studies, Conflict Studies, International Relations Theory, Foreign Policy