Whose Life Is Worth More?: Hierarchies of Risk and Death in Contemporary Wars 9781503610347

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Whose Life Is Worth More?

W H O SE LI FE I S W ORTH MO RE? Hierarchies of Risk and Death in Contemporary Wars

Yagil Levy

Stanford University Press

•

Stanford, California

Stan ford U n i versit y Press Stanford, California © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Li br ary of C on g res s Cataloging-in-Publ ication D ata Names: Levy, Yagil, author. Title: Whose life is worth more? : Hierarchies of risk and death in contemporary wars / Yagil Levy. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018058536 (print) | LCCN 2018060013 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503606821 (cloth; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503610330 (pbk.; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503610347 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Casualty aversion (Military science) | War casualtie— Government policy. | Military policy. Classification: LCC U163 (ebook) | LCC U163 .L425 2019 (print) | DDC 355.4/22--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018058536 Cover design: Rob Ehle Typeset by Kevin Barrett Kane in 10/13.5 Adobe Garamond Pro

Contents

Figures and Tables Acronyms Acknowledgments

vii ix xi

1

Introduction

2

Determinants of the Death Hierarchy

11

3

How to Identify Variations in Risk Transfer

44

4

Risking One’s Own Soldiers in Jenin and Basra

52

5

Passive Force Protection in Iraq and Gaza

91

6

Strategic Transfer of Risk in the Kosovo War

121

7

Tactical Transfer of Risk in Fallujah and Gaza

154

8

Re-Risking One’s Own Soldiers in the Surge in Iraq and Afghanistan

190

9

Conclusion

225

Notes References Index

1

241 247 287

v

List of Figures and Tables

Figure Figure 2.1 Structuring the Death Hierarchy

42

Tables Table 2.1

Interrelations Between the Legitimacies

40

Table 2.2

Variations of the Death Hierarchy

43

Table 4.1

Fatality Ratios in Operation Defensive Shield

68

Table 4.2

Fatality Ratios in Operation Sinbad

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Table 5.1

Fatality Ratios in Iraq, 2004–2006

111

Table 7.1

Fatality Ratios in Fallujah

157

Table 7.2

Fatality Ratios in Gaza

171

Table 8.1

Fatality Ratios in Iraq, 2006–2008

199

Table 8.2

Fatality Ratios in Afghanistan, 2009–2011

221

Table 9.1

Combinations of Fatality Ratios and Their Meanings

236

vii

List of Acronyms

ANSF

Afghan National Security Forces

FOB

Forward Operating Base

IBC

Iraq Body Count

IDF

Israel Defense Forces

IED

Improvised Explosive Device

IHL

International Humanitarian Law

ISAF

International Security Assistance Force

ISF

Iraqi Security Forces

JAM

Jaysh al Mahdi

KLA

Kosovo Liberation Army

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NGO

nongovernmental organization

PGF

Pro-Government Forces

PLO

Palestine Liberation Organization

RMA

Revolution in Military Affairs

ROE

Rules of Engagement

UNAMA

United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan

ix

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to a large number of people and institutions for their support and assistance with this book. The work began during a period of sabbatical leave at the European University Institute in Florence as part of the Individualization of War Project. I thank the project’s members, in particular Jennifer Welsh, the project director, for hours of invaluable discussions, and also David Rudin and Lars Christie for their valuable input. I thank my colleagues who commented on various parts of the book: Barbara Jankowski, Bashir Bashir, Christopher Dandeker, Chiara Ruffa, Eitan Alimi, Eyal Ben-Ari, Franz Kernic, Gerhard Kümmel, Joseph Soeters, Kobi Michael, Marc Lynch, Martin Shaw, Patricia Shields, Paul Vasquez, Thomas Smith, Uri Ram, and Vida Bajc. I presented parts of this book at various workshops, seminars, and conferences. For their invitations and feedback, I am thankful to the Association of CivilMilitary Studies in Israel, the Critical Military Studies Section of the European International Studies Association, the European Research Group on Military and Society, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the Department of Sociology at Columbia University, the International Studies Association, the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, the ISAC-ISSS (the International Security and Arms Control Section of APSA and the International Security Studies Section of ISA) Joint Annual Conference on Security Studies (2014), the Israeli

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A c k now l edg m ents

Sociological Society, Militärakademie an der ETH Zürich (MILAK), the Open University of Israel, the Peace, War and Social Conflict Section of the American Sociological Association, and the Research Committee on Armed Forces and Conflict Resolution of the International Sociological Association. I gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Israel Science Foundation (grant 33/10) and the Open University of Israel’s Research Fund (grant 509107). I am particularly thankful to Lesley Marks for her dedicated and professional editing of the manuscript and to Yonatan Freeman for his professional and indispensable research assistance and also for his input as coauthor of one of the studies that contributed to this book. Thanks also to Shaked Hasson for her technical assistance. Finally, I thank Stanford University Press and its editorial staff for publishing this book: Alan Harvey, director of the press, for having faith in this book; Leah Pennywark, assistant editor, for her patience and support in guiding me throughout the process until the book’s production; Anne Fuzellier, production editor, for her invaluable guidance in moving the book into its final stage; and Bev Miller, copyeditor, for an outstanding editing job.

Whose Life Is Worth More?

1

Introduction What Determines the Value of Life, and How Has It Been Studied?

In 2004, the US-led coalition in Iraq initiated two campaigns to capture the city of Fallujah. In April, the forces tried to occupy the city. However, because of international and domestic pressures based mainly on criticism of civilian fatalities, the operation was halted after three weeks, before the goals were attained. In November and December, the second campaign was launched. This time, having learned the lessons of the first assault and in an effort to limit criticism of overaggressiveness, the command planned a slower operation with strict rules of engagement that forbade targeting or striking any noncombatants except in self-defense. Nevertheless, relative to the first round, the operation ended with more fatalities among Iraqi civilians and heavy destruction of the city. In December 2008–January 2009, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead against the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, inflicting unprecedentedly heavy losses on Gazan civilians. In July–August 2014, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, once again against Hamas-ruled Gaza. Israel, like its American counterpart, was influenced by international criticism that followed the previous operation, which culminated in a United Nations investigation accusing Israel of committing crimes against humanity. Initially, it was more cautious and restrained when it came to harming the civilian population collaterally; however, again like that of its American counterpart, this operation ended with a higher number of civilian fatalities in Gaza than the first one. In both cases, the rules of engagement were gradually loosening.

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Int ro du c t io n

Although this book is more theoretically than empirically motivated, these kinds of shifts illuminate one of the interesting phenomena of the new type of war: civilians are collaterally targeted. This happens even when the targeting contradicts the initial, and surely formal, intentions as policies change dynamically during the operation. It is one illustration of the topics with which this book engages: hierarchies of risk and death. 1.1 Rationale and Scope What determines the value of life? Max Weber (1958) explained that the modern state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, meaning also that the state manages life and death, owing to which it could pacify its internal control; violence is “only indirectly the resource whereby those who rule sustain their ‘government’ ” (Giddens 1985, 4). The state has the authority to determine who will be sacrificed as soldiers protecting civilians, who will be sacrificed as civilians because the price of protecting them is too high, and, of course, who will be killed as an enemy while the state defends its own civilians. Within this project of managing life and death, democratic states must deal with the dilemma of how to balance three conflicting imperatives: (1) protection of one’s own civilians, based on the principles of the state’s sovereignty according to which societal actors grant the state internal authority in return for citizenship rights, among which protection from external enemies is paramount (Giddens 1985); (2) international humanitarian law (IHL), which prescribes the protection of noncombatant immunity (Henckaerts and Doswald-Beck 2005); and (3) the increasing aversion to sacrificing one’s own soldiers’ lives that emerged in the post–Cold War era, which is partly captured by the casualty sensitivity syndrome and promoted by the liberal discourse of citizenship (H. Smith 2005). Managing these dilemmas has resulted in hierarchies of risk and, ultimately, of death, especially as nonstate adversaries exacerbate the tension inherent in these norms (Kaempf 2018, 248). To clarify, the term hierarchy can be defined as a form of differentiation whereby groups can be categorized and ranked from higher to lower according to power (Lake 2009, 264)—in this case, the power that determines the level of the group’s exposure to risk. Aversion to sacrifice may shift the risk of warfare away from one’s own soldiers to enemy noncombatants by increasing the use of excessive lethality, but then contradict the imperative of noncombatant immunity. If aversion to sacrifice restrains the state from risking its soldiers to protect its civilians, the imperative of security is compromised. Risking one’s own soldiers may uphold

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the principles of sovereignty and immunity but may be at odds with the aversion to risk. In short, the crux of my thesis is that states develop a death hierarchy—an ordered scale of value that they apply to the lives of their soldiers relative to the lives of their civilians and enemy noncombatants. Positions on the hierarchy are mutually exclusive—different groups are not exposed to the same risk levels simultaneously—but variations in the risk level of one group affect the others. Studies have already recognized such hierarchies of risk and death by showing that states expose their own civilians, soldiers, and enemy noncombatants to varying levels of risk. Examples of these variances are evident. First, in a conscription military, the upper-middle class is affected more than it is in a volunteer force, where soldiers drawn from the lower classes, including minorities and immigrants, are put at greater risk (for example, Kriner and Shen 2010). Second, given that class, gender, race, and ethnic origin affect the way the state implements the model of human resources in the military (for example, Krebs 2006), different groups are differentially exposed to potential risk. Third, given that the shift in democracies from a labor-intensive to a capital-intensive military substitutes firepower for labor, among other reasons to avoid casualties by distancing soldiers from the theater of conflict (Caverley 2014), it follows that enemy noncombatants may be placed at greater risk in urban wars by being subjected to more precise but also more aggressive firepower. Risk is thereby transferred from one’s own soldiers to enemy noncombatants (Shaw 2005). Fourth, casualty sensitivity affects troop deployment (Horowitz and Levendusky 2011; Vasquez 2005), while military missions seek to minimize the risk posed to their own civilians (Edmunds 2012). Thus, when casualty aversion restricts deployment and international constraints limit the option of transferring the risk, the state may compromise its original security interests by avoiding deployment, even risking its own civilians. Thus, it values its own soldiers over its civilians. Although these studies acknowledge the extent to which different groups are exposed to different levels of threat, there are two major gaps: analytical and methodological. Analytically, previous studies have not explained how and why hierarchies are modified in general, and sometimes even dynamically, during the same deployment. In particular, studies indicating the shift of risk from one’s own soldiers to enemy noncombatants have recognized the existence of a trade-off between aggressiveness toward enemy noncombatants and reducing casualties among one’s own soldiers. Scholars thus have identified a hierarchy resulting from policy

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decisions, but they have left gaps. Martin Shaw’s (2005) influential analysis about the transfer of risk explains the origins of the trade-offs by relating them to the aversion to sacrifice. Nonetheless, in his analysis, this aversion is more static than dynamic. Thus, he leaves little room for understanding variations in risk transfer. Such variations may also inhere in the extent to which different groups are exposed to different degrees of risk, thereby modifying the death hierarchies (see also Miller 2000). In a similar vein, other scholars have presented the operational conditions for the development of this trade-off (Kaempf 2018; Smith 2017) and the role of technology in encouraging it (Cronin 2018; Ignatieff 2000; Rasmussen 2006). They have also identified the causal chain that produces the resulting collateral deaths (Crawford 2013) and assessed its legality by highlighting the limits of IHL (Crawford 2013; Smith 2017). Overall, as in the case of Shaw, what is missing are explanations about how the trade-off plays out in different situations with the resulting variations in the death hierarchy and its determinants. Consider, for example, the most recent relevant study to which my own corresponds. Neta Crawford’s Accountability for Killing: Moral Responsibility for Collateral Damage in America’s Post-9/11 Wars (2013) focuses on the causes of foreseeable collateral damage produced by the US military in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. She substantiated the argument about the moral responsibility of the military for systemic collateral harming of civilians and developed a new theory of organizational moral agency and responsibility. However, she described the changes by analyzing the causal chain that repeatedly produced collateral damage rather than explaining the causes of these changes outside this loop. She assigned moral responsibility to the military and its civilian supervisors while giving less weight to the political-cultural environment within which policymaking takes place and policies are affected. Similarly, expanding Crawford’s study, Bruce Cronin’s Bugsplat: The Politics of Collateral Damage in Western Armed Conflicts (2018) related collateral killing to the Western method of warfare that powerfully and recklessly targets the adversary’s national power and thereby inevitably produces collateral damage. However, like Crawford, he ignored the political-cultural environment within which this method is developed, and left less space for explaining variations in the implementation of this method. In my previous book, Israel’s Death Hierarchy: Casualty Aversion in a Modern Militarized Democracy (2012), I took this analysis one step further by depicting death hierarchies and identifying their determinants. However, my study was

Int ro du c t io n

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limited to the Israeli arena and therefore refrained from developing the theory further and gaining the benefit of a more comparative perspective. To highlight this scholarly gap from a different angle, the abundant literature concerning casualty sensitivity and the resulting policy outcome of casualty aversion explains modifications in the level of this tolerance of casualties (for example, see Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler 2009; see Levy 2015a for a mapping of the literature). Nevertheless, there is no analysis of how variations in this tolerance are translated into military policies, thereby differentially affecting the state’s own civilians and soldiers and the enemy noncombatants. Casualty shyness may generate risk aversion, which reduces the level of protection provided to a state’s own civilians, but it may also promote force protection as well, which may shift the risk from one’s own soldiers to enemy noncombatants. This book aims to address these gaps, at least in part, by analyzing the hierarchies of risk and death of the state’s own soldiers versus its own civilians and enemy noncombatants and by explaining the determinants of those hierarchies. The book also shows how democracies balance conflicting imperatives by shaping and reshaping the hierarchies of risk and death. Once we analyze the hierarchy of risk, we can then ask why comparable democracies create different hierarchies under similar military circumstances. This analysis, however, cannot be accomplished without addressing the second gap, the methodological one: How can we know that the hierarchies really have been modified? Governments do not transparently report their priorities regarding which groups should face greater risks. Nevertheless, there are several indications. For example, changes in recruitment policies indicate variations in risking different social groups, as research mapping the social origins of fallen soldiers shows (for example, see Kriner and Shen 2010). Overt practices of risk aversion, such as force protection, also reveal priorities of risk and protection. More complicated is the measurement of risk transfer, a central theme in the analysis of how death hierarchies are dynamically reshaped. Nevertheless, variations in risk transfer have not been sufficiently measured. One problem is found in studies of risk transfer unsupported by fatality ratios. For example, while Thomas Smith (2008) identified variations in the level of aggressiveness that American troops in Iraq used and provided a clear analysis of how tactical practices changed, he did not support this by showing changes in the fatality ratios. After all, it is possible that policies, such as the rules of engagement, were formally modified but not reflected in practices on the ground (see also Kaempf ’s 2018 analysis of the interactive dynamics between the dilemmas of protecting own

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soldiers versus enemy civilians). Another example is Kahl’s (2007, 8) analysis of US conduct in Iraq. He concluded that the US military “has done a better job of respecting noncombatant immunity in Iraq than is commonly thought” relative to past wars. Nevertheless, this conclusion is also not supported by fatality ratios. Furthermore, the comparison is between different wars in different historical, political, and technological contexts. Unlike these writers, Martin Shaw (2005, 10) did provide the ratios, but he used them as a means of comparing different wars, and it is doubtful that these wars, with their different goals and terrains, are comparable (Cronin did the same, 2018, 270). Without substantiating the impact of fire policies on risking one’s own soldiers versus enemy noncombatants, one may draw unsubstantiated conclusions, as did Kahl (2007). (On this problem, see Dill 2015, 253–255.) This conclusion, however, is part of the trend that legitimizes the Western way of war as more surgical due to its reliance on precision-guided munitions that reduce collateral killing, as the advocates of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)—the innovative application of new technologies combined with changes in military doctrine—often claim (Waxman 2000; for criticism, see Shaw 2005, 87–88, and Zehfuss 2011). Combining these writers’ insights, I have validated the existence of the force/ casualty trade-off by presenting variations in the fatality ratios in the same arena, the Israel-Gaza wars of 1987–2009 (Levy 2012, 147–180). However, while the fatality ratio between a state’s own soldiers and enemy noncombatants is an effective tool to test the trade-off and monitor its variations, there is a second problem: even when arena-related variables such as geopolitics, the identity of the protagonists, and the nature of the battlefield can be controlled (as evident in the case study of Gaza), changes in the fatality ratio between one’s own soldiers and enemy noncombatants do not necessarily signify variations in the scale of risk transfer. This fatality ratio may change because of factors unrelated to risk transfer, such as the nature of the mission, its goals, or changes in the enemy’s capabilities, a gap that appeared in comparative studies as well (for example, Freeman and Levy 2016). Therefore, more ratios should be considered to assess whether risk really was transferred. But here is the third problem: legitimization of using force also entails governments’ efforts to reduce the number of reported noncombatant fatalities. Such efforts provoke disputes over body counts between governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Discrepancies in fatality reports are a typical issue when it comes to battles between Western and non-Western rivals, with methodological (and, of course, political) implications (see Crawford 2013, 137–142).

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Such differences may mirror different perspectives about the applicability of international law and the discrimination it prescribes between combatants and noncombatants, namely, who can be considered a noncombatant. Hence, such differences may also affect the narrative of the conflict. At the bottom line, “those who are able to control the production of numbers control the public discourse and policy debates” (Aronson 2013, 30). To address these challenges, I offer tools to identify variations in death hierarchies. Conclusions about the extent to which Western states respect noncombatant immunity thus have policy implications. If we can measure variations in risk transfer, we can also identify the conditions for determining that risk has been transferred. In other words, we can determine whether a smaller number of enemy noncombatants could have been harmed had the military taken, rather than transferred, a greater amount of risk. Risk is always partly shifted. Soldiers are not expected to take unconditional risks to save noncombatants’ lives. However, it is a matter of degree, so the challenge is to measure the amount of risk transferred over time and the policies that generated the decisions to do so. 1.2 Argument and Chapter Outline The argument I put forward in this book is that states develop a death hierarchy: an ordered scale of value that they apply to the lives of their soldiers relative to the lives of their civilians and enemy noncombatants. Positions on the hierarchy are mutually exclusive—different groups are not exposed to the same risk levels simultaneously—but variations in the risk level of one group affect the others. The death hierarchy exposes different groups to varying degrees of risk by management of the use of force as determined by military variables such as operational priorities, the specifics of the terrain, and the nature of the adversary. The operation of these military variables, however, is mediated by the interaction between two sets of legitimacies: the legitimacy of using force and the legitimacy of sacrificing. In both legitimacies, the focus is on how state leaders internalize the level of legitimacy and translate it into freedom of action to risk their own soldiers versus their own civilians and enemy noncombatants. Put differently, the interplay results in state leaders balancing the three underlying conflicting imperatives—providing security, noncombatant immunity, and casualty sensitivity—in a manner that produces the hierarchies. The interaction between the legitimacies affects military policies such as deployment, armaments and technology, tactics, fire policies and operational style. By implication, military policies give rise to four principal variations of placement

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on the death hierarchy. These variations reflect the categories of risk distribution by identifying who is risked the most: one’s own upper-middle-class soldiers (those drawn mainly from educated, white-collar families), one’s own lower-class soldiers (mainly the lower-middle class, immigrants, and ethnic and racial minorities), one’s own civilians, and enemy noncombatants (those residing among the enemy but not participating directly in the fighting and therefore shielded by IHL). As positions on the hierarchy are mutually exclusive and variations in the level of risk of one group affect that of the others, when a specific group is risked the most, it assumes the risk to which other groups would otherwise have been exposed. Therefore, a group’s risk is assessed relative to other groups. It is worth clarifying from the outset that this book takes an explanatory rather than a normative perspective. It explains the hierarchical outcomes of policies by focusing on how states actually balance the risks of death rather than how they should do so, a question that lies at the heart of IHL and just war theory (see Walzer 2004). Whether risk should be transferred is indeed a moral question (Crawford 2015, 61–62), relating to the extent to which all lives are equally worthy of protection (Luban 2011, 12). So too is the question of whether armed forces should expose all soldiers, regardless of class, to the same risk. However, these questions are beyond the scope of my study. Equal risking is not a theoretical impossibility, but it is also not the reality, although it is evident that in the post–Cold War era, industrialized democracies are less aggressive than in past modern wars, especially in terms of noncombatant fatalities. But power is distributed unequally and thus affects different groups’ ability to increase or decrease their exposure to risk; this book aims at explaining the determinants of this unequal exposure. Chapter 2 elaborates on this theoretical argument and introduces the determinants of the death hierarchy by analyzing the interaction between the legitimacies. Chapter 3 develops the tools used to assess the situations in which the state’s own soldiers are risked in order to protect enemy noncombatants or, conversely, risk is transferred from soldiers to noncombatants. I maintain that to identify such variations by measuring their impact, a combination of three to four categories of fatality ratios should be considered, factoring in the state’s own combatants and noncombatants versus enemy combatants and noncombatants. Then the association between ratios and practices is established to test the extent to which the ratios are mirrored in practices on the ground and variations in practices are reflected in variations in the ratios. Empirically, I argue that when the perceived need for sacrifice bore a high legitimacy, states risked the lives of soldiers from the upper-middle class; this has

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been the core of the contract between a soldier and the state since the French Revolution. When that legitimacy assumed a more moderate level (in the post– World War II era), states modified the makeup of the ranks and increasingly risked the lives of lower-class soldiers who had hitherto been partly excluded from combat roles. In both variations, those groups were risked regardless of the legitimacy of using force, but provided that it was high enough to initiate the use of force. Chapter 4 focuses on these two traditional variations of risking one’s own soldiers: risking upper-middle-class soldiers is demonstrated mainly by Israel’s conscript military in its warfare in the West Bank in 2002, and risking lower-class soldiers is exemplified by the British Operation Sinbad in the Iraqi city of Basra in 2006–2007. In the post–Cold War era, the legitimacy of sacrificing declined in industrialized democracies following the rise of individualism, liberalization, and the market society and the decline in the perception of external threats. Then the casualty sensitivity syndrome emerged. States pursued two options. If the legitimacy of using force was low, they opted for nonmilitary, risk-averse options, even if they compromised the security of the state’s civilians. Chapter 5 exemplifies this interaction between the legitimacies by analyzing policies of passive force protection, taking two forms: risk aversion of the US troops in Iraq, mainly between 2004 and 2006, and Israel’s mission aversion in Gaza in 2008. Alternatively, if the legitimacy of using force could be increased enough to justify aggressiveness, the states shifted the risk from their own soldiers to enemy noncombatants. Risk can be shifted strategically and tactically. It is strategically transferred when decision makers refrain from deploying ground forces and therefore use standoff weapons alone, and at a level of intensity that will spare the need for ground troops but nevertheless increase the risks posed to enemy civilians. Chapter 6 opens with a discussion of the tensions and dilemmas inherent in the inclination to shift the risk from one’s own soldiers to enemy noncombatants. It proceeds with an analysis of the strategic form of risk transfer as exemplified by the classic case of the Kosovo War of 1999. The chapter demonstrates how the interplay between the two legitimacies shifted during the war, allowing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to escalate its airstrikes on Serbia, hence escalating the collateral killing of noncombatants. To help validate the insights from this analysis, I briefly analyze the US drone war in Pakistan, ongoing since 2004. Risk is tactically shifted when decision makers deploy ground forces but also adopt tactics that shift at least part of the risk from own soldiers to enemy noncombatants. Excessive lethality is thus used through artillery, aircraft, drones, and

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other means, sometimes with relatively limited discrimination between combatants and noncombatants. Chapter 7 focuses on this more complicated variation. Two sets of cases illustrate tactical risk transfer: the two US-led campaigns in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004 and Israel’s campaigns in Gaza—Summer Rains (2006), Cast Lead (2008–2009), and Protective Edge (2014). Importantly, the legitimacies change dynamically and may alter the hierarchies during the same campaign, often following initial achievements, failures, and obstacles, especially those that are unforeseen. Nevertheless, recognizing that harming noncombatants may provide less, rather than more, protection to their own soldiers and may even thwart the mission, policymakers modified the death hierarchy and increased the risk to their own soldiers again. Chapter 8 uses the cases of the US-led surge in Iraq (2007– 2008) and the NATO campaign to capture the Afghan city of Marjah (2010) to illustrate the situation of risking one’s own soldiers again. However, despite the initial expectations, the surge in Iraq was ultimately a case of risk transfer. Chapter 9 offers a few concluding remarks about the interaction of the legitimacies and a detailed analysis of the inferences yielded by the combination of the categories of fatality ratios to summarize the methodological aspects of the study. Methodologically, to demonstrate variations of the death hierarchy and explain their determinants, I focus on the cases of the United States, Great Britain, and Israel. All are democracies enmeshed in prolonged warfare, and by implication, they also deal with domestic constraints related to the legitimacy of using force and the legitimacy of sacrificing, and the military policies created by those constraints. I use specific campaigns that are similar in nature but demonstrate different death hierarchies (see section 2.4 and Chapter 3).

2

Determinants of the Death Hierarchy

This chapter presents the theoretical framework of the book. It introduces the determinants of the death hierarchy based on the interaction between the two sets of legitimacies: the legitimacy of using force and the legitimacy of sacrificing. In the next chapter, I present tools for measuring variations in risk transfer that result from the interplay between the legitimacies. As I have argued, states develop a death hierarchy on which the positions are mutually exclusive—different groups are not exposed to the same risk levels simultaneously—but variations in the risk level of one group affect the others. By definition, enemy combatants are constantly exposed to the highest level of risk. The death hierarchy exposes different groups to varying degrees of risk through management of the use of force. Multiple military variables that have been analyzed extensively in the literature determine how force is used. They include changing operational priorities, the specifics of the terrain, the nature of the adversary, the perceived stakes, the utilization of technology, the choices made by the opponent, and the influence of allies (see, for example, Boot 2003). These military variables are affected by the strategic culture. For example, the drivers generating the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and its implementation in the Soviet Union, the United States, and Israel were ultimately shaped by the impact of each state’s strategic culture (Adamsky 2010). The operation of these military variables, however, is mediated by the interaction between two sets of legitimacies: the legitimacy of sacrificing and the legitimacy of using force.

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D et er m ina nts o f t he Deat h Hie rarchy

2.1 Legitimacy of Using Force The question of what constitutes the legitimacy of using force against an external adversary has become especially relevant since the wars that followed 9/11 (for example, the US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan), and post–Cold War interventions in human crises (for example, Kosovo). Debates on such issues have recontextualized the dramatic post–World War II international legal shifts, with the Geneva Conventions of 1949 at the center. This issue is most often discussed within the context of international relations, with a focus on the conditions under which the international community grants legitimacy to the use of force (see Bjola 2009; Finnemore 2005) and, though to a lesser extent, within the context of the political community, whose leadership initiates the use of force or shares the burden of doing so with other states (Geis and Müller 2013), namely "domestic" legitimacy on which this section focuses. This legitimacy matters. To the extent that the modern state, as a compulsory jurisdiction, is characterized by its claim and effective capacity to monopolize the use of force (Weber 1964, 156), state-controlled violence is a fundamental component of the state and is contingent on domestic legitimacy. From the eighteenth century on, legitimacy became even more important, as wars could not be waged without securing popular consent (Tilly 1992, 75). The bar for obtaining this consent has increasingly been raised, since Western societies have become more averse to sacrifice and more sensitive to normative values, making the challenge of legitimation more complicated. We can identify several scholarly gaps in theorizing this legitimacy. Scholars focusing on the dynamic political process to explain legitimation confuse legitimacy with supportive public opinion (see, for example, Everts 2001; Sohnius 2013) and justification (see, for example, Finnemore 2005). This creates several problems. First, it often ignores the culturally ingrained support for, or opposition to, the use of force. Second, these perspectives (especially those centered on public opinion) ignore other factors, such as global constraints, dissent within the military, and the role of nongovernmental organizations that affect the freedom of policymakers to use force. Third, they focus too much on attempts by leaders to mobilize legitimacy for their policies (see, for example, Krebs 2015), while overlooking the socially constructed political culture and the bottom-up mechanism of legitimation that springs from society. Fourth, indicators of legitimacy other than public opinion are not evaluated, particularly those related to collective action (see Gilley 2006, 505) supporting or opposing the use of force. Therefore, we have no tools other than public opinion for operationalizing various levels of legitimation. Finally,

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even in the analysis of other tools that state leaders use dynamically to increase the legitimacy of using force within the boundaries of the polity (see more below), the focus is often on legal or other specific means. Links between these and the broader concept of legitimacy, as well as a systematic methodological approach to analyzing how governments try to establish legitimacy of using force, are still lacking. Part of what is missing in studies of dynamic legitimation is provided by other scholars who focus on the more static component of this legitimacy, but in doing so, they have created other gaps. For example, scholars of militarism have analyzed the extent to which political culture is imbued with militaristic values (see Bacevich 2005; Mann 2005). However, this perspective leaves little opportunity for exploring how legitimation (or delegitimation) is dynamically built within the previously shaped political culture domestically, to support or oppose the use of force. A similarly static perspective is typical of studies focused on the normative perception that “examines the ethical value of the rules, norms or principles involved in various definitions of legitimacy” of using force (Bjola 2008, 628). However, legitimation of using force is a political process resulting in acceptance of policies, regardless of their ethical or normative value, even though using force is often morally justified (Finnemore 2005). Herein lies the importance of conceptualizing the legitimacy of using force. Definition Drawing on Burk’s (2013, 2–3) “way of war,” Johnston’s (1996, 222–223) “strategic culture,” and Mann’s (1987) “militarism,” the legitimacy of using force refers to a socially constructed system of norms, symbols, values, and beliefs held by the community of citizens that accepts or rejects the state’s formal mode of using armed force against an external adversary as a normal, pervasive, and enduring strategic preference. Such legitimacy encompasses social beliefs about the role of the use of force in human affairs, the nature of the adversary and the threat it poses, and the efficacy of the use of force (Levy 2016b, 79). As elaborated later, this legitimacy is made up of two components: the ingrained and the dynamic. The term use of force relates to any state-controlled use of violent force against an external, nondomestic adversary. This term applies to any violent actions employed by either the military or another state agency (such as the CIA-led drone warfare in Pakistan) and, as such, is about a state’s action and authority and, therefore, also about political legitimacy. As Weber (1964, 156) argued, “The use of force is regarded as legitimate only so far as it is either permitted by the state or prescribed by it.” Force can be used for either offensive or defensive

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goals, such as peace operations in which the adversary is the entity interfering with the policing mission of a peacekeeping force (for example, the radical Serbs in northern Kosovo). Furthermore, legitimacy is applied to all three phases: the initiation of the use of force, the extension of deployment after the initiation, and the level of force used in specific operations. When strategic conditions allow, a high level of legitimacy of using force leads to an offensive approach, a strategy aimed at disarming an adversary. In contrast, a low level of legitimacy of using force encourages a defensive approach aimed at denying the adversary its goal (Posen 1984, 14) and doing only what is necessary to repel an external attack. Nevertheless, since the contemporary uses of force, including humanitarian interventions, are often deployed in urban areas, the legitimacy of using force is also focused on using weapons that might harm enemy noncombatants. The use of force may be perfectly legitimate in a given case but not when used against noncombatants. Thus, in this context, a high level of legitimacy of using force allows for policies that expose enemy noncombatants to a high level of risk, either intentionally or with minimum restrictions on harming them. As the focus of this book is legitimation of using force within the democratic polity, this definition of legitimacy relates to the public sphere of the state. In this realm, various actors negotiate over the legitimacy of using force in the face of policymakers’ efforts to legitimize their actions. The polity is the crucial arena, even if its domestic actors are influenced by external players. For example, public opinion among European NATO members matters for decision making in the United States (Everts 2001). However, decisions are initially made within the polity, even if not autonomously. As Bjola (2008, 632) put it, “an exogenous factor cannot really influence actor’s understanding of the legitimacy of an action unless it becomes endogenous to the case through interpretation.” Domestic players are arbiters of multilateral legitimacy (Finnemore 2005, 205). Only in extreme cases are policies externally coerced, as was the case with the NATO airstrikes that led to Yugoslavia’s withdrawal from Kosovo in 1999. Based on these initial decisions, states can negotiate among themselves to reach agreed-on policies. Such processes occurred when, for example, NATO members tried to reach consensus about their shared missions. In turn, consensus or debate affects the polity of every member, such as the decision by some NATO members to pull troops out of Afghanistan in 2010 (Hoehn and Harting 2010, 53–66). This definition of legitimacy encompasses several concepts. First, legitimacy is not meant to be a normative judgment. It rests “on a belief in the ‘legality’ of patterns

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of normative rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands (legal authority)” (Weber 1964, 328). This empirical, or descriptive, approach asks how beliefs about legitimacy influence decision making rather than examining legitimacy in normative terms, according to which “an entity has political legitimacy if and only if it is morally justified in exercising political power” (Buchanan 2004, 233). A distinction has thus been offered between the Weberian subjective approach, which investigates whether citizens believe that the authority is acting in a legitimate manner, and an objective approach, which examines the extent to which the authority has established the minimum moral requirements for its rule regardless of the citizens’ beliefs (Hurd 2007). Hurd (2) wrote: The differences between the objective and subjective approaches is evident in their different answers to the question of whether the Nazi government was legitimate or not. To answer that, the subjective approach would need to know whether the citizens in question believed that the government was legitimate: did they believe that it had the right to rule? If so, then the social consequences of legitimacy (i.e. voluntary compliance, lower enforcement costs, etc.) would presumably be present. The objective approach would answer the question by referring to the failure of that government to satisfy the minimum moral requirements it establishes for a government, and so would decide that it was not legitimate regardless of how some people felt about it.

In other words, policies are subjectively “considered as the fulfillment of recognized norms” (Habermas 1992, 101) and as having moral authority (Barker 1990, 11). I prefer the subjective, empirical approach of “perceived legitimacy” to the normative one, to the extent that my main goal in conceptualizing the legitimacy of using force is to explain policies—how the community of citizens is mobilized for using force—rather than to assess policies normatively. In the end, norms “must be explained in terms of their meaning to the actors within a given ‘meaning context’ rather than in terms of some set of universally identifiable interests” (Schmidt 2010, 7–8). Therefore, politics matter. Second, the definition is in line with Weber’s (1964) classic perception that legitimacy is not a circumstantial view but reflects deeper values. It encompasses normative, legal, traditional, and cultural values that determine society’s acceptance of regimes and institutions and the actions and policies derived from them (see Sunshine and Tyler 2003). Legitimacy, as accordingly defined by Suchman (1995, 574), “is a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions.”

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Therefore, the legitimacy of using force is a multilayered concept, manifested in (1) the political discourse (in which the media plays a key role) and public opinion that supports (or opposes) policymakers’ approach, (2) the reflection of these in the intensity of collective action, and (3) the way the troops themselves adhere to the mission. All forms, at least in a democracy, provide evidence of consent rather than of coerced obedience (see Beetham 1991, 41). Public opinion and collective action are interrelated. Collective action matters because only the combination of shifting public opinion together with the joint effect of protest activities and the action of institutional allies in the public space can increase the government’s level of responsiveness, especially when public opinion is not enough to exact the government’s response (Giugni 2004, on the US case). Moreover, the likelihood that collective antiwar actors successfully mobilize is largely derived from their ability to gain legitimacy from other societal actors (see Marullo and Meyer 2004, 660–661; Meyer and Minkoff 2004, 1475; Verhulst and Walgrave 2010, 43). It is the political culture that creates the climate that sets the boundaries of legitimate actions and debate (Williams 2004). At the same time, collective actions may not only spring from public opinion but may actually alter it (Marullo and Meyer 2004, 641). It is collective actors who divide the elites, activate the media, and keep the war on the agenda (Zaller 1992; Larson 1996, 75–97). An exclusive focus on public opinion, elites, and media that does not factor in the role of collective actors in affecting policies therefore cannot provide a complete analysis. Equally important, the troops’ conduct and public opinion and collective action are interrelated. Dissident activity within the military is not only encouraged by what the soldiers read from within their society, but also their intramilitary activity may alter public opinion and energize collective actors outside the military, as evidenced by the cooperation between in-service resistance and the antiwar movement during the Vietnam War (Lembcke 1998, 27–48). Such forms of support and objections (and the expectations of them) are what policymakers read and assess before acting. Third, legitimacy is not synonymous with public opinion. Public opinion is an indicator of legitimacy, enabling policymakers to gauge the public mood, but it reflects socially accepted values. Moreover, reservations about policies do not necessarily undermine legitimacy (see Suchman 1995, 574). Legitimacy reflects embedded values to the degree that citizens behave in a manner that is not always consistent with their short-term self-interests (Tyler 1990, 29). Again, legitimacy is a multilayered concept. Fourth, legitimacy is not synonymous with strategic culture, as I will explain in detail.

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Fifth, legitimacy is not synonymous with the justification of specific policies. In general, the use of force is morally justified, often to mobilize public opinion (Finnemore 2005). However, justification refers to the question of whether the policy is morally sound, as distinct from the legitimate process that produced it (Miller 2000, 386). Similarly, and in accordance with the general approach already described, “Legitimacy, when challenged, bases itself on an appeal to the past, while justification relates to an end that lies in the future” (Arendt 1972, 151). How legitimacy can be observed is a theoretical problem of identifying how legitimacy explains behavior, independent of how actors explain their attitudes and the other motivations that drive them to adhere to the prevailing order. Identification of this kind is problematic in cases where free choice plays a major role in the government’s efforts to regulate the behavior of citizens (for example, resistance to racial desegregation in the United States) or when the government aggressively coerces behavior (Hyde 1983, 391–397). Mobilization for using force is somewhere in the middle. However, what matters most for empirical and analytical purposes are the policymakers’ subjective assessments. Such assessments concern the extent to which their policies (or the intention to reshape them) are regarded as actually or potentially legitimate as reflected in public opinion and political discourse, the profile of collective action, and the conduct of troops. Although leaders usually rely on public opinion as a good proxy for legitimacy, public opinion is only one indicator. And while it can be a valid proxy in the initiation stage, collective action and the troops’ conduct are better proxies for the extension of deployment. For example, even when British political elites could not maintain majority support for continuing the deployment in Afghanistan, the leaders could leverage elite consensus to bypass public opinion (Bennett 2014a, 511) and stifle collective action. In any case, such real or false assessments affect the policymakers’ freedom of action and motivation to mobilize support. To operationalize the legitimacy of using force, as it applies to the three phases presented above, legitimacy is high when all four conditions are present. First, policymakers believe that public opinion unequivocally supports the use of force to counter a significant threat that cannot be removed peacefully, and therefore they are able to mobilize multipartisan support. Such support represents embedded beliefs reflected in the political discourse, whether arising from active deliberation or not, and is therefore expected to endure typical challenges arising during military campaigns, such as incidents of failure. Often support is reinforced or signaled by elections, especially those held during a war or in the lead-up to war.

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Second, there are no effective antiwar movements, and groups are even organized to voice support for the use of force. Third, manageable global restraints and the state’s limited obligations to enemy noncombatants are domestically perceived as allowing freedom of action. Finally, the troops unequivocally and faithfully adhere to the mission. Importantly, high legitimacy does not always reinforce the policymakers’ freedom of action but may also reduce it when powerful groups demand protection or use of force. In contrast, the lowest level of this legitimacy is evident when the same conditions move in the opposite direction. This is especially true when there are effective antiwar protests that translate the passive disapproval of public opinion into collective action that permeates the ranks. Indeed, even the expectation by policymakers that such phenomena may occur, and the actual raising of such objections, will restrain their decisions to use force. A moderate level of legitimacy is expressed in mixed situations, such as when public opinion opposing military deployment is not translated into collective antiwar action and dissidence among the troops. In such a case, the policymakers have more freedom of action. Strength in one condition can compensate for weakness in another. This operationalization takes a substitutive (effect) rather than a constitutive (cause) approach (Gilley 2006, 503–504). The legitimacy of using force is made up of two components: the ingrained and the dynamic. The Ingrained Components of Legitimacy Policymakers’ choices are often constrained by a given political culture that determines the level of legitimacy of using force. This culture represents the ingrained component or, as Bjola (2009, 604–610) termed it, “the constitutive effect” of legitimacy, defining the cultural and social conditions for the use of force. It is a type of cognitive legitimacy (Suchman 1995, 582) that regards the use of force as based on taken-for-granted cultural values, where cognition—and often emotions (Lebow 2005)—rather than interests or evaluations, plays a pivotal role. Such a situation signifies militarization, in which the use of force is instilled in the citizens’ mind-set as the normal, and even preferred, mode of action (see Mann 1987). This component, however, is not static. The fundamentals of this legitimacy have been historically transformed and are determined by several optional factors, some of which are listed here: 1. The development of a country’s historical heritage. Britain’s imperial tradition, for instance, played a pivotal role in shaping the state’s commitment to taking

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on international roles. In contrast, the imperial heritage in Sweden promoted its neutrality and caused it to focus its resources on home defense (Berndtsson, Dandeker, and Ydén 2015). 2. Historical memories, such as those in the Netherlands, where memories of the sacrifices and violence involved in the Indonesian War of 1945–1949 (including atrocities committed by Dutch troops) informed the debate about the Netherlands’ engagement in Afghanistan (Van der Meulen and Soeters 2005). Similarly, in Israel, the memory of the Holocaust guides the nation’s reactions to external threats and often justifies military aggressiveness (Lustick 2008). 3. Trajectories of state building, such as the interlinking impacts of capitalism and military technological revolution on the militarization of Europe since their rise in the eighteenth century (Mann 1993; Tilly 1992). 4. Military failures, which can reshape the nation’s heritage, leading to demilitarization, such as the impact of the radical break with the Fascist past in demilitarizing Italy (Ruffa 2018, 39–46). A similar dwindling willingness to fight was the result of the war experience in Germany and Japan (Inglehart, Puranen, and Welzel 2015). 5. Political culture. In the United States, for example, it is precisely the liberal tradition that legitimizes aggressiveness against enemies identified as nonliberal (Desch 2010). Democratic identity plays a key role in shaping the collective understandings of who poses a potential threat in the international system (Hayes 2013, 146–148). 6. Global norms. War was considered legitimate for protecting religious faith in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, it has become a legitimate tool for promoting a state’s power. Since World War II, normative beliefs about war have begun to play a more important role (Bjola 2009, 451–459). Legitimacy of using force is not synonymous with strategic culture, although my definition of the legitimacy of using force is close to that of strategic culture, which Johnston (1996, 223) famously defined as an “integrated system of symbols . . . that acts to establish pervasive and long-lasting strategic preferences.” However, there is one major, relevant difference. While the ingrained component has some characteristics that are similar to, but not overlapping with, strategic culture, legitimacy is not a preexisting set of norms shaping decisions. Rather, it is an approach built through the mechanisms operationalized below, which eventually expands or limits decision makers’ freedom to use force. Therefore, it is not the norms and symbols that matter but the way the public, opinion leaders

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(such as the media and collective actors), and troops internalize and translate them into acceptance of or resistance against the use of force prior to and during the course of deployment. After all, countries sharing different cultures may agree on similar policies. Furthermore, the ingrained component may be affected by countervailing factors; for example, it is the same liberal tradition that may legitimize aggressiveness against nonliberal adversaries in the United States and also impose noncombatant immunity. Thus, the dynamic component plays a key role in translating culture into policies. The legitimacy of using force has been a challenge to liberal democracies since the Vietnam War. First and foremost, it is restrained by norms and values that prefer peaceful conflict resolution and concerns about the human and material costs of war (Geis and Müller 2013, 5). This has been especially true since the end of World War II as democracies fight wars of choice; nonexistential conflicts, in which direct threats to immediate national interests are not involved, leave sufficient scope for internal debates about their success, alternatives, and risks and costs (H. Smith 2005). Furthermore, domestic constraints on using force are also derived from the democratic imperatives demanding respect for noncombatant immunity, along with the commitment to tolerance and nonviolence (Valentino, Huth, and Balch-Lindsay 2004, 382–383). A sharp distinction is made between the norms that governed warfare during World War II, when the bombing of civilians was allowed, and new imperatives that forbid the intentional killing of noncombatants (Zehfuss 2011, 545–546). The Vietnam War marked the decline in the American public’s support for targeting enemy noncombatants (Valentino 2016). Citizens are now expected to pressure their governments to uphold those values (Valentino et al. 2004, 382–383). Democracies face protests by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) against the disproportional use of force that causes unnecessary suffering and violates international humanitarian law (IHL) principles. Such pressures run counter to the military emphasis on fighting wars with controversial weapons such as flame or cluster munitions (Hills 2004, 230–237). Democratic imperatives are backed by the impact of global restraints, including IHL and the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 (1949) that reinforced it. New accountability mechanisms subject governmental bodies to surveillance by global institutional networks that include not only international legal bodies but also the global media and NGOs, to which the public is attuned (Shaw 2005, 60–61, 75–76). Once force is used (jus in bello), moreover, the just war theory, which is deeply anchored in the liberal tradition,

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requires that the immunity of noncombatants be extended from the prohibition of intentional harm to the requirement that “civilians have a right to something more. And if saving civilian lives means risking soldiers’ lives, the risk must be accepted” (Walzer 2015, 156). Nevertheless, several mutually related variables work within the limits of the previously ingrained political culture and are critical for increasing or decreasing the impact of this component. They can be circumstantially and contextually used by leaders to mobilize support. These variables constitute the dynamic component of the legitimacy of using force. The Dynamic Component: Variables Affecting the Legitimacy of Using Force This section is a synthesis of the variables that have been largely discussed in the literature. The variables affecting the legitimacy of using force dynamically can be grouped into three categories (including combinations): legal and policy variables, cultural and discursive variables, and structural variables. Each category of variables functions in a different domain. (These and more mechanisms will be demonstrated in the empirical analysis.) Legal and Policy Variables Generally a precondition for obtaining legitimacy is that the use of force be legally initiated by the rightful source of authority (see Beetham 2004, 110). Therefore, exhausting the legal tools for building legitimacy may be the leaders’ initial step, inasmuch as the issue often revolves around who has the authority to use force—a debate that brought about constitutional provisions of war authorities (see Carter 1984; Peters and Wagner 2011, 180, 185–186). To enhance legitimacy domestically, leaders seek to legalize the use of force internationally. Nevertheless, this became a challenge following the 9/11 attacks, when the United States and its allies invoked the “just war,” in which informed principles limit the use of force to self-defense as the critical criterion legitimating the initiation of the use of force (jus ad bellum). Targeting states for harboring terrorists, however, raised legal questions regarding the extent to which a state is liable for actions undertaken by nonstate actors next to its territory (Ratner 2002). In any case, the United States, as the main initiator of military interventions, seeks to secure approval from the United Nations and NATO. Although legality is usually necessary, it is certainly not sufficient for legitimizing the use of force. Norms are harnessed. The “normative ambivalence” of the

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new wars (Geis and Müller 2013), typified by the pursuit of good rather than state interests, became the normative justification for fighting, regardless of the real motivations and results, along with the reliance (of the United States) on multilateral principles acting according to a mutually agreed set of rules (Finnemore 2005). Conflicting legitimacy imperatives, moreover, encourage policymakers to transform theoretical constructs, such as the thesis of peace democracy, into political conviction. In this case, military action to bring about a regime change (as in Iraq) in the name of disseminating democracy worldwide becomes legitimized (Ish-Shalom 2006). Another justification is the moral responsibility of the international community to protect populations from suffering as a result of the state’s action or inability to protect its people (Welsh 2004, 76–84). Small wonder that such policies and their outcomes were criticized by the argument that “the liberal way of war” has become “crusades with only one of two outcomes: endless war or the transformation of other societies and cultures into liberal societies and cultures” (Dillon and Reid 2009, 5). Furthermore, when the imperative prescribing noncombatant immunity clashes with the imperative to protect soldiers’ lives, democracies pursue legal and ethical avenues that allow harm to enemy civilians to spare soldiers’ lives. A major avenue is legally legitimizing target selection by taking advantage of the wide margins for interpretation of IHL (see Benvenisti 2006). This, for example, led the United States to adopt a “logic of efficiency,” according to which war should be decided swiftly and by minimizing harm to both combatants and enemy civilians. This legal interpretation ultimately permits collateral killing (Dill 2015). As part of this legitimation effort, “lawfare” becomes paramount as the “strategy of using—or misusing—law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve an operational objective” (Dunlap 2008, 146). Critics then argue that by being committed to the formal rules of IHL, Western states fail to secure human rights in war because “international humanitarian law serves, at least in part, to protect and regulate the taking of life” (Barnidge 2013, 7). Therefore, the challenge of legitimacy still remains. Cultural-Discursive Variables To legitimize mobilization for war, leaders leverage and sometimes even manipulate and inflate the level of the external threat to encourage public consent for mobilizing the monetary and human resources needed to thwart it (Lake 1992; P. Smith 2005, 27). The discursive process constructs the threat as jeopardizing vital interests (Everts 2002), while nonlethal options to eliminate it are not available or are less

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favorable. Indeed, for Tilly (1985, 171), the state functions as a “protection racket,” meaning that it sells security in exchange for extracting resources, prompting it to “simulate, stimulate, or even fabricate threats of external war.” In short, militarization takes place as socialization that extends to the educational system and other domains of civil culture and economy (Giroux 2014). Proponents of securitization have clearly recognized an important dimension of this process, with its extension to nonmilitary domains (Buzan, Wæver, and deWilde 1998). If mobilization fails to counter skeptical sentiments in the era of wars of choice (skepticism that is largely affected by the aversion to sacrifice), the Weinberger and Powell doctrines that American policymakers drafted in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively, suggest that the assessment of the level of threat may lead to the selection of missions. Therefore, the use of force is restricted to situations in which an overwhelming reaction is legitimated as a last resort to remove a substantial threat. Support for using force to remove a threat is often associated with the belief that using force is morally justified as a righteous measure, the goal is attainable, and it will benefit the whole community at a reasonable cost, issues around which debates arise (Dauber 1998; Finnemore 2005, 201). Legitimacy in this case is a type of exchange legitimacy (Suchman 1995, 578): citizens support military policies in exchange for security provided by the state, or at least the expectation of it. It follows that trust can be regarded as a component of legitimacy, the absence of which may create a “legitimacy deficit” in situations where the government is chronically unable to meet what the citizens believe are its basic responsibilities (see Beetham 2004, 111). In the case of using force, the citizens believe in the principle of using force and then trust the government to implement this principle in a trustworthy manner—that is, they believe that the government will act in their interests in return for their compliance (Levi 1998, 88). Trust can be placed in state institutions, including the armed forces in general, and in specific policies for using force, in particular. Therefore, trust-building measures, such as improving the military’s capabilities, may also increase the legitimacy to use troops. As identity politics govern new types of wars (Kaldor 2006, 7–9), identity discourse has infused Western attitudes concerning enemies and downgraded their value. Dehumanization of the enemy adds a cultural and symbolic layer to inflating risks. This can be produced by stronger group-level emotions in relation to an external threat or fear (Mercer 2014, 529–530) and by identifying the enemy as evil. Dehumanization helps to relax accountability for harming those presented as evil (Geis and Hobson 2014, 420) and as criminals (such as the Serbs

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during the Kosovo War) who undermine the post–Cold War moral world order (Douzinas 2003). To those enemies, human moral principles are inapplicable (Malešević 2010, 142), and their deaths are therefore considered “ungrievable” (Butler 2009) by conferring on them the status of the “living dead” (Mbembe 2003, 40). Portraying wars as religious battles against those worshipping a different, “false” god (such as the Taliban) rather than one’s own “true” God (Toros and Mavelli 2014) adds a complementary layer to dehumanization. In addition, religion may help redefine what constitutes a threat (Hassner 2014, 5) and thus paint the war as a more crucial endeavor. With the restraining impact of liberal values and global monitoring, moreover, states seek ways to use force in a manner that also relaxes their responsibility for the eventual consequences. They employ a mix of legal and policy mechanisms, as well as cultural and discursive ones. First, dismissing the roots of enmity between one’s own side and one’s rival (see, for example, Butler 2004, 3) legitimizes aggression as an indispensable response. Second, accountability for a hostile civilian population may be released by transforming its status from quasi-members of the polity to peripheral regions unincorporated into the state’s legal zone of influence and, by implication, prone to acts of violence (Ron 2003). This was the case in 2005 when Israel disengaged itself from the Gaza Strip. Third, the rhetoric of “accidents” can be used to legitimize the unintentional, although predictable and preventable, collateral killing of enemy civilians as “unfortunate events for which liberal states cannot properly be held to account” (Owens 2003a, 600). Fourth, states shrug off responsibility for protecting enemy civilians by blaming their leaders for failing to conform to the principle of passive precaution that requires a government to protect its own population by removing civilians from the vicinity of military objects (Cronin 2018, 911–936). Finally, relaxation of responsibility is also achieved by using multiple methodologies to reduce the reported number of civilian casualties and other war costs (Benini and Moulton 2004; Shaw 2005, 88–89, 93–94). Against this background, we can understand the differences in the number of noncombatant fatalities reported by different government and NGO agencies (see, for example, Crawford 2013, 136–142). Such differences may mirror different perspectives concerning the applicability of international law and the distinction it makes between combatants and noncombatants, namely, who can be considered a noncombatant. However, their very existence reflects the proclivity of governments to reduce the numbers and, by implication, their responsibility as well. For example, to counter criticism against the collateral killing caused by

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drones in 2012, the United States changed the method by which civilian casualties were counted by considering all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants (Walzer 2016, 16). Another mechanism is legitimation by technology. According to Shaw (2005, 84–88, Western states rely on the use of precision weapons to sustain their legitimacy. Smart bombs and precision-guided munitions, especially with their high visibility in the Gulf War (1991), enjoyed a positive reputation as helping Western militaries significantly reduce the number of unintended noncombatant casualties (Zehfuss 2011, 543–545). This depiction made the war seem ethical, legitimate, and even humanitarian (Owens 2003a), inasmuch as the idea that legitimate warfare must avoid large numbers of civilian casualties had increasingly become the global norm. Against this backdrop, we can understand the confidence of the US public that their armed forces make an effective effort to avoid casualties among enemy civilians (Larson and Savych 2007, xxi). In this way, opposition to war is tempered. Furthermore, it is precisely this promise of precision that relaxes the accountability for accidents. All in all, “collateral damage” was invented as a new phrase during the Vietnam War as a way to legitimize the harming of enemy civilians as an unintended, unplanned, and even apparently unanticipated action (Rockel 2009). As Bauman (2011, 120–122) provocatively put it, decision makers “would try to retrospectively exonerate their willingness to put other people’s lives and livelihoods at risk by pointing out that one can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” Casualty sensitivity can also be leveraged to reduce domestic sensitivity to the immunity of enemy civilians, thus transferring risk from one’s own soldiers to enemy civilians (Shaw 2005), which I elaborate later in the discussion about the interrelations between the legitimacy of using force and the legitimacy of sacrificing. Discursive weakening of deliberation plays a major role. State leaders pursue discursive methods in order to overcome resistance to mobilization for using force by limiting deliberation. In democracies, the use of force by elected civilians is subject (or should be subject) to a deliberative process that addresses the legitimacy of using muscle. During these deliberations, the camps favoring and opposing the use of force may debate values and norms as well as policies. A deliberative democracy is rooted in the principle that citizens are committed to “the resolution of problems of collective choice through public reasoning, and regard their basic institutions as legitimate insofar as they establish the framework for free public deliberation” (Cohen 2003, 345–346). The public sphere is the

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most important arena for the contestation of discourses (Dryzek 2001). In the military domain, deliberation is based on broad debates about military policies (Dauber 1998), the slow thoughtfulness with which the debates are conducted (Huysmans 2004), openness in discussing the issues (Krebs and Lobasz 2007), available information (Kaufmann 2004), equality among the participants (see Dryzek 2001), and the participants’ interest in using argumentative reasoning for reaching an understanding on the issues (Bjola 2008, 639). When deliberation is limited, the popular will may stagnate and the military’s autonomy and that of its political supervisors to interpret this will may increase (see Kohn 1997). Therefore, the legitimacy of using force can arise from active deliberation or the stagnation of deliberation through which the use of force is socially, but passively, accepted (Levy 2016b). It is in the public sphere that the deliberations among policymakers, collective actors and NGOs, intellectuals, and journalists take place. Several mechanisms limit deliberation, though these may be affected by the variables listed thus far, such as threat and dehumanization. For example, depoliticization of the armed forces by strengthening civilian control reinforces the universalist image of the military, thus augmenting its ability to influence decision making and merchandising policies by capitalizing on its prestige and technical expertise (Huntington 1957, 374–379; Mills 1956, 200). As Sanders maintained (1997, 349), deliberation “requires not only equality in resources and the guarantee of equal opportunity to articulate persuasive arguments but also equality in ‘epistemological authority,’ in the capacity to evoke acknowledgement of one’s arguments.” It follows that the epistemological authority that the military holds, which is reinforced by depoliticization resulting from civilian control, obstructs deliberation. Depoliticization is also developed by cultivating support of the troops, as shown in the empirical analysis. Another mechanism is elite consensus, in that alternative policies are not stressed (Zaller 1994) and leaders can give less weight to public opinion because they will be less concerned about political costs (Kreps 2010; see also Berinsky 2007; Kriner and Wilson 2016). Structural Variables In general, structural variables are more consequential than intentional, in the sense that intentional policies may have unintended, although desirable, consequences that change power relations. Most important is the structural weakening of deliberation by reforming the militaries. With the transition to a volunteer, technology-intensive military during the post–Cold War era, which reduced the

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level of mobilization for war, governments could reduce the high political threshold for initiating wars (Starr 2010, 65; Vennesson 2011). With citizens’ reduced participation in war, the new role of citizenship is that of spectator—someone who is well informed about how his or her country manages its military affairs but without directly trying to affect policies (Mann 1987, 47–50). An instrumental factor in achieving this goal was not only the number of troops recruited by the military, but also the impact of recruitment policies on power relations. By encouraging a more critical tone, conscription is more likely to encourage deliberation on military policies than is an all-volunteer force. This is accomplished by (1) enlisting more elite members of society (Horowitz and Levendusky 2011) with not only power but also a greater ability to adopt a critical attitude (Levy 2017, 199–200); (2) coercing service on the willing and unwilling alike (Vasquez 2009, 87–88), which also reinforces the state’s commitment to the enlistees and their social communities (Avant and Sigelman 2010, 241); and (3) encouraging voice for sacrifice (Levy 2017, 199–202), especially as the option of exit is not easy in a conscript military (to use the conceptualization of Hirschman 1970). Thus, when voluntarism governs and powerful groups have little motivation to seek information and openly challenge policies because they are less affected by the service, deliberation about war is limited. The use of force may thus encounter less resistance (Levy 2016b). Then, the legitimacy of using force arises not from active deliberation but from its stagnation, a kind of passive legitimation. Given that a volunteer force increases the leaders’ autonomy to deploy troops by increasing the legitimacy of using force, leaders can actively increase their autonomy by modifying the recruitment model (discussed more later in this chapter). Furthermore, the same mode of recruitment-produced impact that increases deliberation also increases the likelihood that the troops themselves will delegitimize policies by multiple forms of resistance. Among such forms are whistleblowing, selective and gray refusal to deploy, foot-dragging, collective bargaining concerning deployments, and documentation and testimonies, all forms of “control from within” (see also Ruffa, Dandeker, and Vennesson 2013). A conscripted military is thus more likely than a volunteer army to provoke challenges to the legitimacy of using force (Levy 2017). Also instrumental in limiting deliberation springing from the ranks are technologization, which detaches combatants from their victims (see Collins 2008, 1702–1707; Malešević 2010, 227–229), and the deployment of contractors (Avant and Sigelman 2010; Cusumano 2016). According to Ashforth and Gibbs (1990, 178), these reforming moves are a mechanism

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to increase legitimacy by “altering resource dependencies,” in this case, the alteration of human resources. All of these variables are critical for increasing or decreasing the level of legitimacy of using force, and all work within the confines of the previously ingrained political culture, with the basic legitimacy accorded to the use of force. Legitimacy is a multilayered concept, reflected in multiple arenas simultaneously and affected in the public sphere by numerous actors bottom up (such as troops and NGOs) and policymakers top down. Of course, the variables do not function simultaneously, or at the same level of intensity, or in the same direction, as demonstrated in Chapters 4 to 8. In any event, the legal and policy variables create the infrastructure to which the cultural, discursive, and structural layers are added. The dynamic variables, not only the arenas of public opinion, collective action and troops’ conduct, are mutually interrelated. For example, while respecting the distinction between combatants and noncombatants is a general obligation (a legal variable), its implementation may be affected by the image of enemy noncombatants as “enemies” versus “noncombatants” (the variables of threat, dehumanization, and even accountability for a hostile civilian population). Similarly, legitimation by technology helps relax accountability in cases of accidents and also increases trust in the ability of the troops to accomplish their mission (part of the variable of threat and its removal). More important, the social, and therefore the political, makeup of the ranks has an impact on the variable of deliberation by affecting the cycles of citizens who have an interest in the military deployment and the power they possess. At the same time, the greater the level of deliberation, the higher is the threshold for legitimizing the use of force in the face of internal opposition, which affects the weight of other variables, such as the need to inflate the threat and encourage dehumanization. Interrelationships Between the Dynamic Variables and Ingrained Components As the dynamic variables work within the confines of previously shaped political culture, the infrastructure that this ingrained component creates determines the extent to which policymakers can effectively use the dynamic tools to increase the level of legitimacy. To offer a few illustrations: • As a democratic political structure establishes the boundary conditions of defining what is seen as an external threat, it also shapes the repertoire of options that policymakers can apply (Hayes 2013,146–316). The Holocaust and the liberal legacy have shaped the perceptions of threats

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in Israel and the United States, respectively, and were also leveraged to legitimize aggressiveness. • Similarly, the repertoire of symbols used to dehumanize the enemy is inspired by that political culture and heritage. • Societies vary in their thresholds for tempering the requirement of noncombatant immunity. These levels depend on the extent to which this requirement is rooted in political culture. For example, Britain’s culture prompted it to respect such immunity more than American culture did (Aylwin-Foster 2005). • The extent of a society’s militarization determines the barriers to protests that challenge military policies and the human costs of war, as well as encouraging or discouraging resistance within the ranks. Militarization thus limits deliberation, regardless of the model of recruitment (see Giroux 2014).

It follows that being bound by the ingrained component, the strategically sophisticated use of dynamic tools cannot necessarily always produce legitimacy. Nevertheless, the more the ingrained infrastructure is rigid and restrictive, the higher the efforts policymakers are encouraged to make to legitimize the use of force, such as threat inflation in the case of the Iraq War. In turn, the dynamic tools affect what has already been ingrained in the culture. For example, a high degree of legitimation that leads to military failures or overly costly deployments slowly affects the ingrained component, which may lead to demilitarization (see Ruffa 2018). Similarly, global norms, also an ingrained component, can be reframed by new discursive mechanisms justifying the removal of threats. This was the case in the peace democracy thesis that reshaped norms by reframing the menu of acceptable policies (Ish-Shalom 2006). Finally, norms may be an essential part of a political culture. However, limited deliberation may even relax the imperative to deal with norms. It is one thing to convince the public rhetorically about the rightness of using force, and another to do so by using methods that limit deliberation. Legitimation can also work without cultural militarization and, in turn, weaken the power of norms. In general, the legitimation of using force affects and is affected by the legitimacy of sacrificing. 2.2 Legitimacy of Sacrificing Similar to the legitimacy of using force, the legitimacy of sacrificing refers to a socially constructed system of norms, values, and beliefs that accepts or rejects the sacrifice for war in both blood and treasure. It is expressed in public opinion, bereavement discourses, antiwar protests, and the level of military motivation. It is derived from the degree to which the nation is culturally committed to an

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ethos of sacrifice to defend itself and other perceived vital interests. The freedom of a state’s leaders to sacrifice its soldiers and its own civilians is derived from this legitimacy. Most of the conceptual features of the legitimacy of using force apply here as well: (1) this legitimacy is made up of two components: the ingrained and the dynamic; (2) the legitimacy of sacrificing involves the state’s exclusive, monopolistic authority to sacrifice for war; (3) it reflects deeper values ingrained in the nation’s political culture; (4) like the ingrained component of the legitimacy of using force, the approach toward risking one’s own soldiers is also informed by strategic culture (see Adamsky 2010, 3500–3515, on the US case), the characteristics of which partly overlap this ingrained component of the legitimacy of sacrificing; (5) it is not synonymous with public opinion but translates attitudes into multiple forms; (6) the focus is on society’s readiness to sacrifice rather than to normatively justify sacrifice; and (7) the key is the policymakers’ subjective assessment of the society’s readiness to sacrifice. The legitimacy of sacrificing is a sort of exchange legitimacy in Suchman’s terms (1995, 578). Similar to the legitimacy of using force, it rests on the selfinterested calculations of the citizenry that their required sacrifice will bear the fruits of security provided by the state. However, the sacrificers in this case expect more benefits in what is termed the republican exchange. Under the terms of this exchange, the state mobilizes its citizenry to sacrifice for war in return for rights in addition to protection. Central to the republican exchange is the institution of the citizen-soldier, according to which soldiering (and related forms of sacrifice) is a critical criterion for the allocation of rights and other benefits (Levy 2013a). In a somewhat different mode from the legitimacy of using force, deliberation is not the whole story here. Although deliberation matters for the decision to sacrifice, more important is the actual implementation of this legitimacy during the deployment, not only as a means of initiating it. Ultimately, while the “public,” as a virtual entity, supports or opposes the use of force, specific groups shoulder the burden. Given this situation, they also have multiple means to resist sacrificing, as I shall explain. Therefore, the more that groups and individuals can resist sacrifice (for example, draft dodging or even difficulties in filling the enlistment quota), the greater are the government’s efforts to apply coercive policies. In general, voluntary compliance reduces the government’s costs of coercion and increases its effectiveness (Tyler 1990, 4, 21)—hence, the significance of the legitimacy of sacrificing.

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Within the boundaries of the ingrained culture, variations take place.1 From revolutionary wars fought by mass citizen armies up until World War II, when the deployment of conscript militaries reached its peak, the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for one’s country was viewed as a noble sentiment. Mourning did not dominate the memory of the war. Rather, a feeling of pride was often mixed in with the mourning, the feeling of having taken part in and sacrificed for a noble cause. The “Myth of the War Experience” of World War I justified the war as a meaningful and even sacred event (Mosse 1990). The deeply ingrained sacrificial ideology not only determined how men interpreted their wartime experiences by investing death with meaning, but also played an important role in reinforcing soldiers’ combat motivation (Watson and Porter 2010). However, after World War II, with the exposure of civilians to atrocities and mass murder, the view of death in war gradually changed. The notion of glorious sacrifice was replaced with that of victimhood of wartime brutality and fascist ideology, and war was stripped of its glory. Postwar liberalism also gave rise to a new attempt to emphasize the individual dead (Mosse 1990). Gradually, sensitivity to military losses has increased in democratic societies despite, or even due to, the declining number of casualties in war. Often called the “casualty sensitivity syndrome,” the defining aspect of this phenomenon is the declining tolerance for military sacrifice. The policy outcome is casualty aversion, restricting the state’s freedom of operation in deploying the armed forces for risky military missions. The Vietnam War signified the major turning point in the political representation of this sensitivity from a limited, cultural objection to war to an effective, collective antiwar action. Nevertheless, casualty sensitivity is a major, but not exclusive, component of this legitimacy. Principally, this legitimacy is also reflected in the level of willingness to pay heavy taxes for military buildups. Spending cuts played a major role in the increased reliance on the United States in campaigns outside Europe (Hillen 2002, 33–36). More important, legitimacy is required to bear the sacrifices entailed in recruitment. A drop in this legitimacy brought about the phasing out of the draft in most industrialized democracies and the downsizing of militaries to reduce their costs to taxpayers. Soldiers, moreover, express their sensitivities in multiple ways, not just by relying on the sensitivity reflected by public opinion, elite opinion, and collective action. Cowardice and foot-dragging are part of the combatants’ repertoire, especially with rising casualties (Collins 2008, 1209–1526). However, for the sake of shaping military policies and their derived hierarchies of risk, sensitivity to casualties matters most.

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Several social factors undermined the tolerance for casualties in particular, and the motivation for sacrifice required to maintain conscription in general. I mention some of them briefly here and develop this more fully in Chapter 4: (1) the rise of individualism in the post–Cold War period; (2) the decline in the perception of external threats following the demise of the Cold War that both heightened casualty sensitivity and delegitimized the draft system in many democracies; (3) this reduced sense of threat prompted the downsizing of the military and, by implication, reduced social bonding and also the number of casualties that could then attract more public attention; and (4) the decline of republicanism with the rise of liberalism and the market society that undermined the social contract according to which the state militarily sacrifices its citizens in return for rights and protection. Consequently, increasing casualty sensitivity questioned the justification for military death and the threshold for risking soldiers became higher, especially in democracies. Democracies are more sensitive than nondemocracies to the costs of war because of their accountability to their citizens who bear the burdens, and the liberal norms that value those citizens’ lives (Valentino, Huth, and Croco 2010). Indeed, as John Mueller (1973) argued in his landmark contribution that analyzed the Korean and Vietnam wars, an increase in the log of cumulative casualties heightens casualty sensitivity and thereby reduces public support for the war. He articulated the conventional wisdom that the American public does not tolerate casualties. Therefore, mounting casualties may halt military missions, as the cases of Beirut in 1983 or Somalia in 1993 demonstrate. Such sensitivity in terms of concerns about the prospect of casualties even constrains decision making, as happened, for example, in the Kosovo War of 1999 (see Chapter 6; for variations on Mueller’s theory, see Gartner and Segura 1998). Mueller’s analysis sparked a scholarly debate over the notion of singling out the most important factor in causing variations in the level of sensitivity. From this debate, we can infer how, in addition to the effort to reduce casualties by multiple means (including by averting risks), state leaders have more tools. Indeed, like the legitimacy of using force, the legitimacy of sacrificing is composed of two components. Within the limits of the ingrained component already described, policymakers use tools in an effort to increase the legitimacy of sacrificing, which compensates, at least temporarily, for the negative impact of casualties. Such tools represent the political variables, the dynamic component of this legitimacy. If policymakers fail, previous anticasualty trends are activated. Studies identify several political variables as follows:

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1. Achieving the goals and ensuring rightness. Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler (2009) argued that the American public takes a reasonably level-headed cost-benefit approach to forming attitudes about military missions. Within this framework, support for continuing a military operation in the face of mounting combat casualties is a function of the interactive effect of two underlying attitudes: expectations about the likelihood that the military operation will be a success (a trust-building measure, similar to that affecting the legitimacy of using force) and belief in the initial rightness of the decision to launch the military operation, which in my analysis corresponds to a high degree of legitimacy of using force. While mounting casualties increase casualty intolerance, the expectations of success matter the most. Conversely, however, reports about casualties have an impact on perceptions of war success (Voeten and Brewer 2006, 821–823). In any event, success and rightness are subjective constructs and therefore leaders have a wide spectrum of options with which to convince the public about these values, and even to manipulate information. When the public believes that the war is just, it supports its leaders’ attempts to justify continued involvement or escalation by claiming that the sacrifice would be in vain if the troops withdraw without completing their mission (Boettcher and Cobb 2009). 2. Leveraging an external threat. Threats matter for legitimating sacrifice, not only for legitimizing the use of force. Note that we should distinguish between the general perception of threat that declined in the post–Cold War era and reduced the legitimacy of sacrificing as argued above, and the level of specific threats as viewed in specific military interventions, threats that can be leveraged to legitimize both using force and sacrificing. Against this background, the need to use military force to restrain foreign policy aggression with the casualties that this may entail is more legitimate than using force to change the domestic regime of another country (Jentleson 1992; Jentleson and Britton 1998). Inflated threats may then lead to the setting of ambitious war goals; less ambitious goals may provoke reluctance to sacrifice (Levy 2010a, 99–100). In cases of humanitarian interventions in which sacrifice is not required for the defense of vital interests, the challenge to legitimacy is more complicated and requires a significant effort by the leadership to mobilize support for it. Sacrificing one’s own soldiers may be needed not only to defeat oppressive troops, but also to directly defend oppressed civilians by deploying ground forces. Questions about the state’s legitimacy of risking its soldiers for this cause are raised when the soldiers’ right to life clashes with the duty to protect civilians in the targeted state (see Baer 2011; Huntington 1993; Tesón 2011).

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3. Achieving consensus among the elite. Elite consensus is significant not only for legitimizing the use of force. As can be concluded from the case of the US military operations, the support for war and the willingness to tolerate casualties are based on a sensible weighing of costs and benefits. What matters for influencing public opinion is the level of consensus among political leaders regarding this balance. Therefore, the stronger the consensus among domestic elites, the greater is the tolerance for casualties (Larson 1996). 4. Burden sharing. As part of their sensitivity to the costs of war, democratic leaders are more likely than their nondemocratic counterparts to join powerful coalitions of allies to share the burden (Valentino et al. 2010). Burden sharing increases the legitimacy of sacrificing (on the US case, see Kull and Destler 1999; Recchia 2014). 5. Altering the mode of recruitment and increasing the use of technology. Changes in military policies informed by casualty sensitivity often occur when antiwar movements garner mass support (as demonstrated in the cases of the Vietnam War and Israel’s First Lebanon War in 1982). Public opinion has an impact, particularly in protracted deployments, to the extent that it translates sensitivity into collective action and thereby affects policies. Among the collective actors informed by casualty sensitivity are parents (for example, Save Our Sons in Australia provoked by the Vietnam War), bereaved families (for example, the Gold Star Families for Peace in the United States prompted by the Iraq War), and veterans (for example, Soldiers against Silence in Israel provoked by the First Lebanon War). Given that collective actors act out of responsibility or commitment to the ranks, the recruitment model matters. As can be inferred from analyzing the legitimacy of using force, as conscription is more likely than an all-volunteer force to encourage deliberation of military policies by encouraging a more critical tone, it is also more likely to generate anticasualty collective action in democracies that rely on conscription than in those relying on volunteer forces. The mode of military recruitment mediates the collective actors’ ability to leverage the political variables cited above (such as a sense of threat, mission success, and number of casualties) to challenge the dominant discourse and influence the war policy by affecting the actors’ framing, resources, and the state’s commitment to them in a way that determines mobilization. Furthermore, much depends on the way actors read such variables, whether in a critical or more conservative manner. After all, “success,” “threat,” and other variables are subjective constructs, and there is some affinity between a critical reading of them and higher social status (Levy 2013b).

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In any case, a bereavement discourse is shaped, whereby various social groups interpret the loss of their children’s lives or the potential risk to their lives posed by their military service and then translate this interpretation into public discourse across a spectrum of attitudes ranging from subversive to submissive. The subversive bereavement discourse seeks to undermine the assumptions that support the mobilization for war. It can either challenge the war’s justification and rightness or question its costs. At the other end of the spectrum, the submissive discourse accepts these assumptions either passively or supportively. In between these two extremes are attitudes that accept the reasons for war and the sacrifice it entails but challenge needless risks, particularly those caused by the flawed performance of the military or wrong policies. Subversive responses are more likely to occur in conscript militaries, while submissive responses are more likely in volunteer forces (Levy 2018). Thus, the move to a volunteer army, together with increasing the presence of contractors and the transition to technology-intensive militaries—moves that were driven, among other factors, by casualty sensitivity—mitigated casualty sensitivity and increased the legitimation of sacrificing. This results from shifting the burden from the politically active middle class to the more motivated but more politically apathetic lower classes, but also from assigning some of the latter to technological, less life-threatening roles, and releasing those unwilling to sacrifice from having to deal with the draft, as well as relaxing the state’s commitment to those who volunteer to sacrifice. However, even within the confines of existing recruitment policies, even in conscript militaries, policymakers can alter the social composition of the combat troops and increase the use of technology, thereby heightening the legitimacy of sacrificing (for opposing views, see Kriner and Shen 2014). At the same time, since the decline of republicanism undermined the motivation for sacrifice, the state may actively preserve or alter the social composition of the ranks by using rewards, either monetary or symbolic, to provide the military with motivated troops (see Levy 2013a). One example of symbolic rewarding is granting voting rights to immigrants to encourage their enlistment (Krebs 2009, 164–165). These are the variables that are critical for increasing or decreasing the level of legitimacy of sacrificing. Similar to those affecting the legitimacy of using force, these variables do not function simultaneously or at the same level of intensity and do not have equal weight. In general, the social realignment creates the infrastructure to which the other variables are added. Although industrialized democracies have witnessed a drop in this legitimacy, especially since the 1960s, as detailed in the following chapters, societies vary in their degree of exposure

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to this decline depending on their political culture. Furthermore, the variables may move or have an impact in opposite directions according to the interests of those bearing the costs of war. For example, while the powerful tax-paying middle class, especially at the mid-high level, bears the fiscal costs required for military buildup, lower classes increasingly suffer the physical sacrifice of life, so tolerance of casualties can be decoupled from tolerance of economic sacrifice. The dynamic variables are mutually interrelated. For example, the higher the perception of threat, the higher the militarization-informed barrier to challenging the rightness of the use of force. Most important, the variables affect various social groups differently according to their previously shaped attitudes toward war sacrifice. For example, given that a threat is a subjective construct, different groups will interpret it differently, largely depending on their ideological stance. It follows that the variables of threat and mode of recruitment (with its impacts on the social makeup of the ranks and the communities sending them to the military) are mutually interrelated. Together, they affect the type of bereavement discourse and, by implication, the level of legitimacy. To operationalize the legitimacy of sacrificing, legitimacy is high when all four conditions are present. First, policymakers believe that public opinion unequivocally tolerates the human and material costs that the use of force involves. Second, there are no effective antiwar movements informed by casualty sensitivity or aversion to paying taxes. Third, a submissive bereavement discourse is developed in reaction to military deaths. And fourth, motivational factors have a strong, positive influence on the military’s effectiveness. In contrast, the lowest level of this legitimacy is evident when there are effective antiwar protests reflecting anticasualty public opinion, which may also echo the reservations of bereaved families, and the military’s performance is strongly and negatively affected by multiple forms of subversive behavior within the ranks. Policymakers’ expectations that such phenomena may occur, or the actual experience of such reservations, will restrain their decisions about using force. A moderate level of legitimacy is expressed in mixed situations, often when anticasualty public opinion is not translated into collective antiwar action or dissidence among the troops, so strength in one condition can compensate for weakness in another. Given that the legitimacy of sacrificing is evaluated through policymakers’ perception of their freedom of action, gaps between real and perceived legitimacy are possible. Indeed, in certain situations, the public might be more tolerant of sacrifice than the policymakers believe (Gelpi et al. 2009). When casualty

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sensitivity or the expectations of it increase and state leaders have exhausted or refrained from using the repertoire of methods they have for increasing the legitimacy of sacrificing, other policies are applied. As the following chapters show, force protection and risk transfer are the most attainable options. Interrelationships between the Dynamic Variables and the Ingrained Components Similar to the legitimacy of using force, the dynamic variables work within the confines of the previously shaped political culture and are affected by it. Thus, societies vary in their thresholds for tempering the previously shaped political culture that is averse to casualties. For example, this threshold is lower in Britain because of the role of its imperial heritage in legitimizing overseas interventions, while it is higher in the United States with its more individualistic culture (Caniglia 2001). Therefore, the infrastructure created by the ingrained component determines the extent to which policymakers can effectively use dynamic tools to increase the level of this legitimacy. Furthermore, the political implementation of different attitudes, namely, the extent to which a group accepts or resists the level of risk to which it is exposed by the state, is affected by the group’s bargaining power with the state (a societal ingrained structure of power). The greater the degree of choice enjoyed by the group about whether to risk itself or not and the higher the political costs to the state’s leadership resulting from the group’s choice, the less freedom the state has to risk members of this group. For example, the American upper-middle class leveraged its bargaining power under the draft system to avoid the draft and obtain deferments for serving in Vietnam, a war this group viewed as worthless (Henderson and Seagren 2014). In turn, the dynamic tools affect what has already been ingrained in the culture. As the case of Israel will later show, although this legitimacy declined following social changes, the dynamic, political variables further entrenched the development of aversion to sacrifices. 2.3 Interrelations Between the Legitimacies Note that the legitimacies can move in different directions, creating the “gap of legitimacies syndrome.” This gap, which has emerged since the 1970s between the high levels of legitimacy of using force and the low levels of legitimacy of sacrificing, affects military policies in industrialized democracies engaging in warfare (Levy 2010a). A low level of legitimacy of sacrificing may be decoupled from a high level of legitimacy of using force when a strong belief in force to settle conflicts is coupled with an aversion to bearing the costs of doing so (Everts 2002). Citizens

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may follow norms but nevertheless be averse to the costs involved. Military policies are stretched between the poles of these legitimacies. Unresolved tensions between the legitimacies may inhibit leaders from embarking on military ventures or doing so aggressively to spare soldiers’ lives. Such tensions are analyzed in the empirical chapters (Chapters 4 to 8). At the same time, a strong defensive ethos, such as that which typifies the Nordic countries, with a relatively high willingness to fight and risk lives for defending an extraordinarily emancipatory lifestyle in the vicinity of the Russian threat (Inglehart, Puranen, and Welzel 2015), signifies the combination of high legitimacy of sacrificing with lower legitimacy of using force. Importantly, the legitimacies are mutually interrelated. A low level of legitimacy of sacrificing may reduce the legitimacy of using force by prompting policymakers to pursue less costly and less violent options. This is especially so because the lack of tolerance for sacrifice may also encourage the questioning of the use of force and thus reduce its legitimacy, as often occurs when antiwar sentiments mount. The costs involved may prompt critical thinking about the lethal options, as collective investment in information about the way the state provides protection occurs only at suboptimal levels (see Lake 1992, 26), so the two legitimacies may be mutually reducing. Another option is for the state to provide less security to its civilians. Concerns about casualty sensitivity can even give politicians and generals an excuse for avoiding risky missions (Record 2000, 10–12). Alternatively, a drop in the legitimacy of sacrificing requires greater efforts to increase the legitimacy of using aggressive fire by leveraging the relevant variables analyzed earlier. Increasing the legitimacy of using force will help trade the risks of the state’s own soldiers for harming enemy noncombatants by distancing the former from the theater of battle, as typified the risk transfer during the post–Cold War era (Shaw 2005). Casualty sensitivity can even be leveraged to reduce domestic sensitivity to the immunity of enemy civilians, especially when the public’s greatest concern is military casualties and civilian casualties are a secondary issue (see Larson and Savych 2007, 169–170, regarding the US public opinion about Iraq). Even ethical justifications for relaxing such constraints appeared, arguing that the duty to protect one’s own soldiers may balance the duty to spare enemy noncombatants (Kasher and Yadlin 2005, 17–18). By implication, the legitimacy of using force is increased. On the surface, the ethic of protecting soldiers might underlie and sustain the legitimacy of sacrificing. It can be seen as part of the implicit contract between the soldier and the state. In Britain, the soldiers’ right to life has even been protected by court rulings (McCartney 2010, 419).

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While increasing the level of legitimacy of using force may compensate for the low level of legitimacy of sacrificing, it may also affect this legitimacy in a positive way by leveraging an external threat to legitimize sacrificing (Jentleson and Britton 1998) and enhancing confidence in the ability to remove the threat by military means (Gelpi et al. 2009). To the extent that the militarization of politics and culture takes place, with its unquestioned willingness to remove a substantive threat by force, critical thinking regarding the use of force and the costs involved in doing so is less prevalent. In a similar vein, adherence to the mission, a reflection of a high level of legitimacy of using force, may increase the tolerance for casualties, because otherwise the sacrifice would be in vain (Boettcher and Cobb 2009). Nevertheless, the dehumanization of the enemy that increases both legitimacies may also reduce the legitimacy of sacrificing to protect noncombatants. If the lives of the enemy are considered ungrievable, as Butler (2009) argued, and if noncombatants in enemy nations bear responsibility for failing to restrain their leadership, as Dunlap (1999, 19) maintained, it might seem illegitimate to risk one’s own soldiers to protect ungrievable, accountable, demonized noncombatants (see also Huntington 1993). It follows that the legitimacy of using force can increase the legitimacy of sacrificing to different degrees. Thus, if risking soldiers is tolerated enough to remove a threat but not enough to justify risking soldiers to protect enemy noncombatants, particularly in humanitarian interventions, leaders may try harder to legitimize more collateral harm to enemy noncombatants, shifting risk from their own soldiers. In the final possible interrelation between the legitimacies, restraint, stemming from the declining legitimacy of using force, may also reenhance the legitimacy of sacrificing to accomplish goals with less force and thus gain the trust of the occupied, local population (Smith 2008, 160–161). This idea became prevalent as part of the new counterinsurgency strategy articulated in 2006 by the United States in Iraq and later in Afghanistan, advocating greater risk to one’s own forces to protect the Iraqi population (Crawford 2013, 56). Importantly in this case, the legitimacy of the mission was relatively high but did not extend to risking noncombatants. Such an approach can also represent the more restrained tactics of NATO members in Afghanistan. An example is the Dutch forces who were more restrained even than the British, with readiness to incur “acceptable risk” (Soeters 2013; Van der Meulen and Soeters 2005). Table 2.1 illustrates the interrelations between the legitimacies.

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Level of Legitimacy of Sacrificing

Table 2.1: Interrelations Between the Legitimacies High

Reenhancing the legitimacy of sacrificing to accomplish goals with less force.

Militarization, perception of a strong threat, and adherence to the mission increase tolerance for sacrifices.

Declining legitimacy of sacrificing lowers the legitimacy of using force.

A drop in the legitimacy of sacrificing requires greater efforts to increase the legitimacy of using aggressive fire to protect one’s own soldiers.

Low Low

High

Level of Legitimacy of Using Force

2.4 Methodology From this theoretical framework the methodology is derived. My goal is to develop a (middle-range) typological theory about the determinants of the death hierarchies rather than offering a grand theory or testing existing models. A typological theory is: [A] theory that specifies independent variables, delineates them into the categories [in this case the legitimacies] for which the researcher will measure the cases and their outcomes, and provides not only hypotheses on how these variables operate individually, but also contingent generalizations on how and under what conditions they behave in specified conjunctions or configurations to produce effects on specified dependent variables (George and Bennett 2005, 235).

However, “typological theories specify the pathways through which particular types relate to specified outcomes . . . [and therefore are] open to the possibility of equifinality—the same outcome can arise through different pathways” (ibid.). A strict causal explanation that isolates alternative variables is not the case here. To demonstrate variations on the death hierarchy and explain their determinants, I will focus on the cases of the United States, Britain, and Israel. I chose these cases for three reasons. First, these are the only democracies that are currently using force on a large scale. By implication, they also deal with domestic constraints related to the interaction between the legitimacies. Typical variations on the hierarchy are mainly relevant to the post–Cold War era. It was primarily

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following the Vietnam War that the norm allowing the targeting of civilians changed and reinforced the norm of noncombatant immunity concurrently with the emergence of the casualty sensitivity syndrome. Thus arose the dilemma of risking one’s own soldiers versus enemy civilians (see Cronin 2018, 90–108). The proposed theory is less relevant and less richly exemplified in other cases—for example, in France which intervened in various postcolonial conflicts but in a limited fashion (attested, inter alia, by the small number of casualties over time), or in less democratic countries such as Russia. Furthermore, the need to relate the interaction between the legitimacies to specific fire policies with their impacts on fatality ratios guided me to select operations in which we can single out the conduct of a specific military, thus ruling out other NATO members. Second, these countries have different cultures and models of recruitment. However, it is precisely this variety that helps us develop explanations about the determinants of the death hierarchy, namely, the conditions under which policymakers select their military policies. This logic partly corresponds with “the method of difference” in which candidate “antecedent conditions will announce themselves as differences in the characteristics of the compared cases” (Van Evera 1997, 1298). Third, because of the agenda to develop a theory, I used these cases for their richness and diversity and, as such, they may provide conceptual clarification for a broader research (see Yin 2009, 92). To demonstrate variations and their determinants, I will use specific campaigns and deployments that are similar in nature in the sense that they were all waged in urban areas, but which nevertheless demonstrate different death hierarchies. These cases typify an armed dispute between a democratic state (where the dilemma leading to risk transfer is more acute than in nondemocracies) and a nonstate actor in an urban terrain (where the underlying dilemma is most relevant). To identify specific variations over time, I will compare deployments performed under similar military circumstances by controlling arena-related variables, such as geopolitics, the identity of the protagonists, the weapons they used, and the goals of the campaigns. Therefore, the proximity in time between the operations is important. Nonetheless, sometimes single cases can also provide a fairly credible picture. In each case, I analyze the interaction between the legitimacies, starting with a description of the ingrained component of both legitimacies and their status prior to deployment (for example, in the Iraq War), which will lead to an analysis of the dynamic situation on the eve of and during each operation. I assess the level of both legitimacies by drawing on secondary sources that represent their operationalization backed by the testimonies of politicians, commanders, and soldiers.

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2.5 Conclusion To sum up the theoretical argument, military variables are mediated by the interaction between the two legitimacies of using force and sacrificing. The interaction affects military policies such as deployment, armaments and technology, tactics, fire policies, and operational style. By implication, military policies create different positions on the death hierarchy. To illustrate how the argument may work, the specifics of the terrain (a military variable) certainly affect the type of force used. However, warfare on the same terrain may produce different options. Therefore, while it may be operationally preferred and politically legitimate to launch ground incursions in a specific situation of urban warfare, the use of artillery may be the favored option because the legitimacy of sacrificing would not tolerate the casualties incurred in ground operations. Military variables generate policies, but the legitimacies serve as normative and institutional constraints on policymakers, which may lead to the option ultimately chosen (for a general theoretical context, see Maoz and Russett 1993; Risse-Kappen 1996). Figure 2.1 depicts the argument. To recall, the interaction between the two legitimacies gives rise to four principal variations of placement on the death hierarchy. Historically, when the perceived need for sacrifice bore a high legitimacy, states risked the lives of soldiers from the upper-middle classes. When that legitimacy assumed a more moderate level (in the post–World War II era), states modified the makeup of the ranks and increasingly risked the lives of lower-class soldiers who had hitherto been partly excluded from combat roles (in both cases, regardless of the legitimacy of using force but provided that it was high enough to initiate the use of force). In the post–Cold War era, when the legitimacy of sacrificing declined, states either pursued nonmilitary, risk-averse options, even at the expense of their own security interests (if the legitimacy of using force was low), or shifted the risk from

Military Policy

Military Variables mediated by

Legitimacy of Sacrificing Legitimacy of Using Force

Figure 2.1: Structuring the Death Hierarchy.

Structure of Death Hierarchy

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their own soldiers to enemy noncombatants (if this legitimacy could be increased enough to justify it). At times, however, recognizing that harming noncombatants provides less, rather than more, protection to their own soldiers and may even thwart the mission, policymakers have modified the death hierarchy and increased the risk to their own soldiers again, as in the warfare in Iraq (since 2007) and Afghanistan (since 2009). Table 2.2 shows the variations produced by the interaction between the legitimacies, including the final effects created by the interrelations between the legitimacies, as Table 2.1 depicts. Table 2.2: Variations of the Death Hierarchy High

A Risking upper-middle-class soldiers more than other soldiers and enemy noncombatants in either a defensive or offensive manner (for example, Israel’s Battle of Jenin, 2002)

Level of Legitimacy of Sacrificing

B Risking lower-class soldiers more than upper-middle-class soldiers and enemy noncombatants in either a defensive or offensive manner (for example, UK’s Operation Sinbad in Basra, 2006–2007; NATO’s surge in Afghanistan, 2010)

Low

C Favoring soldiers over one’s own civilians by embarking on force protection or pursuit of nonviolent solutions (for example, US force protection in Iraq, 2004–2006; Israel’s mission aversion in Gaza, 2008; the UK exit from Operation Sinbad, 2007)

D Shifting risk from one’s own soldiers to enemy noncombatants (for example, Kosovo War, 1999; US battles of Fallujah, 2004; US drone war in Pakistan; US surge in Iraq 2007–2008; Israel’s campaigns in Gaza, 2006–2014)

Low

High

Level of Legitimacy of Using Force

Now, having clarified the variations on the hierarchy, we can ask again: How can we know that the death hierarchies really have been modified? Chapter 3 provides the tools.

3

How to Identify Variations in Risk Transfer

As I asked in Chapter 1, how can we distinguish between situations in which risk was taken (cells A and B in Table 2.2) and those in which risk was transferred (cell D)? As explained in section 1.1, variations in risk transfer have not been sufficiently measured in the literature, and this chapter fills the gap. To identify variations in risk transfer, we consider a combination of three to four categories of fatality ratios (casualties refer only to those killed, not those injured). It is worth emphasizing that I do not measure the risk theoretically imposed on the state’s own soldiers or its enemies, but rather its impact in terms of fatality ratios. Militaries develop methods for risk assessment in general (Karmperis et al. 2014), and the US military has devised methods to calculate and minimize unintended risks to enemy civilians in particular (Kahl 2007, 43). Any decision regarding recruitment, deployment, and fire policy reflects assumptions about risk. My focus, however, is on the actual consequence of that assessment in terms of fatalities and the indication of whether risk was shifted or taken rather than the initial theoretical assumptions or calculations. Policymakers, moreover, routinely assess the results, and they may change policies if undesirable results are produced (see Kahl 2007, 30–31). To the extent that policies remain in force, with the amount of risk shifted or taken, this may indicate that the assessment of risk produced the intended, and ultimately desired, results. Note that although individuals make decisions that transfer risk mistakenly and unlawfully, it is the military organization that bears responsibility for its directions, its reactions to

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errors or crimes, and the training it supports (Crawford 2013). Moreover, the organization acts within the confines of freedom allowed by civilian authorities, freedom determined by the interaction between legitimacies. Here are the ratios. 3.1 The Ratio Between the State’s Own Soldiers and Enemy Combatants This ratio indicates the extent to which the state’s own soldiers are put at risk: the greater the ratio, the lower is the risk. In other words, the state’s own soldiers claim a much higher price from enemy combatants, even if the potential risk was previously high or more of the state’s own soldiers were killed in absolute numbers relative to previous deployments. Enemy combatants are members of the armed militias or troops, although they are not always defined as soldiers and are killed directly by the state’s attacks. Although killing enemy combatants is a desired outcome, not to be avoided or traded off against harming one’s own forces, it poses a risk to one’s own troops and, by implication, encourages actions that reduce risk. This can result as the consequence of a reduction in the rival’s capabilities and changes in its tactics, but can be intentionally produced by (1) bolstering the soldiers’ protection (for example, providing protective armor and equipment); (2) improving medical care (for example, the wounded-to-killed ratio in the US military, comparing soldiers wounded in action to the number who died, rose from 2.6:1 in Vietnam to 7.4:1 in the post-9/11 wars; Taylor et al. 2011, 74); (3) changing the nature of the mission or its goals; (4) increasing the force ratio; and (5) increasing the killing capacity by increasing firepower or improving precision. All of these affect military effectiveness, measured by Biddle and Long (2004) for different needs as a “loss exchange ratio,” that is, the casualties of the attacker divided by those of the defender. Importantly, reducing troops’ risk by increasing killing capacity can also be achieved by harming enemy noncombatants. Enemy noncombatants are those residing among the enemy, not participating directly in the fighting and therefore shielded by international law, but killed directly, even if unintentionally and collaterally, by the state’s attacks. Harming noncombatants can be done in two ways. First, concerned about the costs of war and fearing defeat, democracies are more likely than nondemocracies to target noncombatants as a means of coercing the adversary into giving up quickly and at minimum cost to their own side. Noncombatants are then directly rather than collaterally targeted (see Downes 2008). This logic can be extended to the tactical level as well and to the effort to target civilian infrastructures to shorten the war (see Cronin 2018).

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Second, and more relevant to this study, the less that fire is restricted by the need to spare the lives of civilians whose presence is within or near military objectives, the more the troops can fire liberally and reduce their own risk but then also partly shift it to enemy civilians. Fewer restrictions thus improve one’s effectiveness. At the same time, the less that soldiers are exposed to risk by improving their protection or precision in relation to enemy combatants, the lower is the inclination or the justification to shift risk to civilians. Conversely, for example, troop shortages may be compensated for by increased firepower (Keiler 2005, 2), which in turn may collaterally affect civilians in the theater, while restraint under conditions of such shortages indicates a higher level of risk taking. Thus, variations in this ratio are necessarily studied to investigate the level of risk to which one’s own troops are exposed and, by implication, their inclination to shift it to enemy noncombatants. 3.2 The Ratio Between the State’s Own Soldiers and Enemy Noncombatants This ratio reflects the trade-off between force-produced fatalities and one’s own casualties and monitors its variations (Levy 2010b). It indicates the extent to which soldiers are exposed to risk in their activities among the enemy noncombatant population relative to the risk they impose on those noncombatants to reduce their own risk. I limit my analysis to noncombatants killed directly by the democracy’s troops (and exclude, for example, those killed by rival local militias) in order to use more credible data and isolate the extent to which risk is transferred directly. In addition, I do not calculate the harm to civilian infrastructures (on the debate about this point, see Benini and Moulton 2004) because (1) long-term damage cannot always be attributed accurately to the war, especially to one side of the conflict; (2) such damage is not always quantitatively documented; (3) damage can be inflicted for motivations other than shifting risk; and (4) what is (or should be) documented is immediate death by the side shifting risk, which immediately affects its fire policies. Similarly, death as opposed to injuries is the main value measured. In principle, as Luban (2011, 44) argued, the language of the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions indicates that the anticipated risk transfer ratio can never be greater than one-to-one—that is why it is a proportionality standard. If the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated by choosing one tactic over another (like Distant Engagement over Close Engagement) is saving x soldier

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lives, it cannot be pursued by causing more than x anticipated but unintended additional civilian deaths. In the usual situation, where military organizations are exposing civilians to greater risk than they are sparing themselves, they must protect their forces by abstaining from operations that force existential tradeoffs, not by forging ahead with the operation but placing more weight on military lives than the lives of civilians. (Emphasis added)

Therefore, a ratio above 1:1 may indicate a decline in the military’s willingness to sacrifice its soldiers by shifting more risk to enemy noncombatants, and vice versa. True, this ratio reflects a demanding interpretation of international humanitarian law (IHL) and is not always a good guide for the troops, especially on the tactical level (Bohrer and Osiel 2013, 767, 788). However, at least on the operational level, commanders can calculate the cumulative number of fatalities to assess the balance of risks. Deviations from the 1:1 ratio may indicate changes in risk transfer, but not always. The fatality ratio of soldiers to enemy noncombatants may change because of factors unrelated to risk transfer. For example, from one operation to the next, the troops shifted the same amount of risk to enemy civilians by adhering to identical rules of engagement, but the ratio of one’s own soldiers to enemy noncombatants increased or decreased because the soldiers were better protected or their effectiveness, or that of their adversary, increased. However, the issue is whether the troops adjusted the level of risk transferred to their improved/worsened level of protection/effectiveness. Similarly, this ratio is affected by an increase or decrease in the number of noncombatants at risk, varied according to the absolute number of those residing in the arena but also by the intensity and duration of the battle, the conduct of the population, and the extent to which it is exposed to risk by the armed forces—this, even without an intentional effort to shift the risk, or without the soldiers being at greater or lower risk. Again, however, adjustment is expected when policymakers are aware of greater risk to civilians. Therefore, ultimately, deviations from this 1:1 ratio may indicate risk transfer or taking. Likewise, a decreasing ratio from operation to operation may signify risk taking, but this is not the case when ultimately more noncombatants than combatants are killed significantly from one operation to the next (and hence the level of discrimination is lower). This happens when the troops are put at higher risk as indicated by a declining ratio between one’s own soldiers and enemy combatants, part of which has been shifted to civilians. In this case, only a lower number of noncombatants killed will indicate relative risk taking.

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Therefore, calculating the previous ratio between soldiers and enemy combatants and the cumulative consequence of both ratios helps test the validity of the ratio of soldiers/enemy noncombatants for identifying the inclination to shift or take risk, for which we measure the level of discrimination. 3.3 The Ratio of Enemy Noncombatants Among Total Enemy Fatalities This ratio represents the extent to which the troops distinguish between combatants and noncombatants. Two relevant principles are prescribed by IHL. First is the principle of discrimination, according to which indiscriminate attacks that do not “distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives” are prohibited (Protocols Additional to the Geneva Conventions, Protocol 1, Articles 48, 51). Article 57 further obliges the use of military means and methods designed to implement this prohibition. The second principle is that of proportionality, which prohibits an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. (Article 51)

Nevertheless, there is a tension between the two legal principles—in the words of Michael Schmitt (2014, 150): Whereas the restriction to military objectives seeks to preclude attacks in which protected persons or object are themselves targets, or where the attack is made with culpable disregard for the civilian consequences, proportionality operates in scenarios in which incidental injury and collateral damage are the foreseeable, albeit undesired, result of attack on a legitimate target. This renders the discrimination decision matrix much more complex.

In the end, subjectivity (and, by implication, politics) governs. It is problematic to assess “what it means for harm to civilians to be ‘excessive’ ” (Rodin 2006, 162) and to determine “the value of innocent human lives as opposed to capturing a particular military objective,” as the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court admitted (United Nations 2000, Article 48). This is particularly true because the value of the object is derived from the extent to which the attacker faces defeat. In such cases, “the calculation of military advantage likely to result from an operation will be greater, for the issue is not the objective value of a target, but rather the target’s subjective value to the attacker” (Schmitt 2014,

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157). Ultimately, the principle of proportionality is concerned with the attacker’s calculated intent and expectations rather than with the victim’s harm, without setting objective standards to judge the results of the attack (Dill 2015, 100–101; Rowe 2000; Smith 2017, 44). Military necessity is valued above civilian protection (Crawford 2013, 160). For the sake of assessing risk transfer and risk taking, discrimination is more measurable than proportionality, and in many cases, it also reflects deviations from (or flexible interpretation of ) proportionality, especially when more noncombatants are killed than combatants, whereas the opposite adheres more closely to the principle of proportionality. It follows that the greater the transfer of risk, the more it is that discrimination and proportionality are likely to be violated, but the rules can be flexibly interpreted, thus expanding the Western militaries’ freedom of operation. However, in line with the explanatory perspective, the question discussed in this book is not whether military necessity permits greater collateral harm or the extent to which this harm complies with proportionality. This is especially so as the transfer of a greater amount of risk does not necessarily represent disproportionate harm or the violation of the proportionality principle, and casualty ratios do not necessarily indicate the level of compliance with IHL. Rather, the increased shifting of risk reflects a political decision: the state’s inclination to increase the protection of its soldiers within the confines of what it believes is proportionality. Risk is always partly shifted. Soldiers are not expected to take unconditional risks to save noncombatants’ lives. In accordance with what has been defined as the scope of this book, the goal is the assessment of the reality and its determinants. Comparatively, estimates of this ratio of enemy noncombatants among total enemy fatalities show that since World War I, this ratio has been about 50 percent, including in the “new wars” (Melander, Öberg, and Hall 2006, 20). Although this is the general ratio, in ethnic and religious wars, about 75 percent of those killed are noncombatants (Eckhardt 1989, 90–91). Therefore, significant deviations in both directions from this 50 percent ratio may signify excessive risking of enemy civilians or, conversely, of one’s own soldiers. Still, this ratio represents the average rather than any expected norm, unlike that of 1:1 between one’s own soldiers and enemy noncombatants. This ratio calculates the cumulative consequence of both former ratios. Still, this ratio is not a function of the former ratios and therefore is necessary even if both former ratios move in the same direction. Even then, we have to calculate the relative change in both ratios, and if relatively more enemy noncombatants

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or enemy combatants were killed from one operation to the next, the inference is that discrimination decreased or increased, respectively. At the same time, an increased or decreased level of discrimination alone cannot indicate the ultimate result, as this ratio isolates the fire policy toward enemy noncombatants from the immediate risk to one’s own soldiers. For example, improved discrimination often indicates risk taking, but it is not necessarily so. It can also be a case of partial risk transfer, when although the number of enemy combatants killed is higher relative to the increase in the number of noncombatants, it is due to the troops’ increasing their advantage over their adversaries, mainly by using weapons more liberally with the harm to civilians this entails (as demonstrated by the battles in Fallujah, addressed in Chapter 7). Therefore, this ratio is meaningless unless it is tested against other ratios to indicate the troops’ exposure to risk and the amount they took or shifted. Such assessment is also necessary to conclude whether fire policies are motivated by the desire to reduce the soldiers’ risk or by other motivations—such as deterrence, punishment, and even revenge—unexplained by the need to reduce the troops’ risk. Such motivations result in the atrocities that troops commit in wartime as either a policy or a result of “battlefield frenzy” (Browning 1992, 160–162). 3.4 The Ratio Between the State’s Own Noncombatants and Enemy Noncombatants This ratio is relevant only in border wars, including ethnic wars, in which troops fight to directly protect their civilians. Thus, it is irrelevant to overseas campaigns such as those fought by Western armies. Given that protecting one’s own civilians legitimates the risk to one’s own soldiers and to enemy noncombatants, increasing the risk to one’s own civilians (signifying a failure to protect them) may increase aggressiveness toward enemy noncombatants to obtain the same benefits as noted in the ratio between one’s own soldiers and enemy combatants. Furthermore, there may be a direct linkage between risking one’s own soldiers and own civilians as when, for example, the enemy launches rockets from a civilian building toward one’s own border community of civilians. Then, cautious clearing of the building may risk both one’s own soldiers and civilians by prolonging their exposure to risk, whereas airstrikes may risk enemy civilians but also reduce risks to own soldiers and civilians (Bohrer and Osiel 2013, 776–777). Each of these ratios provides a partial picture, and therefore the combination is necessary, providing a suitable point of departure to assess who eventually assumes

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more risk. But even the combination of ratios alone cannot always unequivocally explain the increasing or decreasing levels of risk transferred or taken since the ratios can be interpreted in different ways. So once we calculate the ratios, the second stage is to back them up with an analysis of practices on the ground. This linkage is necessary to test the extent to which the ratios are mirrored in practices, mostly in cases in which the combinations do not provide a robust conclusion. Nevertheless, we also have to test how variations in practices are reflected in variations in the ratios. Policies can be formally changed without the change being reflected in practice by ratios, and thus unexpected fatality ratios are generated. Therefore, this combined method may also help us evaluate figures provided by different sources about the number of noncombatants killed, and even to decide which provide more valid conclusions regarding the scale of risk transfer. However, my study will not engage in the different methods of body count and the controversies they trigger (see, for example, Aronson 2013; Bennett et al. 2015; Crawford 2013, 137–142). Rather, it will highlight discrepancies that enable us to understand the legitimacy issues involved and how the methodology offered in this study contributes to evaluating the numbers. With these theoretical insights in mind, we can proceed with depicting the hierarchies and their determinants.

4

Risking One’s Own Soldiers in Jenin and Basra

This chapter analyzes the basic variation on the death hierarchy: the risking of one’s own soldiers. Risking the lives of one’s own is at the core of the contract between a soldier and the state with unlimited liability expected (see McCartney 2010, 418–419). Nevertheless, historical changes shifted this risk from upper- to lower-class soldiers. This chapter focuses on two variations on the hierarchy that were thus created: risking upper-middle-class soldiers, as exemplified by the Israeli case of the Battle of Jenin (West Bank) in 2002, and risking lower-class soldiers as exemplified by the British case of the Battle of Basra (Iraq) in 2006–2007. 4.1 Risking Upper-Middle-Class Soldiers Since the eighteenth century, republicanism has governed the era of state formation and has been accompanied by the formation of mass citizen armies. Under these circumstances, the state risked the lives of soldiers drawn from the rising middle class more than enlistees from the lower classes. However, recruitment of the lower classes was gradually expanded with the increase in the demand for troops (see Levi 1997), and armies also enjoyed a supply of colonial troops, such as the Gurkhas in the British Army (Vasquez 2011). Cell A in Table 2.2 depicts this situation. Two factors worked to prioritize the risk of the upper-middle class. First, the state elites trusted them more than other groups. Enloe (1980) held that ethnicity was used as a criterion for estimating the degree of loyalty of different groups to

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the state, from which derived the “ethnic state security map,” which determined a group’s access to valuable positions and vital functions within the military. This notion of a state security map and the hierarchy of trust it created is applicable to other classifications as well, which explains why lower-class groups were trusted less. As Krebs (2006) recognized, human resources policies were highly affected by the degree of trust that state elites placed on various social groups. Consequently, social stratifications impeded the changes required for maximum military strength, as this involved arming the lower classes, who were oppressed and full of hatred toward the elites (Andreski 1954, 37). This resulted in multiple forms of exclusionary policies. Second, military hierarchies, in conjunction with republican criteria, produced social hierarchies constructed around the status of soldiering, which at least initially marginalized lower social groups, ethnic minorities, and women. Unequal burden was translated into, and was thereby compensated by, privileged social position. Examples of hierarchy making include the male-dominated system of war that influences intergender power relations in society (Goldstein 2001) and the role of citizenship discourse surrounding the French levée en masse of 1793 in promoting the social mobility of the middle class (Forrest 2003). Republicanism, with the social hierarchies it created, encouraged sacrifice and thus increased its legitimacy. This legitimacy persisted even where casualties were heavy. To recall (see section 2.2), from revolutionary wars until World War II, the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for one’s country was viewed as a noble sentiment (Mosse 1990). When this legitimacy of sacrificing was matched by a high level of legitimacy of using force, an offensive approach, strategy aimed at disarming an adversary, governed military policies (Posen 1984, 14). This was the case in the United States and other liberal democracies until the first years of the Cold War and in Israel until the First Lebanon War (1982). Declining legitimacy of using force encouraged a defensive approach. This, for example, was the case in Australia, in which conscription was accepted after World War II for defensive goals but not for overseas missions (Vasquez 2009, 335–372). Notwithstanding the willingness to risk lives, troops often did not respect the lives of enemy noncombatants. However, such disregard arose from a variety of sentiments, including ethnic hatred, rather than from the intent to shift the risk from one’s own soldiers to enemy noncombatants. Only when costs significantly mounted, militaries comprising the upper-middle class intentionally targeted noncombatants in protracted wars of attrition as a means of coercing the adversary into a quick submission, thereby reducing its own military casualties (Downes 2008).

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Against this background, exemplifying this variation on the hierarchy is less relevant in the wars waged until the Cold War era ended. Then the norms that had permitted targeting civilians up until the Vietnam War changed and gave way to the dilemma of risking one’s own soldiers versus enemy civilians, while the development of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) served to intensify this dilemma at the tactical level (see Rasmussen 2006, 73–88). Moreover, since this period, the conscript militaries of democratic nations—in which this dilemma is particularly acute because of the higher level of casualty sensitivity (see section 2.2)—gradually ended their role with the abolition of the draft in many democracies; thus, the field for exemplifying this variation has narrowed. Thus, Israel, in which republicanism legitimized the sacrificing of upper-middle-class groups as combatants in a conscript military, is a case in point. However, it was not necessarily the case until the 1980s, before the dilemma arose about how to treat enemy civilians, for Israel did not fight significant urban wars until the First Lebanon War. But because data about noncombatants killed in this war are extremely inaccurate (Tucker 1982), the next opportunity to test the case was during the second Intifada (2000–2005) when Israeli troops fought Palestinian militias embedded within the urban terrain of the West Bank. More specifically, from March to May 2002, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield. It was the largest operation of the second Intifada, during which Israel recaptured the main West Bank Palestinian cities in order to root out alleged terrorist cells. Before analyzing this operation, I present the ingrained component of both the legitimacies in Israel. The State of Legitimacies in Israel Both legitimacies declined during the 1970s and 1980s but not at the same level of intensity, as the legitimacy of using force was recovered and remained relatively high. Legitimacy of Using Force Israel was created at the beginning of the twentieth century as a colonial project of Jewish emigrants, mainly from Eastern Europe. During the formative years of the prestate political community, a conflict developed between the Jewish and Palestinian communities, which were both under British rule. As the conflict escalated from local clashes to intercommunal conflict, culminating in the 1948 War between Israel and the surrounding Arab states following the formal establishment of the Israeli state, the Israeli leaders gradually concluded that the conflict

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could be resolved only by force (Ben-Eliezer 1998). Since then, the legitimacy of using force has remained high. It rests on several pillars: Permanent conflict. Since the Arab world essentially rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, Israel lives under constant existential threat to its security, facing an enemy that is superior in both territorial and demographic terms; this has given shape to a siege mentality. Furthermore, with the memory of the Holocaust guiding the nation’s reactions to external dangers, such threats can sometimes be regarded as a potential second Holocaust and hence justify military aggression (Lustick 2008). Therefore, according to Kimmerling (1993), the Israeli-Arab conflict is accepted as a routine, immutable, and uncontrollable situation. A worst-case analysis is the only prudent approach to assessing the reality. Furthermore, because of regional instability and the agenda and unreliability of the Arabs, Israel must retain its territorial and demographic assets unless they can be proportionally translated into sustainable security gains. Israel is determined to retain its military superiority over the Arab states as a means of both deterrence and defense. It should therefore conduct a steady military buildup with the introduction of state-of-the-art weapon systems. This logic also gave rise to the acquisition of nuclear weapons in the 1950s (Maoz 2006, 302–304). Also, Israel is determined to prevent its adversaries from gaining advantage by acquiring military capabilities, and to this end it is ready to initiate a preemptive strike on military installations or to use diplomatic means to block arms sales. Because the next round of hostilities is inevitable, Israel must ensure that the war starts on terms favorable to it. The society is subordinated to military and national security considerations: it is a “mobilized society” and a “nation in arms.” War sacrifice (in both human and material terms) is acceptable and part of normal life (see also Freilich 2012, 381–416). These principles shaped Israel as a militaristic society (Kimmerling 1993). Even when it accepted territorial concessions, such as the peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, Israel insisted on broad security arrangements. Gradually politicians became dependent on the military—not just on the army as an organization but on a military mind-set since Israel’s political aims were subjected to military thinking, mainly following the 1967 War (Levy 1997). Sense of victimhood. Israel forged a collective sense of victimhood largely drawing on past traumas, with the Holocaust playing a central role. This sense, seeing Israel as victim and the Arabs as perpetrators, is largely linked to justification of Israel’s conduct and its perception of its own moral superiority, and it reduces feelings of guilt for committing harmful acts against the Palestinians (Bar-Tal et al. 2009).

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Materialist militarism. There is a congruence between Israel’s militarist approach and the fulfillment of material interests that largely benefited the middle class. These were mainly the material fruits of the wars of 1948 and 1967 in terms of territorial gains, the Palestinian market and cheap labor force, and military industries. Material interests and the inequitable social structure they shaped rigidified Israel’s hawkish approach (Levy 2007). The centrality of the military. The centrality of the conflict for a new nation coping with the absorption of mass emigration and social inequalities led to the role of “nation builder” being delegated to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and made it the “people’s army.” It became a crucial institution for both the defense of the state and the self-image of the nation, and an important tool for legitimizing inequalities by mobilizing the lower classes (Levy 2007, 30–40; Maoz 2006, 582). This centrality of the military, together with other symbols of militarism, suffused the cultural state of mind of the Israeli collective, making the use of force self-evident (Kimmerling 1993). Aspiration for decisive campaigns. Because of political, social, economic, and geographic constraints, Israel could engage only in short and decisive military campaigns (Maoz 2006, 14). Instrumental rationality. Like its Western counterparts, since the 1990s (and probably earlier), the military has promoted instrumental rationality. Emphasis has been placed on the means, the weapons, rather than on the ends—the political logic of using force and the human costs incurred. This has legitimized the deployment of precision weapons like smart bombs, intelligent missiles, and other means by which Israel praised the new technology for enabling surgical strikes (Ben-Eliezer 2012, 53–61). Ethnonationalism. Ethnonationalism was strengthened in response to the aftermath of the 1967 War in which the encounter between the Israeli-Jewish community and historically venerated sites, such as the Old City of Jerusalem and Hebron, was renewed. Among religious and rightist circles, the occupation was an incentive to reassert their identification with Jewish tradition. Traditional Judaism, which invokes the primordial in the building of the Israeli-Jewish community, became for many a crucial factor in redrawing the boundaries of Israeli society, hence sharpening the distinction between Jews and Israeli Palestinians and prescribing an aggressive stance toward the surrounding Arab states (Shafir and Peled 2002, 87–94). Need for international legitimacy. Because of its high dependence on foreign aid and foreign trade, Israel has always been constrained by international legitimacy.

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Against this background, ensuring the support of at least one power before going to war has been one of Israel’s major principles, but this also restricted its autonomy (Maoz 2006, 14–15). Since the 1960s, the United States has been Israel’s major ally and, by implication, its main source of legitimacy; hence, the Israelis could appreciate the legitimacy of the United Nations less. Resting on these pillars, the legitimacy of using force remained high until the turning point of the 1973 War. Israel, which had expanded its borders following the 1967 War, was then surprised by an Egyptian-Syrian attack that was barely repulsed, and Israel suffered some 2,500 fatalities. This war shattered the public perception of the IDF as omnipotent and, more important, that military superiority could replace territorial concessions, which Israel had been reluctant to promote following the 1967 War (Maoz 2006, 412–436). More significant was the First Lebanon War, in which Israel invaded South Lebanon initially to uproot the Palestinian ministate led by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). With the end of the first stage of this war, which took one week during which Israel conquered South Lebanon, antiwar protest surfaced. It was directed against the transformation of the previously declared and widely politically acceptable short-term operation into an attempt to reshape internal Lebanese politics, which prolonged the war beyond the first week and culminated in a siege of Beirut in summer 1982. For the first time, protest groups, built around reservist organizations, focused on the very goals of the war. Central to this discourse was the definition of the First Lebanon War as a “war of choice,” as opposed to what had previously been described as “wars of no choice,” thus positing the notion of an alternative to bellicosity (Helman 1999). Unprecedentedly, the criteria for legitimizing the use of force were debated, and the rightness of the war was challenged. For the first time, moreover, reserve soldiers were organized to selectively refuse to carry out politically disputed military missions. Ultimately, the IDF was dragged into a war of attrition against Shi’ite militias in South Lebanon for three additional years, culminating in about 650 IDF casualties (Levy 2012, 42, 53–54). In 1985, largely due to further antiwar protests, the IDF unilaterally withdrew from parts of Lebanon (Maoz 2006, 206–229). Acknowledging the declining legitimacy of using force, the self-restrained use of military force, along with considerations of international politics, were reflected in the relatively moderate policy adopted by governments during the first Intifada that erupted in 1987. At that time, governments were reluctant to use massive firepower to quell the uprising while the Palestinians did not bear firearms. This was also the case during the Gulf War of 1991, when the Israeli government refrained

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from retaliating against Iraq’s Scud missile attacks. Such restraint paved the way to the Oslo Accords of 1993–1995 between Israel and the PLO, which in turn led to control over part of the West Bank and Gaza Strip being gradually handed over to the newly established Palestinian Authority (Levy 2012, 57–58). A new turning point emerged with the eruption of the second Intifada in September 2000. This new round of hostilities between Israel and the Palestinian Authority followed the failure to reach a final peace agreement prescribed by the Oslo Accords. Unlike the first Intifada, this time the Palestinians used firepower against the Israeli military and eventually also against civilian targets. Increasingly, Israel intensified its attacks against the Palestinian headquarters, militias, and civilian infrastructures in the West Bank and Gaza, changing their view of the Palestinians from peace partners to enemies. Now, the legitimization of using force faced only a weak challenge. A few important legitimizing mechanisms were at work. First and foremost was the external threat posed by the Palestinian Authority, expressed in terror attacks in Israel’s cities. To indicate the costs on the Israeli side, 44 Israeli civilians were killed in Palestinian terror attacks in 2000; this number rose to 207 in 2001 and to 452 in 2002.1 Escalation legitimized further aggression in the IDF’s attacks on the Palestinian Authority, with broader use of high-tech weaponry. Allegedly, Israel then committed “politicide,” the destruction of the Palestinian political entity (Kimmerling 2003). With buses exploding in Israel’s cities, acceptance of the use of force grew without an effective antiwar protest emerging from the Israeli center-left (see Hermann 2009, 111–119). Without the balancing impact of this camp, the ethnonationalist political coalition could gain more power, clearly demonstrated in the election of the rightist Ariel Sharon as Israel’s prime minister in 2001. Indeed, in terms of public opinion, the “Oslo Index,” measuring support of the Oslo agreement and belief in its ability to bring about peace between Israel and the Palestinians, dropped from 45.3 points in August 2000, on the eve of the Intifada, to an average of about 35 points in 2001 and around 33 points in 2002.2 Instrumental to the legitimation of force was also Israel’s ability to blame the Palestinians for the hostilities, thereby paralyzing the peace camp, largely as a result of the narrative that developed with the outbreak of the Intifada. As analysts Robert Malley and Hussein Agha (2002) presented it, this narrative asserted that while Ehud Barak, Israel’s prime minister when the Camp David talks with the Palestinians failed and the Intifada erupted, “made a most generous offer [in the talks], the ‘vicious’ Palestinian leadership turned it down because they wanted to

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get rid of Israel, and all the rest is gossip.” To the extent that this narrative took root, the use of force was not only legitimized but could even be carried out for the “purposes of punishment, destruction and psychological release” (Lustick 2008, 47), which were embodied in the IDF’s political goal of “burning into the Palestinian consciousness” the recognition that violence would not bring them political gain. Thus, the Palestinian civilian population could be more legitimately targeted and harmed (Ben-Eliezer 2012, 100–101). Legitimation was also enhanced by presenting the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority as an autonomous political entity bearing responsibility for the violence inflicted by Palestinian militias. The Military Advocate General could thus distinguish between the first Intifada, during which the army carried out policing missions, and the second, in which it was involved in combat. This precluded the need to investigate the killing of Palestinian noncombatants and led to modified rules of engagement (B’Tselem 2010); at least in part, this distinction was legitimized by Israel’s Supreme Court (Byman 2011, 318–319). In other words, the occupied territories were transformed from “ghetto” to “frontier,” in Ron’s terms (2003), and by implication, Israel’s responsibility to the Palestinian population diminished (Gordon 2008). To this portrayal of reality was added the presentation of the Palestinians’ actions as a war by all means through which public opinion could be mobilized (Grinberg 2010, 162–165). No less important, to gain legitimacy internationally, Israel leveraged the 9/11 attacks by equating the Palestinian organizations with al-Qaeda and describing the conflict as part of the clash between good and evil. Israel failed to convince the Western world with this logic, but the administration of President George W. Bush did little to block Israel (Ben-Eliezer 2012, 108–110, 135; see also Byman 2011, 143). Add to this the social change in the composition of the IDF. The troops deployed to fight the Palestinians were different from those deployed in the First Lebanon War and the first Intifada. During the 1980s and 1990s, a social realignment of the military took place, resulting in increasing the government’s autonomy to deploy the troops by countering dissident voices emerging from the politically active secular middle class. The most important steps were (Levy 2012, 63–67): 1. The adoption of the RMA-based counterfire doctrine largely drew on standoff precision firepower that decreased combatants’ exposure to risk and was first implemented during the 1990s in South Lebanon. 2. The social composition of the field units was realigned by encouraging the integration of lower-class groups for whom the military was perceived as

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a track for upward mobility (and more so than to their peers from privileged groups, as shown later), such as Mizrahi groups (lower-class 1950s emigrants from Arab countries), immigrants mainly from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia, and, most important, the religious among the young generation. For many of the religious enlistees, carrying out the mission of regaining Jewish control over what they perceived as the Holy Land, mainly the occupied West Bank, was their main symbolic gain from military service. Meanwhile the IDF offered them special pathways through the army that would protect them from being secularized during their military service. Hence, religious groups could discard the marginalized status they had had in the past in the military and society at large. Through this realignment, the military was able to draw on a pool of ideologically motivated soldiers who displayed more loyalty to the military than the secular middle class did. 3. Reserve soldiers were removed from friction zones. They are the most protected group in the death hierarchy because they are more likely than regular conscripts to engage in political protest. Two reasons account for this. First, reservists are “mobilized civilians” or “civilianized soldiers” who bring their civil values with them to reserve duty and bargain with the army over the nature and conditions of their service. On their return to civilian life, they may translate the experience of their reserve duty into political energy (see Lomsky-Feder, Gazit, and Ben-Ari 2008). Second, the secular middle class is represented in the reserves in greater proportions than in the compulsory army, because the social composition of the reserves mirrors that of the compulsory army as it was ten or fifteen years previously (the 1990s, in this case, during which the secular middle class was highly represented before the social realignment of the ranks had matured), or because of mobility acquired in civilian life. Hence, they have more time and resources, and thereby greater potential, than other groups to protest. Indeed, reserve-based organizations have characterized antiwar protest since the First Lebanon War. With these three changes, combat forces exhibited much greater enthusiasm than they had in the past for aggressive missions, as this behavior gained more legitimacy outside the military and was more aligned with the troops’ ideology. In contrast to the pattern of the First Lebanon War and the first Intifada, the troops refrained from arousing public opinion through their social networks (Levy 2012, 92–93). At the same time, the legitimacy of using force was partly limited by human rights discourse of which the IDF became more aware a year or two after the eruption of hostilities, following international and domestic criticism and monitoring

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by civil rights organizations. However, these discourses are often understood by local-level commanders as no more than an operational parameter that could be, under certain circumstances, ignored (Ben-Ari et al. 2011, 55). The spiraling threat also legitimized sacrifice, balancing out the previous decline in this legitimacy. Legitimacy of Sacrificing Until the 1970s, the legitimacy of sacrificing was extremely high. Public discourse was dominated by the hegemonic bereavement model, according to which death in war was presented as the norm and casualties were presented as heroes, in accordance with the perception that Israel faced existential threats. Bereaved parents refrained from publicly voicing any concerns or demands regarding their loss, and even expressed pride. In return, they became symbolic public figures lauded by the establishment (Lebel 2007). The 1970s and 1980s marked the turning point. It was during these years that the legitimacy accorded to military sacrifice began to erode. In the 1973 War, Israel suffered some 2,500 IDF fatalities, about 0.1 percent of the total Jewish population. The impacts of this war resulted in deeper changes that matured politically during the First Lebanon War and the war of attrition in South Lebanon that followed the initial steps (1982–1985), during which Israel lost about 650 IDF casualties (Levy 2012, 42, 53). This war also marked a turning point: its outcome unprecedentedly spurred the parents of the fallen soldiers to take collective action against the army’s operations. Heavy burdens decreased the legitimacy of sacrificing mainly in conjunction with other factors, similar to those processes seen in other Western democracies. First was the ascendancy of a market society that was affected by Israel’s exposure to globalization. The market ethos, together with globalization, enhanced the liberal discourse, challenged previous collectivist commitments and symbols, and increased criticism of the military expenditure that had risen since the 1973 War and was not offset by significant war-produced economic gains. Second was the decline in the perception of the external threat: following the 1967 War, Israel had established its regional dominance. Furthermore, the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, signed in 1979, proved that even significant existential threats could be removed by diplomatic means—in this case, at the cost of complete withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula captured in 1967. This could challenge the rightness of future wars, which in turn would negatively affect the legitimacy of sacrificing. Third was the destabilization of the republican exchange between state civilian institutions

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and the citizenry. This exchange laid the infrastructure for the state’s capacity to mobilize the Jewish community for war sacrifice. However, this exchange was destabilized following the 1970s when military service lost much of its value in a market society, the liberal discourse undermined soldiering as a criterion for rights, and groups not serving in the army collected significant rewards not contingent on the test of military service. In addition, military failures ruptured the image of the Ashkenazi (Jews of European descent), secular, middle-class warriors, the social backbone of the IDF (Levy 2012, 42–46). Indeed, the erosion in the legitimacy of sacrificing was mainly felt among the secular middle class. In the First Lebanon War, antiwar activity had clear ethnic and class characteristics. About 70 percent of the casualties in the first (and most intensive) week of the war, which claimed the lives of about 230 soldiers, came from the secular middle class, with 20 percent of all casualties coming from the upper-middle class. It was the most organized, wealthy, and sacrifice-averse social stratum in Israeli society that created the infrastructure for the protest. Most effective were bereavement-motivated antiwar movements, such as Parents Against Silence and the reservists’ group, Soldiers Against Silence, both middle-class-based movements whose efforts influenced public opinion and triggered the IDF’s unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in 1985 (Levy 2012, 51–56). It is significant that the withdrawal occurred in tandem with the Economic Stabilization Plan implemented by the Israeli government in 1985 to eliminate the hyperinflation that had increased during the 1980s. This move incorporated a deep cutback in army spending and reinforced the ideology of market society (Levy 2007, 150). Politically, however, the second withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 was more significant. Although Israel had ended the First Lebanon War in 1985 by unilaterally withdrawing its troops from South Lebanon, between 1985 and 2000, it was dragged into a guerrilla war against Hezbollah forces in the security zone that Israel still occupied as a buffer between Lebanon and northern Israeli towns. This guerrilla war claimed more than three hundred IDF fatalities (Kaye 2002–2003, 570). The turning point was in February 1997 when two Israeli military helicopters collided en route to Lebanon and claimed the lives of seventy-three soldiers. In response, the middle-class-based Four Mothers movement was founded by mothers of soldiers who were serving in Lebanon at the time of the accident. Four Mothers led the campaign to pull Israel out of Lebanon unilaterally and unconditionally. In its discourse, the movement challenged the costs and compared them to the

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political and military logic of the specific mission in terms not of rightness but of logic. Changing the “wrong means” to protect the northern border of Israel was the goal (Levy 2012, 72–76). Like the cost-benefit calculation that Larson (1996) offered, the movement questioned the extent to which the ends could be achieved by other means, for example, a withdrawal that would discourage Hezbollah from fighting and thus reduce casualties. Ultimately the campaign that Four Mothers initiated played a key role in shifting public opinion and driving the Israeli government to unilaterally withdraw its troops from Lebanon in 2000—or at least this achievement was later attributed to the movement’s actions (see Hermann 2009, 166). As the mode of military recruitment mediates the collective actors’ ability to leverage political variables, such as a sense of threat and mission success, to challenge the dominant discourse and influence the war policy, Four Mothers, as a movement emerging within the political-cultural confines of conscription, succeeded in influencing public opinion and policymakers. It successfully capitalized on the notion of republican motherhood—the republican exchange between military sacrifice, in the form of motherhood, and political rights, in the form of a political voice in military affairs; drew on the middle class, from which most of the casualties in the helicopter accident came (top infantry units were still less affected by the social realignment), as typified by conscription touching powerful actors; and encouraged voice rather than exit: parents chose to convince decision makers to set alternative policies rather than encourage their sons to opt out, which would have been illegal, or at least socially illegitimate, under the Israeli draft regime (Levy 2013b). This cost-centered discourse created a new cultural barrier to war sacrifices, known as “Lebanon phobia,” which would play a key role in the Second Lebanon War of 2006 (Levy 2012, 76). Here we see how dynamic, political variables reshaped what had already been ingrained in the culture: the legitimacy of sacrificing declined following social changes and was further entrenched by the politically generated Lebanon phobia. Owing to the realignment of the military, however, the IDF shifted some risk from its soldiers to enemy civilians by increasing the reliance on technology while also drawing on those social groups more willing to sacrifice. Indeed, despite its withdrawal from Lebanon in 1985, the IDF was able to deploy in South Lebanon for twelve more years (1985–1997) and fight the Hezbollah militias without raising domestic opposition motivated by ideological reservations or sensitivity to casualties. Only the 1997 helicopter collision, with the death toll that it brought to middle-class families, triggered pressures to withdraw.

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In September 2000, a few months after the withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, the second Intifada broke out. As noted, the troops deployed to fight the Palestinians were different from those of the First Lebanon War because of the social realignment of the ranks. It follows that Israel gradually reformulated the death hierarchy by partly shifting the burden away from soldiers drawn from secular middle-class groups to those drawn from lower-class and religious groups. This change is clearly indicated by comparing the social composition of the casualties of the second Intifada, those 233 IDF soldiers killed between the eruption of hostilities in September 2000 until Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in summer 2005, with the 231 fatalities from the first week of the First Lebanon War, during which most of the military forces, including reservists, were active. The comparison reveals a clear drop in the proportion of casualties from secular middle-class groups, from about 68.5 percent to about 45.5 percent, while this gap was filled by lower-class groups. The upper-middle class alone, the main engine of antiwar protest, reduced its share from 19.5 percent to about 8.0 percent. No less important, while the weight of reservists in the First Lebanon War stood at 35 percent, this proportion declined to 19 percent in the second Intifada, in line with the inclination to distance reservists from risky missions. These changes were broader than the demographic changes that Israel experienced during this period. Furthermore, they remained similar during the Second Lebanon War. To a large extent, the bereavement discourse mirrored this social change and was characterized by a submissive tone. Because of the relatively small proportion of fallen soldiers from the upper-middle-class groups and reservists, critics failed to generate a critical mass for an effective subversive voice (Levy 2012, 84–89). Only in the Gaza theater were such voices heard, but at a later stage and with no significant impact (see section 5.2). Weakening the presence of groups with an anticasualty agenda increases the legitimacy of sacrificing. In sum, as the second Intifada progressed, an encounter between high levels of both legitimacies expanded the policymakers’ freedom of operation. Cell A in Table 2.2 captures this situation. Against this background, Israel conducted Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, with the Battle of Jenin at the center. The Battle of Jenin From March to May 2002, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield. It was a direct reaction to the killing at the end of March of twenty-nine Jews who were

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celebrating Passover at a hotel near Tel Aviv, an event that represented a climax stage of terror attacks. From March 29 to May 10, the IDF reoccupied some of the major West Bank cities to clear them of terror cells. Under the shadow of this terror event, policymakers had more confidence in claiming legitimacy both internationally and domestically: internationally, to use force and hence also respond to domestic pressures to act, and domestically, to sacrifice soldiers’ lives (Ben-Eliezer 2012, 124–125). Indeed, the legitimacy of using force reached new heights: 90 percent of the Jewish population confirmed in the middle of the operation that the decision to mount it had been right, including 60 percent of the voters of the leftist Meretz Party (Yaar and Hermann 2002). Furthermore, the Passover attack and the operation that followed stopped the momentum of one of the most challenging dissident groups, Courage to Refuse, composed of reserve soldiers who refused to serve in the occupied territories and mobilized the support of hundreds of reservist combat soldiers and officers (Ben-Eliezer 2012, 130–135; Levy 2012, 90). Still, legitimacy of using force was partly limited. With President Bush calling Israel, when the operation started, to halt incursion into Palestinian-controlled areas (Kampfner 2003, 185) and being monitored internationally by several governments and organizations, Israel’s room for maneuver was limited, and this restricted the use of force (Ben-Ari et al. 2011, 120, 151–152). High legitimacy of using force was coupled with high legitimacy of sacrificing, as reflected in the mobilization of four reserve divisions. Willingness to sacrifice was evidenced by the strong response rate to the extensive call-up of reservists, who regarded the operation as a “fight for their home” (Suissa 2012, 108). To recall, reserve soldiers are the most protected group in the Israeli death hierarchy, and hence they had been removed from friction zones as much as possible (Levy 2012, 63–64, 129–130). Their deployment in this operation signified the policymakers’ confidence in their ability to risk upper-class soldiers. Consequently, Israeli commanders and politicians could now overcome a cognitive barrier that hitherto had blocked them from entering the dense urban terrains for large-scale incursions, worrying that such operations would lead to heavy losses on both sides (Henkin 2003, 50). It was the field command that pushed from the bottom up to take more risks (Druker and Shelah 2005, 195–197). The toughest operation took place between April 3 and April 18 in the refugee camp of the city of Jenin, portrayed as one of the major terror centers on the West Bank, only a few miles from the border between the West Bank

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and Israel. In this camp, several hundred Palestinian fighters were intermingled among civilians. The operation in Jenin was carried out mainly by an elite, reserve infantry brigade. Being partly restricted in its ability to harm civilians, the troops called on the residents to leave. However, the majority remained as the operation began and mostly left later (Henkin 2003, 54–55). In order to warn civilians, the troops used camp residents to knock on doors and persuade people to leave (Rees 2002). Thereafter, the military used tanks and infantry supported by helicopters to conduct house-to-house searches. It refrained from using artillery to clear areas, and even the tanks were used mostly as mobile bases for the troops with limited shooting (Henkin 2003, 55–56; Settle 2003, 31–34). More important, using airstrikes was prohibited despite the troops’ request, with the near certainty that this decision would risk the soldiers’ lives. Nevertheless, the decision was motivated by the interest in reducing collateral damage to Palestinian noncombatants (Goodman 2003, 10–11; Henkin 2003, 55). As cited in the inquiry by Time Magazine, the Chief of Central Command refrained from approving airstrikes because “he feared giving the Palestinians the public relations coup of mass civilian casualties” (Rees 2002), but this directive followed the approach taken at the political level. To better indicate the significance of this decision, even the local Palestinian militias expected airstrikes as the Israelis had repeatedly bombed Palestinian installations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. As a leader of the Fatah gunmen in the camp told Time’s journalist, when they had seen the IDF troops advancing on foot, they decided to stay in the camp and fight (ibid.). Operationally, the IDF used bulldozers to widen the narrow alleys of the camp by shearing off the fronts of buildings, allowing tanks and heavy armor to penetrate the camp (Human Rights Watch 2002, 9) and blow holes in the external walls of inhabited peripheral buildings. Thereafter, armored vehicles offloaded soldiers through these openings directly into Palestinian homes, thereby protecting themselves from Palestinian snipers; nevertheless, the snipers were hiding and successfully held back the IDF soldiers (Weizman 2007, 201–202). The IDF used helicopters to support the troops by targeting Palestinian rooftop positions (Rees 2002). Often, however, the troops used human shields to search inside the houses (Byman 2011, 150–151). This mode of fighting limited the risk to residents, relative to the risk inherent in the alternatives, such as bombing houses, although it was mainly indiscriminate helicopter fire and indiscriminate fire from the ground that harmed civilians (Human Rights

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Watch 2002, 9, 12–29, 46–48). At the same time, soldiers were exposed to snipers and the danger of hidden explosives, including booby-trapped houses that the camp’s command had prepared for defense. However, the IDF’s method slowed the progress of the troops and further increased the risk to them (Henkin 2003, 55–57; Weizman 2007, 201). Indeed, on April 9, thirteen reservists were killed in a single ambush. Later, the bereaved families accused the defense minister of not providing aerial covering fire that could have saved lives (Levy 2012, 170). The combatants themselves complained, as one said, “We’re like pizza delivery boys who have to come right to the door of the terrorists’ houses” (Henkin 2003, 56). Such allegations indicate that the legitimacy of sacrificing is limited when numerous losses of one’s own soldiers cannot be justified to protect enemy noncombatants. From this stage, the IDF accelerated the operation. It shifted tactics from house-to-house searches to the use of bulldozers to destroy the camp (Weizman 2007, 202), backed by a wider use of tanks, helicopter gunships, and missiles. In two days, the IDF assumed full control of the camp (United Nations 2002, 14–15). To understand the results, let us look at the fatality ratio, presented in Table 4.1. In the Battle of Jenin, the fatality ratio of Israeli soldiers to Palestinian combatants was 1:1, indicating the level of risk to which the Israeli soldiers were exposed. The same ratio applied in the case of Israeli soldiers to Palestinian noncombatants, indicating a minimum level of risk transfer, and this conclusion is confirmed when we look at the percentage of civilians among total deaths, which stood at about 50 percent. A glance at the numbers of the entire operation (not including the Battle of Jenin) reveals a deviation from Jenin’s numbers: less risk to the IDF soldiers and higher transfer of risk to noncombatants with a lower level of discrimination (harming civilians was more prevalent outside the big cities, where the operations were less internationally monitored). Furthermore, only in Jenin was the riskiest mission shouldered almost entirely by a reserve brigade. Interestingly, although the IDF acted more aggressively after the killing of thirteen soldiers, the B’Tselem report (cited in the table) shows that most of the Palestinian fatalities occurred earlier, in the house-to-house searches, before about 90 percent of the residents had gradually left (Rees 2002). It follows that soldiers assumed a high level of risk. Although this risk was partly, and in a limited manner, transferred to the Palestinian population during the first stage, it materialized only when the thirteen soldiers were killed. Israel intentionally risked upper-class soldiers, those who still staffed the elite infantry

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Table 4.1: Fatality Ratios in Operation Defensive Shield

The Operation/ Ratio

Battle of Jenin

Israel’s Soldiers to Palestinian Combatants

Israel’s Soldiers to Palestinian Noncombatants

Ratio of Palestinian Noncombatants Among Total Palestinian Fatalities

1:1 (23:23)

1:1 (23:22)

0.5 (22/[22 + 23])

1:12 (6:70)

0.7 (70: [70 + 29])

Operation Defensive 1:5 (6:29) Shield (without Jenin)

Note : Percentages are rounded. The actual number of fatalities is in parentheses. The numbers include only those killed directly by the IDF in Operation Defensive Shield throughout the West Bank (March 29–May 10, 2002) but do not include the dead who cannot be classified as either combatants or noncombatants (according to their participation in hostilities). Sources: Data about Palestinians killed by hostile action were taken from B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories: https://www.btselem.org/statistics/ fatalities/before-cast-lead/by-date-of-event/westbank/palestinians-killed-by-israeli-security-forces, accessed September 8, 2018. Information about Israel’s fatalities was taken from Israel Ministry of Defense (undated).

brigades, more than other soldiers and to a greater, or at least equal, extent to enemy noncombatants. This level of risk is even more significant as the ratio of forces between the Israeli and Palestinian troops was about 3:1, which denied Israel unequivocal superiority (Henkin 2003, 54). To recall, troop shortages may be compensated for by increased firepower (Keiler 2005, 2). Still, it is worth emphasizing that the issue here is risk in terms of immediate fatalities, as explained in Chapter 3; it is not an analysis of the total damage the Israelis inflicted on the camp’s population. Under the dust that covered the camp and with denial of access for humanitarian and medical aid and the media (United Nations 2002, 16, 36; Weizman 2007, 203), Israel was accused of perpetrating a “massacre” in the camp (Henkin 2003, 34–35). Even if the facts presented here show a very different picture, the damage to the camp was enormous. As Human Rights Watch (2002, 4) reported, at least 140 buildings were completely destroyed,

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severe damage was caused to more than 200 buildings, and approximately 4,000 people, more than a quarter of the population of the camp, were rendered homeless. The United Nations criticized Israel, stating that the “destruction was both disproportionate and indiscriminate” (United Nations 2002, 15). The images of destruction impelled the Bush administration to press Israel to end Operation Defensive Shield (Ben-Eliezer 2012, 130), leaving the impression among the Israeli public that although the operation had been a military success, it nevertheless harmed Israel politically (Yaar and Hermann 2002). To better understand the interaction created by the legitimacies in Defensive Shield, it is important to note that Israel refrained from extending this operation to the Gaza theater. An operation in the densely populated areas of Gaza would require more forces than on the West Bank because the area was saturated with weapons posing a far greater risk to the troops (Yaalon 2004). Since Israel could not expose its soldiers to such a high risk and was also limited in its legitimacy (mainly internationally) of using massive firepower to reduce the risk to soldiers, it opted not to act in Gaza (cell C in Table 2.2). Britain in Iraq exemplifies another variation of risking one’s own soldiers. 4.2 Risking Lower-Class Soldiers Before analyzing the case of Basra, I present the overall historical decline of the legitimacy of sacrificing in industrialized democracies. The Historical Decline of the Legitimacy of Sacrificing in the West Legitimacy of sacrificing has declined in industrialized democracies since World War II, especially since the 1960s, and it has primarily affected the upper-middle class. This drop has also extended to the unwillingness to pay high taxes to maintain the armed forces, but the declining tolerance for casualties was the most restrictive. This tolerance was undermined by several social factors that also affected the motivation for sacrifice required to maintain conscription.3 First, the rise of individualism in the post–Cold War period came at the expense of dedication to serving one’s country and effectively contradicted the core values of military service, such as sacrifice and discipline. When life in Western societies is increasingly seen as a source of opportunity and no longer a threat, the sacrifice of lives is viewed as an intolerable waste of human potential (Inglehart, Puranen, and Welzel 2015). This trend has been reinforced by the impact of the shrinking size of the family, leading to increasing parental and political resistance to military

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adventures that risk lives (Luttwak 1995). Individualism has also eroded the significance of military death with the rise of a therapeutic culture that emerged largely from the language of rights and, for example, privileged the suffering and trauma of Vietnam veterans (Illouz 2007, 59). Second, the decline in the sense of external threats following the demise of the Cold War also played a significant role in the development of the casualty sensitivity syndrome. As the Cold War began to draw to a close during the 1970s, the cost of security became relatively higher. Although economic and physical security continued to be valued positively, their relative priorities declined over time (Inglehart 1990). Global conflicts simply did not threaten the interests of the US and European NATO members sufficiently to justify putting large numbers of soldiers at risk in fighting nonexistential “wars of choice” (Everts 2002; Inglehart et al. 2015; Luttwak 1996; H. Smith 2005). With the empowerment of the market society, moreover, a postheroic mentality emerged that rested on a capitalist vision of the economy with the peaceful spirit of commerce at its center (Münkler 2005, 71–72). In tandem with casualty sensitivity, the delegitimation of the draft system, in the form of conscientious objection (concurrent with the rise of antinuclear concerns; Joffe 1987), increased the volunteer component in most Western European armies. Gradually this process led to the phasing out of the draft in most Western democracies (Ajangiz 2002). It is important to note that the decline in the subjective perception of the external threat also devalues military sacrifices symbolically. The greater the perceived threat is to the nation’s existence, the worthier military sacrifice becomes and, by extension, the status of those sacrificing is also enhanced. Such devaluation was among the driving forces behind the demise of the draft system and the increasing intolerance for sacrificing life (Levy 2013a). Third, the reduced sense of threat prompted the downsizing of the military. Military service became selective, first through selective conscription and later through the transition from conscription to a volunteer force. Selectivity increased casualty sensitivity and had other negative impacts on the value of military service (Levy 2013a). As Marvin and Ingle (1999, 87) asserted, the “value of a sacrificial episode depends on how many bodies touch blood directly and how many other bodies are linked by personal ties of blood and affection to them.” It follows that a low number of casualties devalues such episodes and may imperil rather than empower social bonds. More concretely, when casualty rates are low, the media present the fallen to decision makers and the public as individuals,

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with names and faces (Ben-Ari 2005; Dauber 2001; Rasmussen 2006, 78). Individualization increases sensitivity to loss. To illustrate, more American soldiers (6,800) died in the month-long Battle of Iwo Jima than in the entire Iraq War. As Mueller (2005, 45) demonstrated, by early 2005, when combat deaths were around 1,500 in Iraq, a survey showed that over half of the respondents considered the war a mistake, the same as the percentage of those who considered the Vietnam War a mistake during the 1968 Tet Offensive after nearly 20,000 soldiers had already died. A fourth factor that undermined the motivation for sacrifice was the decline of republicanism. Republicanism, which denotes that the state mobilizes its citizenry to sacrifice for war in return for rights and protection, declined with the rise of liberalization and the market society, and thus undermined the social contract that sustained sacrifice. Most important, citizenship gradually became divorced from soldiering. The middle class was able to realize considerable achievements that were no longer dependent on military service (Burk 1995). Citizenship has been increasingly viewed as a status one is born with and not something one has to pay for by serving in the military (Leander 2004, 579). Consequently, this process diminished the impact of rights and other social rewards as motivating sacrifice among the middle class, the social backbone of citizen armies. In addition, the decline of the welfare state reduced the benefits enjoyed by servicepersons by increasing inequality. Thereafter, the commitment of citizens, particularly those with higher incomes, to defending their country is challenged, because the sense of fairness is undermined (Anderson and Hirsch-Hoefler 2010). Fifth, death became less justified because medical and social advances drastically changed the perception of mortality, distancing death from the experience of young people (Cerulo 2006, 43). Finally, it was precisely the use of RMA weapons that further undermined the legitimacy of sacrificing: the “boomerang effect” of the RMA, in Rasmussen’s terms (2006, 73–88). He asserted that the RMA helped the United States and its allies make wars more politically acceptable by reducing their own casualties. However, it also produced an unintended consequence, the perception of wars as almost risk free, that paradoxically increased casualty sensitivity for two interrelated reasons: the fewer soldiers who were killed, the greater the sensitivity to their loss, and by giving a false sense of security in the belief that wars are relatively cost free, it became harder to justify death when soldiers inevitably died. Public expectations that victory could be achieved at minimal human cost were heightened (Gelpi 2006).

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All in all, increasing casualty sensitivity implies that the justification for military death and its meaning are questioned, especially as military death is an organized death handled by the state (Ben-Ari 2005). Consequently, the threshold for risking soldiers has become higher, particularly in democracies (see Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler 2009, 1–2). Democracies reacted to this change by reforming their militaries (in addition to the option of reducing risk by reducing military deployments). Since the legitimacy crisis surrounding the draft and the syndrome of casualty sensitivity involved mainly the privileged upper-middle-class groups, the state had little to offer them in terms of new rights. Still, in an attempt to reattract privileged groups, the state legitimized sacrificing by monetarily rewarding servicepersons directly (mainly by providing better pay), a move that has typified the vocationalization trend experienced by Western armies since the 1970s (Moskos 1977). Eventually, vocationalizing the armed forces encouraged enlistment from among lower social groups, including immigrants and, gradually, more women. Monetary incentives offered by the military matched their expectations more than those of middle-class groups, and they expected to use the military as a pathway to first-class citizenship (see Krebs 2006). Realignment of the social composition of Western militaries, along with other factors, gradually led to the phasing out of the draft in most industrialized democracies. Social realignment shifted the risk from middle- to lower-class groups with increasing integration of contractors. With a growing presence of lower social groups in combat roles, the political impact of casualty sensitivity declined as long as less privileged groups who were less powerful, more politically apathetic and conservative, were the ones put at greater risk. A more submissive tone governed the bereavement discourse. At the same time, groups with political power were much less politically engaged because their members’ vulnerability to military sacrifices had declined, as had their commitment to the troops with the transition from state-mandated sacrifice (draft) to voluntary enlistment. As a result, governments acquired more political freedom to risk soldiers (Vasquez 2005). Increased shielding of upper-middle-class groups was also reflected in decisions to refrain from deploying reserve soldiers. Casualties among reservists were more likely to ignite protest because reservists are more committed than regular conscripts to family life and careers and, in many cases, are largely drawn from upper-middle-class families. With this in mind, President Lyndon Johnson refused to mobilize the National Guard and the reserves during the Vietnam War (Vasquez

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2009, 102–105). Similarly, growing casualty sensitivity drove Israeli commanders to reduce the deployment of reserve soldiers to areas of danger (Levy 2012, 63–64). However, the vocationalization of the armed forces in the United States and Britain shifted this overall trend and encouraged the deployment of reserve forces recruited on a voluntary basis. With the decline of active-duty forces, the reserves became more necessary and relevant to post–Cold War deployments (Dandeker, Greenberg, and Orme 2011). In tandem, and no less important, since the 1970s, was the process of transforming armies in industrialized democracies from labor-intensive to professional capital- and firepower-intensive militaries. Technologization and, more specifically, RMA with the increasing use of precision-guided munitions, reduced the scope and intensity of military sacrifice by distancing many combatants from risky engagements with enemy troops and shortening the duration of war by using “shock and awe” methods. Responding to casualty sensitivity was leveraged to justify the development and procurement of more expansive weapon systems (Schörnig and Lembcke 2006). However, as Caverley (2014) explained, not only were the human costs lower, but the fiscal costs required for financing the capital-intensive militaries were shifted in many democracies to the affluent minority—those bearing the brunt of taxation. Shielding the middle class from the costs of war reduced the threshold for using force. The death hierarchy has therefore been modified, and the state may favor the protection of soldiers drawn from upper-middle-class groups over those drawn from less-privileged classes, who increasingly fulfill combat roles, especially those incurring risk to life. Cell B in Table 2.2 captures this situation. Variations in the risk level of one cluster of groups (in this case, upper-middle-class groups) thus affected the level of another cluster, lower social groups, on the hierarchy of risk. The legitimacy of sacrificing generally declines but is partly balanced out by the willingness to sacrifice among less advantaged groups, regardless of the legitimacy of using force. Britain exemplified this pattern in Iraq, and more specifically in Basra. The State of Legitimacies in Britain Britain controlled the Iraqi city of Basra following the occupation of 2003. It provided the leadership of the Multi-National Division (South East), which covered the southern Iraqi provinces, where Basra was the most important city. A few months after the US-led invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in April 2003, insurgency erupted, directed mainly against the US-led

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coalition. For its part, Britain stabilized security in the region of Basra until a new wave of Shia looting occurred in late 2005, suspected of being supported by Iran, after control of Iraq had been transferred to Iraqi sovereignty in 2004. From this period, the number of attacks on coalition troops and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) increased with a rise in sectarian violence between Shias and Sunnis and intra-Shia tensions. UK forces were exposed to a higher level of threat, particularly from improvised explosive devices (IEDs; House of Commons 2006, 6–9). Against this background, in September 2006, Britain together with the ISF launched a large counterinsurgency undertaking, Operation Sinbad, that effectively lasted until May 2007. Before analyzing the operation, it is necessary to link the legitimacy on the eve of this operation with the ingrained component of legitimacy in Britain. Historically, the legitimacy of using force was moderate. Britain experienced remilitarization in the form of what Edgerton (1991) termed “liberal militarism.” It relied on a professional army rather than conscription, which had ceased to exist since 1962, and mainly on technology manufactured by private industries. Liberal militarism “advances under the banner of its own universalist ideology and conception of a world order, whether Pax Britannica or Pax Americana” (141), encouraging the deployment of forces to police a “new world order.” The first Gulf War of 1991 marked the turning point in Britain’s perception about its new global role. Furthermore, this liberal militarism and the policing that derived from it were inspired by the imperial heritage of the United Kingdom, which, from the nineteenth century, had engaged in domestic forms of policing in Northern Ireland and in post-imperial limited operations abroad. Thus, as one of the major architects of the post–World War II global order, Britain committed itself to playing an international role, guided by economic and other interests in addition to its imperial heritage (Berndtsson, Dandeker, and Ydén 2015, 312). This politicalcultural background may explain the engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. The legitimacy of using force was not unlimited. Imperial heritage legitimizes overseas interventions but also restricts the force deployed. The British Army’s history of imperial policing, including the experience of violent civil strife and terrorism in Northern Ireland, made internal security the norm while conventional war became the exception. Since the 1940s, moreover, Britain has internalized the basic principle of minimum force as a key to success in counterinsurgency. Insurgency was not considered as principally a military problem, and it was accepted that security could be improved only through attempts to accommodate and negotiate with local forces. The British placed a premium on winning “hearts

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and minds.” Therefore, the tactical manual (UK Ministry of Defence 2001) prescribed that the “number of insurgents killed should be no more than is absolutely necessary to achieve the success,” adding that “the killing of a teenage gunman could be justifiable in military terms but its possible effect on his community could jeopardize a . . . Hearts and Minds operation” (section 4, article 18). Soldiers were therefore trained to deal with civilian populations by living, fighting, and dying with indigenous forces; functioning in small units with limited technology; practicing persuasion and using force only when no other choice existed; and using the minimum force necessary, with the commanders’ capacity to escalate and deescalate according to the situation. Consequently, on the ground, British soldiers were tolerated more by the local population because they refrained as best they could from interfering in the internal conflicts of the areas they occupied. This further bolstered the measures taken by the British to minimize collateral damage (Bulloch 1996; Cassidy 2008, 88–93; Cornish 2003; Marston 2010, 78). Clearly, the British approach was more restrained than that of the Americans, as we will see. Politically, the main obstacle to the post-imperial impetus to intervene could potentially have been the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which formed the major antiwar player. However, its power and that of other peace movements declined in the 1980s when the government decided to deploy cruise missiles, and then further in the 1990s when the Labour Party, from which many of the antiwar supporters came, supported the Gulf War (Klandermans 2010, 64, 71). In the case of Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted, with good reason, on UN Security Council Resolution 1441 of November 2002 to legitimize the war at home (Byers 2004, 173–174). This resolution afforded Iraq “a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the Council,”4 with weapons of mass destruction at the center of this disarmament. Indeed, an overwhelming majority, influenced by the prime minister, had promised (in polls) to approve a war if it were backed by such a resolution (Verhulst and Walgrave 2010, 55). With this public support and support by the ruling Labour Party, the leadership could dismantle the antiwar opposition. At its peak in February 2003, about 750,000 people took to the streets in one of the largest-ever demonstrations in the United Kingdom, to speak out against the war.5 Nevertheless, rather than stopping the war, the antiwar movement generated an internal split among the party’s leaders (Verhulst and Walgrave 2010, 45). Also instrumental in diffusing protest was the model of recruitment. After World War II, compulsory military service and reserve obligations had fallen

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into disfavor with the British and become unpopular for disrupting young people’s work and family life, and hence politically costly for deployment. As a result of this, and following limitations on the deployment of conscripts in the Suez crisis of 1956, the government decided to end the draft (Vasquez 2011). Thereby, the leadership released itself from political constraints and regained greater autonomy to deploy troops. As Shaw (1988, 57) maintained, “Total war is at its very best a two-way process, in which the State coerces the population but the population endorses its own coercion and thereby improves its position in and influence on the State.” Decreasing military participation in favor of capital-intensive warfare, starting from the Falklands/Malvinas War of 1982, reversed the relationship between states and the majority of their citizens, thereby helping leaders to emancipate themselves from dependence on their citizens for success in war. Thus, we can better understand why anti-Iraq protest was less likely to emerge as an enduring effort. Restraining the use of violence against enemy civilians required more willingness to risk troops. Indeed, the legitimacy of sacrificing was higher in Britain than in the United States. Historically, the United Kingdom’s casualty sensitivity has been low. With the tradition of overseas interventions for the sake of survival, the country tolerated the sacrifice they entailed. Herein also lies the main difference between Britain and the United States, where a more individualistic culture and less need to fight for survival produced a lower degree of tolerance to casualties (Caniglia 2001). Furthermore, the focus on less lethal practices in counterinsurgency operations increased casualty tolerance so as not to risk the mission, although the risk to the troops was not ignored but calculated relative to the prospect of success (Cornish 2003, 126–127). Against this background, for example, Britain was more willing than the United States to send ground troops to Kosovo in 1999 (see Chapter 6). Typically, moreover, the transition to the all-volunteer force weakened the elite’s commitments to the troops. Indicatively, throughout the 1990s, public and parliamentary debates were rarely obsessive about casualty rates (126). From this relatively high level of willingness to sacrifice derived the special “war fighting ethos,” for which British troops were uniquely socialized relative to other NATO militaries. In addition to special duties and rights, this ethos obliges soldiers “to lay down their lives in the performance of their duties” (King 2013, 274). Motivation to risk inevitably follows this obligation. Still, this obligation was not unlimited. McCartney (2010, 419) argued:

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What the British public has not taken into account is . . . [that] requiring the armed forces to minimize civilian casualties exposes them to greater danger on the ground. Yet at the same time the public wants to preserve the right to life of those soldiers, which can be achieved only by minimizing their exposure to danger in theatre. On the one hand the public requires more from their armed forces, and on the other it requires less. This is a conundrum that is difficult to resolve.

Another important layer of the legitimacy of sacrificing was the willingness to bear the economic brunt of the deployment. As Dandeker (1994, 645) identified, the end of the Cold War brought about pressures exerted by influential sectors of the public for downsizing the armed forces and diverting funds for spending on nonmilitary goods. Although Britain had traditionally spent a relatively high percentage of its gross national product on defense, military spending was cut. In sum, the encounter between a moderate level of legitimacy of using force with a higher level of legitimacy of sacrificing enabled Britain’s participation as the major US ally in Iraq and its enduring deployment there after the invasion. Operation Sinbad, Basra, 2006–2007: The Legitimacies on the Eve of the Operation In 2006, Britain launched Operation Sinbad in Basra, aimed at creating the conditions for handover of the city to the elected Iraqi government’s control through its security organizations. Practically, the goal was to root out death squads and curb the empowerment of the Shi’ite Jaysh al Mahdi (JAM) militias; this would be achieved through district-by-district searches, seizing weapons, arresting terrorist suspects, and clearing the police station where insurgents had taken control. Another important goal was to help residents rebuild the city by protecting reconstruction works (Report of the Iraq Inquiry 2016, section 9.5, 7, 37; Wither 2009, 624). At the same time, efforts were made to train the local security forces to assume responsibility (Maciejewski 2013, 168). Legitimacy of Using Force Legitimacy of using force was moderate. Britain was the major US ally in Iraq and its partner in initiating UN Resolution 1441 that legally legitimized the war, at least in part, over opposition in most of Europe. Later, Resolution 1483 in May 2003 recognized “the specific authorities, responsibilities, and obligations under applicable international law of these states [United States and United Kingdom] as occupying powers under unified command.” This resolution legitimized the occupation and the resulting measures taken to protect the Iraqi population. Resolution

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1546 from June 2004 legitimized the status of the Multi-National Force headed by the United States and United Kingdom as now operating under Iraqi sovereignty. Resolution 1723 adopted in November 2006, concurrently with the launching of Sinbad, provided renewed authority for the Multi-National Force. Notwithstanding legalization, to the extent that legitimacy was affected not only by the level of threat but also by the belief that it could be effectively eliminated by military means, the buildup of Sinbad coincided with a period of skepticism that lowered this legitimacy. From the outset and in line with its heritage, Britain’s approach to the occupation of Iraq was less force oriented than that of the United States; Britain advocated moderate rules of engagement and supported the transition of power from the coalition to local Iraqis to enable withdrawal, with the UN playing a leading role. As the inquiry commission, headed by Sir John Chilcot and created by Prime Minister Gordon Brown (Blair’s successor) in 2009 to learn lessons from the Iraq War, concluded: “Between 2003 and 2009, the UK’s most consistent strategic objective in relation to Iraq was to reduce the level of its deployed forces” (Report of the Iraq Inquiry 2016, Executive Summary, 123). To a large extent, the key to this British approach was the assumption, developed by local commanders and adopted by politicians, according to which “the increase in violence in the region is due largely to the local struggle for political and economic power, rather than from a sectarian-based insurgency” (House of Commons 2006, 8). Not for nothing Britain compromised its security interests in the form of stabilizing Basra and suspended the initiation of counterinsurgency as long as it could until Sinbad began, during which time Britain tolerated the deterioration of the security situation in the region. Skepticism regarding the logic of forceful intervention thus diluted the legitimacy of using force. Indeed, a poll conducted on the eve of Sinbad revealed that 61 percent of voters wanted British troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2006, even if they had not completed their mission, and Washington wanted the troops to stay; only 30 percent backed the government’s commitment to keep troops in Iraq as long as their presence was considered necessary. Even the government signaled its intention to cut troop numbers as the Iraqi Army would be in a position to take over security responsibilities (Glover, Norton-Taylor, and Wintour 2006), effectively signaling the unworthiness of the risky deployment for this unpopular war. More generally, the leadership of Prime Minister Blair lost much of its legitimacy when it became apparent around the time of the 2005 general election that his government had lied to the public about the reasons for going to war: the false threat that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Consequently, Parliament became more involved in decision making (Strong 2017, 2–3).

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Furthermore, even in the United States, belief in the prospect of achievement in Iraq was declining. British policymakers took heed of new voices in Washington on the eve of midterm elections that highlighted the unpopularity of the war so that a policy shift was on the table (see section 8.1). In the end, in November 2006, the Republicans lost their majority in both houses and the advocates of the withdrawal won the majority (Report of the Iraq Inquiry 2016, section 9.5, 46, 51). Domestic politics played its role as well. Following the London bombings of July 2005, when a series of suicide attacks claimed the lives of dozens of people, relations with the local Muslim minority attracted more attention. For the Blair government, legitimation of the UK involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan in the form of the War on Terror was a necessary condition for political survival. At the same time, the intervention in Muslim countries caused unrest among British Muslims (Brighton 2007) and potentially could have reduced the trust that using force benefited the whole community. Public reservation was translated into London’s attitude toward the mission in Basra. Ending the unpopular war was not the only item on the agenda; the need to divert more resources to win the less unpopular mission in Afghanistan also motivated decision making. London acknowledged the perception that the war in Iraq was being lost and therefore focused on bolstering NATO’s mission in Afghanistan (Bennett 2014b). Therefore, although Sinbad was aimed at handing over responsibility to the ISF to end the unpopular war, Britain nevertheless sought to do so by “creating a credible narrative for exit rather than creating credible results” (Maciejewski 2013, 163). “There was no appetite [in London] for any sort of surge operation,” testified Lieutenant General Richard Shirreff, who served as the Commander of the Multi-National Force in southeastern Iraq and initiated this operation.6 To some extent, while London wanted an exit, the operation was pushed from the bottom up by the field generals (Elliott 2015, 116–117). For them, withdrawing without results signified a blow to the reputation of the British Army.7 Strongly determined to succeed, General Shirreff declared that “the British Army was not going to lose its name in Iraq” (cited in Maciejewski 2013, 162). His goal was to set the conditions for an effective handover, while London sought the same under any conditions (163). Furthermore, part of this agenda was driven by the desire to give the United Kingdom a real achievement in Iraq and differentiate it from the United States, whose conduct in Iraq increasingly suffered from a lack of international legitimacy (157). Nevertheless, General Shirreff ’s expectations did not accord with the lower legitimacies of both using force and sacrificing (economically), from which derived

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the limited resources secured for this operation (Maciejewski 2013, 161–163). As Shirreff lamented, the force lacked basic resources, including the necessary number of troops.8 However, to reduce the British commitments to the US agenda, the British decided not to allow the use of US support in Basra (Report of the Iraq Inquiry 2016, section 9.8, 494). Here, we see one of the tensions inherent in the legitimacies: while the layer of tolerance for casualties within this legitimacy of sacrificing facilitated the operation, as detailed below, and was aligned with the legitimacy of using force, the layer of economic sacrifice restricted the operation. To further indicate the mood in London, even General Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, stunned his government in October 2006 by calling for rapid withdrawal of British troops from Iraq and challenged the government’s policy to commit to the ongoing military interventions.9 Dannatt’s statement reflected the extent to which many British officers and soldiers had lost faith in their mission (Wither 2009, 627). Overall, argued Wither, “unlike many European armies, British forces have retained a warfighting ethos and have not shrunk from direct combat in Iraq and Afghanistan” (622), but following battles like that of Fallujah (in which overwhelming force was used; see Chapter 7), British commanders wondered if they had enough troops to fight in the manner of combat required (ibid.). Furthermore, Dannatt acknowledged the damage to the military’s status as standing above political debate by stating his “outrage” at reports about how injured soldiers recuperating in hospitals alongside civilians were confronted by antiwar campaigners who called on them to remove their uniforms. This was a unique form of protest that targeted soldiers directly, not the politicians, and those in the most socially honored position as injured soldiers. In part, this legitimacy deficit on the eve of Sinbad was offset by five mechanisms, the first of which was derived from the Iraqis themselves: from the elected Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to the residents of Basra who suffered from the insurgents. To a large extent, Sinbad was embedded within the Iraqi government’s plan to stabilize Basra10 and improve the day-to-day lives of its residents.11 Legitimation bred restraint. Thus, while the original plan included detention operations, following a meeting with Maliki, in which the prime minister’s reluctance to fight by deploying the ISF was revealed, Sinbad was limited to a series of strikes in less sensitive areas of the city. It was aimed at patrolling the city to protect engineering projects (Report of the Iraq Inquiry 2016, section 9.5, 37–40). A second mechanism offsetting the legitimacy deficit, which was instrumental in limiting antiwar protest, was the fact that the left-center Labour Party initiated and ran the war. Even the Guardian, a left-leaning quality newspaper, covered the

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war in a less critical tone than may have been expected (Fahmy and Kim 2008). A third mechanism was the ineffectiveness of collective action. Public opinion data from 2011 indicated that although most of the public did not believe in the success of the deployment in either Iraq or Afghanistan, only a very small minority reported participation in antiwar activities (Gribble et al. 2015, 135–137). Lack of protest enhances policymakers’ confidence in their legitimate freedom of action. Respect for the armed forces was the fourth mechanism. Increasing people’s respect for the military (which was high, at around 75 percent of the public) was decoupled from public opposition to the military deployments in both Iraq and Afghanistan (Gribble et al. 2012, 143–150). Respect can be considered a component of trust—if not in the military’s performance, at least in the institution—and it can be instrumental in reinforcing the generals’ ability to sell policies to the public and mitigating opposition to war. In Britain, the local version of “support the troops” (a phenomenon developed during the Iraq era in the United States) took the shape of fairly positive coverage of the war in the media, partly through journalists being embedded with the troops, and, in turn, the desire to support the troops in part shifted public opinion toward a pro-war position (Lewis 2004). In general, “support of the troops” diverts public opinion away from the policies to the troops themselves and delegitimizes antiwar dissent as an attack on “our” soldiers (Stahl 2009). A fifth mechanism was created when neither the public nor human rights organizations exerted effective pressure on the government to inquire into the real numbers of fatalities among Iraqi noncombatants. As the Report of the Iraq Inquiry (2016, section 17) revealed, the government was aware of media and NGO reporting on the high levels of civilian casualties. However, “[those] reports did not trigger any work within the Government either to determine the number of civilian casualties or to reassess its military or civilian effort” (ibid., 218), even though the government was concerned to sustain domestic support in light of claims that troops had killed large numbers of civilians (ibid.). Criticism even escalated to accusations about manufacturing ignorance to deliberately deflect political criticism (Rappert 2012). Such inaction—and even deliberate inaction—is possible only when claims and reports from the bottom up do not mature into effective pressure or protests to change the course of action, indicating that the level of legitimacy of using force was not so low as to restrict government freedom of action. Legitimacy of Sacrificing On the eve of Sinbad, the legitimacy of sacrificing was moderate as well—not as high as in the first stages of the deployment (witness the pressure to adopt

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an exit strategy) but still high enough to energize the operation. In general, the British public’s acceptance of military deaths and injuries was associated with both the perception of the mission as successful and the rightness of the deployment (Gribble et al. 2015, 134–135). Society became increasingly intolerant of casualties caused unnecessarily by the lack of protective equipment, unsuitable medical treatment, accidents, and failures (Edmunds 2012, 279; Forster 2012, 277; McCartney 2010, 419). Indeed, on the eve of the operation, General Dannatt publicly expressed his concerns about the “unacceptable” treatment of injured soldiers and even warned the defense secretary about the danger of breaking the “covenant” between a nation and its army.12 A year later, the general successfully convinced the government to increase soldiers’ pay while lamenting the hitherto low payment and its impact on motivation.13 It was precisely this late achievement that testified to the social marginality of the forces. With the perception of the deployment in Iraq as less successful than that in Afghanistan, it can be surmised that tolerance for casualties was not high. However, even in the case of Afghanistan, things changed for the worse. Since 2006, the year of Sinbad, mounting casualties in Afghanistan pushed the media to cover these more extensively, and this turning point was associated with decreasing support for the war, which dipped below 50 percent (Kriner and Wilson 2016). Indeed, anticasualty collective action was more evidenced in the case of Iraq. The parents of Military Families Against the War, founded in 2003 by bereaved parents to campaign for the withdrawal from Iraq and an investigation into the war, wrote in an open letter: Our loved ones gave their lives in the service of this country. . . . When they went to that war they believed they were being sent to defend our country. They were told it was their duty to disarm the Saddam regime of its weapons of mass destruction. . . . We now believe our prime minister, Tony Blair, misled the people of this country as to the true reasons for the war in Iraq. . . . This is why we are calling for an independent public inquiry into the decision to go to war. We must restore accountability to public life.14

In other words, the parents utterly discredited the war because of its misleading aims. It was a typical subversive bereavement discourse. The Military Families’ campaign was part of a larger endeavor to direct the public’s attention to the costs of war, by, inter alia, naming individuals killed as a result of what they regarded as an illegitimate war. A further negative impact on the legitimacy of sacrificing caused the incident in which six Royal Military Policemen were killed in the southern town of Majar

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al-Kabir in June 2003 by a mob attack on a police station. The bereaved parents blamed the military for following flawed procedures.15 While such cases point to a decline in the parents’ trust in the armed forces (Forster 2006, 1053), the parents of these six fallen did not question the cause of war. Instead, they focused their criticism on the poor performance of the military command, which, for them, was responsible for their sons’ deaths. This was midlevel in the bereavement spectrum between subversion and submissiveness. However, following this event, policymakers gave more weight to force protection (Maciejewski 2013, 160). For good reason, prior to Sinbad, the troops deployed in Basra limited their ground movements to minimize casualties on both sides (Ucko 2010, 141). Troops’ motivation also played its role: unpopular war with pressure to exit rendered the sacrifice unworthy and affected the soldiers’ morale (see Wither 2009, 625–626). Declining legitimacy of sacrificing could be offset by four mechanisms. First, given the small number of British casualties and the social marginality of the British Army, the government was effective in suppressing the opposition (Ware 2010). Instrumental was the lack of public interest in military news, which also led to a lack of familiarity with the real numbers of British casualties (Gribble et al. 2015, 139–140). Second, individuation of the dead, which includes naming the dead, has become a form of the memorialization of war sacrifice. The Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington DC, with its 58,000 names, is a prominent example. Individuation may have two contradictory effects. When casualty levels are low, the media can present soldiers to the public and decision makers as individuals, with names and faces, or in body bags (Ben-Ari 2005; Dauber 2001; Rasmussen 2006, 78). Individualization increases sensitivity to loss. At the same time, the opposite result may occur. Stow (2008) cites the New York Times series “Portraits of Grief,” which published individual biographies of the New York City victims of 9/11. Stow maintains that this approach creates a “pornography of grief ” that becomes the dominant mode of memorialization. Consequently, What began as a tradition of naming the individual dead as a way of bringing home the enormity of national tragedy . . . has devolved into a self-defeating focus on the individual, both victim and viewer, that ultimately serves to erase the very thing it was supposed to remember, with the political now obscured by the personal. (Ibid., 238)

Thus, the individuation of death stimulates a discourse that may divert attention from the political implications of the loss to the loss itself, thus corrupting

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deliberative democracy. Whereas Stow studied the impact of memorialization of civilian casualties, a similar picture emerges in the analysis of how the pornography of grief governed British media coverage of families bereaved in the war in Afghanistan and corrupted the political discourse (White 2009). The result was a lack of interest that could reduce collective action. Third, lack of interest is largely entwined with the social makeup of the ranks. The UK volunteer forces drew mostly on young people living in disadvantaged communities (Gee 2007, 98, 127, 129–131). Social makeup affects not only the conformity of the troops but also the weak commitment of the upper classes—the most politically engaged groups (Gribble et al. 2015, 137)—to those dispatched to Iraq. Indicatively, as a survey conducted in 2011 showed, the military was much less respected by people with higher education than others (Gribble et al. 2012, 141–142). Weak commitment was also reflected in the obituaries for soldiers killed in action. They helped legitimate the sacrifices by emphasizing the idea that the fallen soldiers had made a free choice (Zehfuss 2009), thereby also helping to weaken political commitment to the fallen and hence also potential protest. A fourth mechanism was the Military Covenant drafted by the government in 2000, which laid out the mutual obligations between British society and its professional military. This covenant guaranteed that those serving should face no disadvantages compared to other citizens in obtaining public and commercial services. At the same time, the covenant also attempted to idealize society’s commitment to its military and its servicepersons (Forster 2012). It was bolstered by the public’s overwhelming support of troops serving in the wars regardless of opposition to the deployment (Gribble et al. 2012, 143–150). Within the discourse of this covenant, concerns about casualties were raised. However, symbolic rhetoric and material rewards can boost motivation for sacrifice. In sum, this interaction between the legitimacies, both at moderate levels, enabled risking lower-class soldiers, who largely staffed the UK ranks, more than enemy noncombatants in a campaign that was portrayed as a defensive endeavor for the sake of the Iraqi people. Cell B in Table 2.2 captures this situation. However, as always, dynamics governed the operation. The Course of Sinbad Believing that transfer of power to the Iraqis was key, the UK troops shaped their operational style accordingly. From the outset, since Basra was the only military zone under overall British command, the British demonstrated that their

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approach would differ from that of the US troops (Herring and Rangwala 2006, 119). Therefore, immediately after the invasion, British troops were regularly shown on UK television walking around Basra wearing berets, in contrast to the force-protection approach taken by the US military. UK troops signaled a message to the British public that as a result of experience in Northern Ireland, they could adopt a “soft” approach (Fidler 2007). Formally, rules of engagement were more stringent than those of the United States; for example, the British were not permitted to fire on insurgents when the latter no longer posed a direct threat (Wither 2009, 626). Although Britain believed that the zone remained calm because the troops were tolerated for doing little to interfere in local politics (Herring and Rangwala 2006, 163–164), tension was now created between the task of aggressively dealing with insurgents and the operational style adopted. In Sinbad, the pattern was mostly to secure areas rather than take control over the strongholds of the militias or assault them. Sinbad was an offensive with a defensive style. In the beginning, Sinbad was seen as a successful operation. However, Britain lacked sufficient troops. As General Shirreff testified, in each strike into a specific area of the city, the troops could “clear it, hold it for a little time and get some [reconstruction] projects going but then you would have to move on.”16 Thus, since cleared areas could not be held without keeping sufficient troops positioned among the people and the ISF was not ready to take robust control (Report of the Iraq Inquiry 2016, section 9.5, 177), Basra was left in the hands of the militant militia and death squads (section 9.8, 494). Since December 2006, local Shi’ite militias targeted the British forces, both patrols and bases, more intensely, mainly by using snipers, rockets, and IEDs, and killed dozens of soldiers. British troops reacted with an offensive against these militias, but to a limited degree, mainly by opting for a risky tactic of targeted night campaigns to capture or kill insurgents (Maciejewski 2013, 169–171). American commanders criticized the British indecisiveness, blaming them for “waltzing around Basra spending US taxpayers’ money [which funded the reconstruction project].”17 It was only at the end of December 2006 that the British led an attack against the police headquarters in Basra, which had been infiltrated by the militias, and found 127 prisoners; over 80 percent of them showed signs of torture (Report of the Iraq Inquiry 2016, section 9.5, 67). At the same time, the British killed or captured several leaders of JAM (Storrie 2008–2009, 18). Rocket attacks increased the death toll among civilians around the British bases and created the impression that the troops were failing to handle the situation

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(Maciejewski 2013, 170), but Britain did not deploy enough troops on the ground to maintain the mission (Fairweather 2012, 283). So from January 2007, the operation morphed into an endeavor to hand over control to local Iraqis on the assumption that the presence of the UK troops had increased the violence (Maciejewski 2013, 171), because nationalist militias were fighting simply to be free of occupation (Storrie 2008–2009, 18). The United Kingdom would “become part of the problem, rather than the solution” warned Jock Stirrup, Chief of the Defence Staff (Report of the Iraq Inquiry 2016, section 9.8, 493). Operation Zenith, the withdrawal from Basra, then took its course. At the same time, there was pressure and criticism from the American side to delay the withdrawal since, in January 2007, President Bush initiated the surge against the insurgencies and deployed more troops to Iraq.18 However, as General Shirreff explained, “It was quite clear to me that, once Sinbad had run its course, there was no appetite for any further plan, any further surge.”19 As an alternative to the escalation of fatalities on both sides that a delayed withdrawal would entail, the British forces partly withdrew from the city to the Basra Air Base. Their commanders believed this would reduce the attacks on British targets (Report of the Iraq Inquiry 2016, section 9.5, 59, 86). As part of the redeployment, Prime Minister Blair announced in Parliament that there would be a troop reduction in Iraq (114). To facilitate this move with limited effect on their prestige, the British crafted an informal deal with JAM. As early as January, they had acknowledged that force alone could not distance this organization from the cycle of violence and that the Iraqi government was reluctant to launch an assault on it. Therefore, they sought ways to negotiate (Report of the Iraq Inquiry 2016, section 9.5, 82–87). It was agreed that JAM would cease attacks on UK forces and facilitate their exit from Basra in return for suspending strikes on the militia and progressively releasing 120 prisoners (Storrie 2008–2009, 18). As a British brigadier described the dilemma confronting the military, the alternative was to continue to fight and then to bear a similar level of IDF [indirect fire] casualties for the rest of the year: perhaps another 50 UK dead. This view had some advocates within Whitehall, who saw it as the blood-price to be paid to sustain the transatlantic relationship, but it is doubtful that the political appetite for this course existed. (Ibid., 20)

Major General Jonathan Shaw, who succeeded General Shirreff as Commander of the Multi-National Force in January 2007, testified about the impact of casualties on redeployment: “The casualties, the steady drip of casualties [had] a

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ratcheting effect on the political machine of people asking why are we there. . . . It increased the necessity for troop reductions because that was, if you like, the criteria of success.”20 In other words, the legitimacy of sacrificing gradually decreased during the operation. As an alternative to withdrawal or sustaining the deployment by risking British soldiers, which ran counter to the limited appetite in London, Britain could protect the UK and ISF soldiers by inflicting more casualties on Barsawi civilians by increasing the use of standoff fire capabilities. This option, however, stood at odds with the limited legitimacy of using force, especially under the terms of cooperation with the Iraqi government. As the inquiry mission (Report of the Iraq Inquiry 2016, section 9.8) concluded, the initial constraints set by the Iraqi government “contributed to the conditions which led the UK into negotiations with Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM) in early 2007” (494). Boxed within these limitations, an exit strategy became the favorite option, even at the expense of not achieving the goals, especially because the ISF were not yet ready to operate alone and despite the rising concerns that withdrawal would increase the stronghold of Iran (then a tough rival of the West) in Iraq (Report of the Iraq Inquiry 2016, section 9.5, 87–89; section 9.8, 495–498). A move from cell B on Table 2.2 to cell C was set in motion in the form of pursuing nonviolent solutions while compromising original security interests. Accordingly, after a trial cease-fire in June, talks continued and withdrawal began, which ended in September 2007. It included withdrawal from the symbolic Basra Palace, viewed as a humiliation for the UK forces who could not retain control under the massive attacks.21 Consequently, reports delivered in June showed a sharp reduction in attacks against British facilities (Report of the Iraq Inquiry 2016, section 9.5, 173–174). Concurrently, UK forces in Iraq were reduced from 7,000 to 5,500 (180), but soon the attacks were intensified that summer (Ucko 2010, 143). Since the original attempt was to shape a narrative of success, a struggle over the narrative started with the withdrawal. Americans and even senior British figures argued that the security situation was generally worse, while these views contradicted previous messages regarding the success of Sinbad (Report of the Iraq Inquiry 2016, section 9.5, 92, 97–98). General Shirreff admitted that the operation had “failed to achieve the security which was the original genesis of the plan, but it achieved other things.”22 In the final test, the casualty rates in Basra remained at the same level despite the withdrawal (Ucko 2010, 145). The inquiry mission (Report of the Iraq Inquiry 2016, section 9.8, 496) concluded:

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In other words, even if the increasing violence following the withdrawal claimed more Iraqi fatalities and thus disproved the assumption that withdrawals would also reduce fatalities among the Iraqi population, Britain’s main concern was to reduce its own casualties (Bennett 2014b, 280–284). The militias filled the security vacuum that had been created in the city, and this paved the way to a joint Iraqi-American Operation Charge of the Knights in March 2008, which bypassed the UK troops (Mumford 2009, 292–293). After the withdrawal from Basra and until the final withdrawal from Iraq in 2009, Britain lost only a few soldiers in hostile incidents. Thus, the war ended for Britain. Overall, the fatality ratio sums up the entire battle from October 2006 until the withdrawal of September 2007, even if Sinbad was effectively ended in May 2007, as Table 4.2 shows. The ISF lost 16 combatants, while the United Kingdom lost 38 soldiers as a result of hostile fire, most of them during 2007 with the escalating attacks. The coalition (including ISF) killed 71 Iraqi noncombatants and approximately 340 combatants between October 2006 and May 2007. Thus, the fatality ratio between coalition combatants to Iraqi insurgents was about 1:6, reflecting the UK forces’ advantage, but not so high as to spare risks. The ratio between coalition combatants to Iraqi noncombatants was about 1:1.3, around the norm of 1:1, and the proportion of noncombatants among the total Iraqi war dead was about 17 percent (assuming that from May to September 2007, more insurgents were killed than the 340 mentioned, while some of those 340 could probably be considered noncombatants). This was far below the average of 50 percent. Both ratios indicate the extent to which Britain and its local allies risked their own soldiers to minimize collateral killing of local noncombatants by restricting the use of force. Ultimately both legitimacies were at a medium level. The legitimacy of using force rested on the perception of short-term withdrawal backed by the futility of deployment and engagement in Iraqi politics. To some extent, the government could enjoy broader freedom of action mainly due to the limited impact of domestic opposition. Such a gap between reservations about casualties but practical tolerance for the deployment signified a medium level of legitimacy of sacrificing. With both legitimacies at medium level, while the legitimacy of sacrificing dynamically declined, force protection became paramount. In this case, force protection took the form of mission aversion, leading to the exit from Basra and force reduction.

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Table 4.2: Fatality Ratios in Operation Sinbad

Coalition’s Soldiers to Iraqi Combatants

Coalition’s Soldiers to Iraqi Noncombatants

Ratio of Iraqi Noncombatants Among Total Iraqi Fatalities

1:6 (54:340)

1:1.3 (54:71)

0.17 (71/[71 + 340])

Note: Percentages are rounded. The actual number of fatalities is in parentheses. Sources: Information about Iraqi Security Forces was taken from icasualties, an independent website tracking casualties in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars (http://icasualties.org/Iraq/IraqiDeaths.aspx, accessed September 24, 2018). Information about UK casualties came from icasualties (http://icasualties.org/App/ Fatalities, accessed February 14, 2019). Information about Iraqi noncombatants was compiled from Iraq Body Count (https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/, accessed September 24, 2018), and about Iraqi enemy combatants from Maciejewski (2013, 171).

4.3 Conclusion As the two cases in this chapter show, the overall declining legitimacy of sacrificing in both Israel and Britain set limits on the governments’ autonomy to deploy troops in risky, large-scale operations. This was the common ground between the conscript IDF and the volunteer British Armed Forces. Both governments could overcome these limits only as a last resort, so both compromised their initial security interests as much as they could: Israel refrained from capturing the Palestinian cities until terror attacks sharply escalated, and Britain accepted the deterioration of the security situation in Basra until the situation required withdrawal or operation. In both cases, urgency heightened the perception of threat and thereby legitimated not only the use of force but also sacrifices. Still, in both cases, the legitimacy of using force was not high enough to transfer risk from the troops to the local civilians in Jenin and Basra. Therefore, both militaries drew on a relatively high degree of legitimacy of sacrificing through which risk could be taken rather than transferred. This level was high enough not to have to significantly increase the legitimacy of harming local civilians. Lower legitimacy may have maintained inaction. However, in both cases, the legitimacy of sacrificing dynamically declined during the operation with high numbers of casualties combined with failure to accomplish the mission. At this point, however, although both militaries were reluctant to bear more casualties, each took different roads.

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With a higher legitimacy of using force in a perceived “fight for home” against terror, Israel could legitimize, at least domestically, more aggression than the British. So the IDF escalated the use of force against the Jenin camp, while Britain, restricted by more limited legitimacy of using force against the people whose protection had been the aim of its deployment, opted for exit. In view of the difficulties of clearing the Jenin camp from which, allegedly, terror attacks were launched, this option of exit without victory was too politically costly in Israel. It follows that the volunteer British Armed Forces could sustain casualties in an overseas deployment detached from directly protecting the security of the British homeland more than the IDF when deployed to combat terrorists a few dozen miles from the country’s center. Paradoxically, the reliance on more upper-class conscripts, to whom society is committed and whose networks and resources allow them to resist sacrifice, restricted Israel’s legitimacy of sacrificing more than in the case of Britain. When the legitimacy of using force is higher, risk can be shifted from one’s own troops to enemy noncombatants and, by implication, policymakers’ freedom of operation increases. This situation is described in Chapters 6 and 7. But when this legitimacy is not so high and is coupled with more restrictive legitimacy of sacrificing, such as during the finale of Basra, a form of passive force protection is more likely to emerge. Chapter 5 depicts this situation.

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Passive Force Protection in Iraq and Gaza

Despite social realignment—the RMA intertwined with either the transition to voluntary forces (United States and United Kingdom) or social change within the confines of conscription (Israel)—casualty sensitivity may remain high or even rise. This may force governments to reshape the death hierarchy so that it favors the lives of its soldiers over those of its own civilians (cell C in Table 2.2) or shifts risk to enemy noncombatants (cell D, as Chapters 6 and 7 show). Several conditions may create this mounting casualty sensitivity. First, autonomous social and cultural trends may be at work, such as those listed in Chapters 2 and 4, that have already negatively affected the tolerance for sacrifice. After all, there is a reinforcement of values hampering military sacrifices such as civil rights, human liberties, and materialism, which affect all segments of society. Second, it takes time for the impact of social realignment and the shift to a firepower-intensive military to mature, because these result from structural reform in recruitment policies and armaments. Reshaping the death hierarchy toward favoring soldiers over civilians may therefore precede the stage at which the state risks soldiers from lower-class groups more than those from the upper-middle class. Providing less security may even be a short-term solution until the structural changes are fully developed. Third, policymakers may tend to ignore the impact of realignments and continue to believe that the public will not tolerate a high toll of combat casualties. Such concerns constrain military deployment (Gelpi Feaver, and Reifler 2009).

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Fourth, casualty sensitivity may extend to lower-class groups as well. Such sensitivity can emerge from the group’s feeling that it has “passed the test” of proving its ability and loyalty or from a sense of being treated unfairly in light of its military sacrifice, as typified by the involvement of African American veterans of World War II in the civil rights movement during the Vietnam War (Cowen 2008, 201–202). Furthermore, as the case of lower casualty tolerance among African Americans suggests, they may be concerned that their community would be asked to bear a disproportionate share of casualties (Gelpi et al. 2009, 87). Nevertheless, in the end, reliance on groups drawn from the lower classes may be insufficient. It may prove necessary, once again, to risk upper-middle-class groups for large-scale military operations or to increase the risk to the lower classes but also protect them when casualty sensitivity mounts. When a low to moderate level of legitimacy of sacrificing is paired with a low to moderate level of legitimacy of using force, the demand for using force is not high, and concerns about casualties keep this legitimacy of using force low. In that case, casualty-averse policies are the outcome, performing force protection. By and large, casualty aversion by means of force protection signifies that the state upgrades the value of soldiers’ lives, thereby reducing the level of protection it offers to its civilians. “Force protection” is often used in the literature as encompassing mainly active methods of risk transfer. Nevertheless, there is a distinction between passive forms, focused on the troops themselves, such as improving the way soldiers are shielded—and to this I would add mission aversion—versus active forms such as risk transfer (for another distinction see Gibson 2009, 1–2). This active-passive distinction is also used in professional military guidelines but with slightly different meanings. This chapter focuses on passive force protection by examining two cases: force protection of the US troops in Iraq, mainly from 2004 through 2006, that took the form of risk aversion, and Israel’s force protection in the form of mission aversion in Gaza in 2008. Active force protection in the form of risk transfer is the focus of Chapters 6 and 7. 5.1 Force Protection: The US Troops in Iraq, 2004–2006 A few months after the US-led invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in April 2003, insurgency erupted, directed mainly against the US-led forces in Iraq. In response, the US troops—and also, though to a lesser extent, the British—employed two methods: passive force protection, the main focus of this section, and risk transfer, as an active method, which is the focus of Chapter 7.

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The State of Legitimacies in the United States It is timely to present the ingrained components of both the legitimacies in the United States prior to the Iraq War. Legitimacy of Using Force Legitimacy of using force has been fairly high, in the sense that the polity accepts the use of force as a suitable tool for solving conflicts that pose threats to the United States. This legitimacy rests on several pillars, especially after the demise of isolationism following World War II. Cultural militarism. Americans, wrote Bacevich (2005, 2), “have come to define the nation’s strength and well-being in terms of military preparedness, military action, and the fostering of (or nostalgia for) military ideals.” During the Cold War, the leadership fused foreign relations, economy, science, education, internal security, and other domains with military power to serve the needs of national security (Kohn 2009). But even later, diffusion of militarism into the civilian sphere reflected and reinforced militarization, such that reality was defined by military means—for example, by glorifying soldiers and romanticizing wars (Lutz 2002)—and was reflected in the popular culture (Bacevich 2005, 111–117). Paradoxically, the entrenchment of the romantic view of the military resulted partly from the liberalization of the military, in that abolishing the draft gave rise to a massive governmental effort to glamorize the military as a means to attract young people to enlist (Roberts 2008, 113–117). America’s global role. The American public and elites believe in “American exceptionalism,” according to which America has a commitment and ability to apply its unique values throughout the world. Seen through the lens of this perspective, even violent behaviors, including mass killings in wars, can be justified by myths such as “the United States behaves better than other nations do” or “the United States is responsible for most of the good in the world” (Walt 2011). In this spirit, America’s liberal tradition not only justifies but also inspires aggressiveness by painting nonliberal adversaries as satanic monsters in a manner that creates hysteria and anxiety at home about an apocalyptic threat to the American way of life (Desch 2010, 427–428). Since the 1990s, neoconservative intellectuals even redefined the US role in the world as a reaction to what they saw as the post-Vietnam weakness. They emphasized the centrality of military power over the reliance on international regimes and the pursuit of America’s global leadership centered on the advancement of American values. As they perceived of those values as unquestionably universal,

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neoconservatives highlighted the requirement to be willing to act decisively and bear the sacrifices it entailed (Bacevich 2005, 73–77). Interests. The use of force served interests and not only (if at all) ideas. During the 1980s and 1990s, the United States shifted its long-established geopolitical priorities toward the energy-rich Persian Gulf. Its vital security interests were reshaped to react forcefully to any attempt by any outside force to gain control of the region (Bacevich 2005, 176–177, 181). The ascendancy of military and security institutions. Empowerment of the military establishment since World War II resulted from the perception that the United States should be willing to solve political problems by using force, captured in Mills’s (1956) account of the new “power elite.” In the post–Cold War era, argued Kohn (2009), the American people agreed to maintain a large military so as to remain the dominant military power globally, and this infrastructure led to increasing the use of force all over the world to provide solutions to global disputes. The combination of these pillars reshaped the new US militarism into a more imperial mode, highlighting the theme of hegemony. This theme indicated “that the imperial power establishes ‘the rules of the game’ by which others routinely play” (Mann 2005, 12), and hegemony is the only reliable guarantor for the security and welfare of the United States (Sohnius 2013, 53). The legitimacy of using force has been reinforced by: Belief in technology. Belief in technology was detached from politics and leaned toward confidence in the omnipotence of technology. According to Hills (2006), it is “a thrusting political and military culture that focuses on war-fighting, technological solutions, and its own hegemonic status.” This combination of factors, she argued, “become[s] political vulnerabilities when they reinforce the belief that power can be exercised independently of the relationships in which it occurs” (636). Consequently, technological solutions offer the preferred repertoire for solving political problems by military means (Aylwin-Foster 2005, 6). A related pillar is the: Aspiration for quick and total results. In the binary belief that the nation is either at war or at peace, society aspires to achieve quick results when conflict erupts. Reading this aspiration, commanders adopt a planning and operational style that tends toward overwhelming force. As the Soldier’s Creed says, the soldier interacts with the enemy to “destroy,” not “defeat” the enemy, which may permit more options (Aylwin-Foster 2005, 8–13). Transfer of risk. From its earliest years, argued Kahl (2007, 38), the US military adopted a subculture of annihilation, holding that direct and overwhelming force

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is necessary to destroy the enemy to achieve victory—an enemy-centered view. The acceptance of a high level of harm caused to enemy civilians to spare American casualties became apparent at least since the atomic bombing of Japan. With the advent of precision weapons, the United States developed a new style of “legalized, risk-averse war that hinged on precision-guided bombs, standardized targeting, and normative levels and types of collateral damage” (Smith 2008, 147). Public indifference to civilian casualties, accompanied by denial of responsibility and even “blame the victims” mentality allowed this approach to be developed (Tirman 2011, 10–13). Nonetheless, capabilities and aversion are restricted by: The centrality of international norms. In response to the human crimes of the Civil War, a subculture of immunity of unarmed civilians developed in tandem, but also in tension, with the subculture of annihilation (Kahl 2007, 39). Nonetheless, its practical application was not fully realized in past wars, including Vietnam. Since Vietnam, the intentional targeting of civilian populations has been questioned and gradually delegitimized among the public and elites for either moral or instrumental reasons. The requirement to protect civilians became more paramount (Valentino 2016). Concurrently, while in Vietnam, the US military waged warfare without considering IHL in its decision making, legal considerations played an important role in shaping combat operations in the Gulf War and significantly more so in the Iraq War (Dill 2015, 6). The United States pioneered the use of precision weapons to buttress the legitimacy of using force by promising respect for noncombatant immunity (Shaw 2005, 84; Zehfuss 2011, 543–545). Legitimacy of Sacrificing The legitimacy of sacrificing has been moderate to low. Politically, the casualtymotivated protest against the Vietnam War marked a significant milestone in the belief about American society’s tolerance for war casualties. As Gelpi et al. (2009, 1) argued: Ever since the Vietnam War, policymakers have worried that the American public will support military operations only if the human costs of the war, as measured in combat casualties, are trivial. The general public, so the argument goes, is highly sensitive to the human toll, and this sets severe constraints on how American military power can be wielded. . . . Americans stop supporting military operations that produce casualties.

Since Vietnam, this wisdom has guided policymaking such as that which determined the exit from Beirut following the bombing of the US Marine barracks

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in 1983 that killed 241 American soldiers. A significant inhibition for sacrifice was the negative memory of Somalia’s Operation Restore Hope, the deployment that the Clinton administration expanded in fall 1993 to secure the UN humanitarian mission in Somalia, but which rapidly retreated in October after eighteen US soldiers were killed. Thereafter, the newly named “Somalia syndrome” emerged, reflecting intolerance for casualties when force is used in pursuit of nonvital interests (Klarevas 2000). Less important for the moment is whether this syndrome was a type of folklore that did not necessarily affect the overall tolerance toward casualties (see Gelpi et al. 2009, 38–45). Even folklore has its impact. Culturally, this approach and the willingness it entailed to overwhelm the opponent in order to protect own soldiers had its roots in “an idealistic valuation of the individual, along the lines of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The materiel luxury of bombs and bullets substituted for soldiers’ lives reinforces the viewpoint that all men are created equal” (Caniglia 2001, 80). But sensitivity to losses does not capture the entire legitimacy of sacrificing. Also, the military’s resources have been questioned. From the end of World War II and especially since the 1970s, the empowerment of the market society, together with the declining existential threats, reduced the legitimacy of sacrificing resources for military needs. The cost of security became heavier as the Cold War drew to a close during the 1970s. These costs became heavier in relative terms, although not necessarily in absolute terms, as economic and physical security continued to be valued positively, but their relative priority declined over time (Inglehart 1990). Military consumption was then portrayed as a burden. The citizen-soldier was replaced by the citizen-taxpayer, and particularly by the citizen-consumer, both of whom favored “purchasing” low-cost security as part of the neoliberal ethos of “small government.” In this spirit, economists have often debated whether military expenditure plays a crucial role in maintaining low levels of unemployment and contributing to growth, or whether it is a burden on growth. The intensification of this debate since the 1970s signals the new ethos of endeavoring to rein in defense budgets (see, for example, Davoodi et al. 2001; Pivetti 1992). This resulted in cutting military spending in real terms, pressures to cut more (Markusen 1992, 392), and downsizing the armed forces, of which the abolition of the draft in 1973 was part. Indeed, phasing out the draft is another consequence of the declining legitimacy of sacrificing. On the surface, this was a direct response to the antiwar protests that emerged from the ranks and potential draftees and their social networks

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during the Vietnam War. However, the first stirrings of this resistance go back to political and social changes. In addition to the general analysis offered in section 4.2, it is worth mentioning that compulsory recruitment was delegitimized in the United States partly because citizenship was gradually divorced from soldiering, when the middle class was able to realize considerable achievements that were no longer dependent on military service (Burk 1995; Moskos 2001). Furthermore, values such as duty, honor, and serving one’s country were supplanted by monetary inducements guided by marketplace standards, signifying the transition from institution to occupation (Moskos 1977). In turn, the move to a volunteer army mitigated casualty sensitivity and increased the legitimation of sacrificing by shifting the burden away from the politically active middle class, who were less willing to sacrifice, to the more motivated and more politically passive lower classes, as elaborated below. Within the confines of this ingrained component in the case of Iraq, US leaders leveraged several mechanisms to legitimize both legitimacies but also adapted their policies to what they read as the status of these legitimacies. Insurgency Reduces Legitimacies It is safe to surmise that the main challenge in Iraq was to legitimize the use of force to a high enough level to compensate for the relative lower level of legitimacy of sacrificing in a war that was inevitably being dragged into a ground deployment. Legitimation for using force in the Iraq War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, was initially high, as largely reflected in the majority supporting the initiation of war: in March 2003, with the invasion of Iraq, 72 percent thought that using military force in Iraq was the right decision (Pew Research Center 2008). This legitimacy rested on the existence of a previous militaristic infrastructure in the US political culture that was reinforced when the United States declared the War on Terror following the 9/11 attacks. Immediately after the attacks, the discourse initiated by the Bush administration was for using force for a continuous struggle against global terror (Kohn 2009, 196–197). The selection of this strategy from the repertoire of options was inspired by the traditional belief that force could solve security problems. Based on this infrastructure, legitimation was developed in two directions. Bottom up, immediately after the 9/11 attacks, neoconservatives in and out of the government began pressing insistently for an all-out invasion of Iraq (Bacevich 2005, 92). Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News network, gave the president this advice: “The American public would tolerate waiting and would be patient, but

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only as long as they were convinced that Bush was using the harshest measures possible. Support would dissipate if the public did not see Bush acting harshly” (Woodward 2002, 207). Top-down, notwithstanding the militaristic infrastructure that encouraged the public to favor the option of war, the administration was constrained in its efforts to persuade the public by linking the option of war to Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction (Foyle 2004). Militarization of the public discourse as a means of mobilizing support was reinforced by invoking additional themes. First, two more variants of Saddamas-threat were used to legitimize the war: his human rights record and his alleged links to international terrorism, and particularly to al-Qaeda (Everts and Isernia 2005, 265–266). Second was framing the meaning of 9/11 in terms of the War on Terror and thereby neutralizing the potential Democratic opposition by setting the boundaries within which the discourse could be legitimately conducted (Krebs and Lobasz 2007). Third was portraying Iraq as part of the “axis of evil” that was threatening the peace of the world. This choice of words evoked memories of World War II in which total war was needed to remove this evil (Western 2005, 117). Furthermore, this anxiety-provoking talk helped to make terrorism dangerous, not so much as a physical threat but as an existential threat to the American way of life (Desch 2010, 427). This framing, moreover, was promoted by the neoconservatives, who were now in a powerful position in the administration (Mann 2005, 8–9). They attributed 9/11 to a sickness infecting the world of Islam and saw the attack as an opportunity to finish off the job that had been left undone in Desert Storm in 1991, and which was viewed as a display of America’s weakness (Bacevich 2005, 87–92). This weakness was also attributed to the “feminization” of American men during the Cold War and thereby a return to “manliness” motivated a military reaction (Tirman 2011, 215). In short, the war was “portrayed as a powerful moral crusade” (Kaldor 2006, 154). Dismissing the roots of enmity between the West and the Muslim nations, and the role of US foreign policy in nurturing it (Butler 2004, 3), might have helped to stifle antiwar protest. A fourth theme was the ambitious strategy of regional transformation involving the toppling of authoritarian regimes and the cultivation of liberty and democracy (Ish-Shalom 2006). This strategy departed from the previous, more moderate American foreign policy (Mearsheimer and Walt 2007, 255–256). To a large extent, this agenda concealed other interests. For example, Mann (2005, 208) concluded that the Bush administration had invaded Iraq to regulate the

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oil market for the benefit of the United States, in contrast to Hussein’s policy of using the oil to further Iraq’s interests. In a similar spirit, Harvey (2005, 5–7) argued that painting the war as a struggle justified by promising freedom to the Iraqi people served the American neoliberal agenda of reshaping the Iraqi economy according to free-market principles. All of these themes were instrumental in conferring meaning on the military mission that extended to setting ambitious war goals required to eliminate inflated threats and legitimizing sacrifice to a society reluctant to pay the high costs of war. In the end, public opinion not only backed the war, but legitimation also split the Democratic Party and paved the way for Congress’s approval. Remilitarization, moreover, reinforced the military establishment and the executive at home, and promoted legislation with infringements of civil liberties and freedoms motivated by a sense of fear (Kohn 2009, 201–205). Still, internal opposition set potential barriers. Antiwar demonstrations started globally in late 2002. In addition, on February 15, 2003, on the eve of the war, millions of people around the world demonstrated against it. As Tarrow (2010, vii) argued, this campaign represented “the largest example of collective action in history to protest against the impending war on Iraq.” It was mainly unique for being “a concerted campaign of transnational collective action—using the new tools of the Internet and more conventional means of mobilization—which brought millions of people together around common goals and against common targets” (Ibid., viii). In the end, the protest failed to stop the war. Just before the February protest, public opinion in most European countries agreed that Iraq was a threat to world peace, but also (by between 68 percent and 87 percent) rejected the possibility that the United States would invade Iraq without UN backing, while in the United States, only 56 percent held this opinion (Verhulst and Walgrave 2010, 55–57)—hence, the efforts that the administration made in the UN to legalize and thereby legitimize the invasion. Manipulating the threat of weapons of mass destruction helped the United States and Britain to pass UN Security Council Resolution 1441 in November 2002, which afforded Iraq the final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations. It was an ambiguous resolution; even without clear authorization for the use of force against Iraq, it served the governments’ interest of legitimizing the war despite skeptical public opinion at home and in Europe. When the United States and Britain invaded Iraq, they claimed this action was authorized (Byers 2004).

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Instrumental to the neutralization of the protest was the structure of war burden. With the abolition of the draft, the burden was shifted from the politically active and less motivated middle class to the more motivated and often politically apathetic lower classes. It was not only an issue of the limited power of the social networks of those sending their children to the military, but also a contractual change in the relations between the state and the recruits. Consequently, the military was marginalized, and public interest in its deployment declined. After all, military participation as a percentage of the total US population in the armed forces dropped from about 2 percent in the Vietnam War to about 0.5 percent in the post-9/11 wars (Taylor et al. 2011, 73). Against this background, laments about the growing civil-military gaps became prominent in the American discourse. Ironically, for example, an American writer justified her choice to write about a military unit of war dogs by arguing that “dogs were one of the few common points of reference between the military and the larger public” (Fallows 2015, 4). To indicate social changes in the military makeup following World War II, when the draft was still in force, the presence of African Americans in the armed forces increased at the same time as motivation to serve among the white middle class declined. During the Vietnam War, to which many African Americans were channeled voluntarily or because of fewer options for deferment, the death rate for African Americans was about 30 percent higher than the average death rate for all American forces fighting in the same theater (Westheider 1997, 13). Later, in the early years of the all-volunteer force, men from the lower classes were more likely to be assigned to combat occupations than men from higher classes (MacLean and Parsons 2010). Overall, the percentage of racial minorities increased from about 25 percent in 1990 to about 36 percent in 2009 (Taylor et al. 2011, 80). With the transition to capital-intensive militaries, relatively highly educated soldiers (including from among minorities) are required to use the increasingly sophisticated weapons (Kentor, Jorgenson, and Kick 2012). Nevertheless, this requirement does not necessarily affect the placement of lower-class soldiers in life-threatening positions (more so in conventional forces than in Special Operation Forces). As detailed below, social mapping of the distribution of casualties confirms this conclusion about the overall change. A supplementary effort was the increasing deployment of contractors. It is not coincidental that as early as 2008, the ratio of military personnel to contractors in the US military had risen from 5:1 during the Vietnam War to 1:1 during the war in Iraq (Congressional Budget Office 2008, 13).

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This combination of social and contractual changes had political implications. As Paul Starr (2010, 65) argued, the “ability to wage war without conscription and with so little call for personal sacrifice from the public may reduce the high threshold for starting wars that has been partly responsible for democracies’ military success,” thus neutralizing the traditional republican-type bargaining over a war’s goals and expectations. Indicatively, as Andrew Bacevich (2007, 79) noted, When it came to invading Iraq, President Bush paid little attention to what voters of the [affluent] First District of Massachusetts or the 50th District of California thought. The people had long since forfeited any ownership of the army. Even today, although a clear majority of Americans want the Iraq war shut down, their opposition counts for next to nothing: the will of the commander-in-chief prevails.

This was the mechanism that helped defuse antiwar protest in the case of Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense when the war was initiated, confirmed in his memoirs (2011, 102): “I was convinced then [during the Vietnam War], and remain convinced now, that if the country had a volunteer system in place during the Vietnam War, the level of violence and protest across the country would have been considerably less.” Consequently, Eikenberry (2013, 10) argued that 90 overseas military deployments occurred in the twenty-seven-year draft period, as opposed to more than 144 during the thirty-nine-year course of the volunteer forces. Thus, “with wellresourced and capable volunteers supplemented by generally willing reservists, America’s politicians have not faced significant organized domestic grassroots opposition to unpopular conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, quite unlike the Vietnam War experience (11).” Complementary to this shift in burden distribution was the method of funding the war. Unlike any other war in American history, argued Joseph Stiglitz (2008), this war was entirely financed by deficits—debt that would be paid in the future and therefore did not affect the short-term burden of taxpayers. Furthermore, this was also the first American war when the administration lowered taxes as the nation went to war. This was part of the attempt to normalize the war, famously expressed in President Bush’s dictum: “the military at war and America at the mall” (see Kohn 2009, 198). In sum, as a lower burden decreases the public’s motivation to monitor the policies of state institutions (see Lake 1992), the social base of antiwar movements narrowed in the United States. In addition to these mechanisms, and as an attempt to quiet critical voices in America and abroad, legally regulated use of technology was employed. More

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than in past campaigns, the air campaign was the most exhaustively legalized part of the war (Dill 2015, 6). Furthermore, as President Bush promised a few weeks after the war started, “more than ever before, the precision of our technology is protecting the lives of our soldiers and the lives of innocent civilians. . . . In this new era of warfare, we can target a regime, not a nation.”1 Legitimacy of sacrificing was initially at a moderate-low level, as ingrained in the political culture. This socially ingrained casualty sensitivity was reflected in polls. During the buildup process and until the war started, roughly half of Americans opposed the war when there were hundreds of American casualties (Everts and Isernia 2005, 297). Manipulation of threat, together with the promise of technology to protect the soldiers, could help increase this legitimacy. In addition, burden distribution could help not only to legitimize using force, but also to mitigate casualty sensitivity. This was because the burden fell on soldiers drawn from lower-class groups and immigrants, not typically the “voters of the First District of Massachusetts,” to use Bacevich’s words, thus generating a weaker commitment among the elites to the soldiers deployed. Social mapping of the distribution of American wartime casualties across sociodemographic variables is an important determinant of both the tone and the impact of the bereavement discourse. As Kriner and Shen (2010, 29–31) demonstrated, the increasing participation of members of the lower social classes in the military revealed that in communities that suffered the highest casualty rates in the war in Iraq, the proportion of college-educated individuals was almost 40 percent less than in communities that did not suffer casualties in this war. In contrast, during the Vietnam War, the gap stood at 25 percent. Likewise, the family income gap between the communities rose from $8,200 during Vietnam to $13,200 during Iraq. Similar findings were reported by demographic research, according to which nonmetropolitan areas in the United States paid a higher price than metropolitan areas in the Iraq War, meaning that nonmetropolitan troops are at greater risk of death. This research also shows a higher risk of death for Hispanic and African American nonmetropolitan personnel compared to metropolitan personnel (Curtis and Payne 2010). Mapping the origins of approximately the first 1,000 soldiers who fell in Iraq also revealed the same trend: among the casualties, 342 came from densely populated counties and 536 from smaller ones. This reflects the overall social makeup of the military, which provided economic opportunities for young people in rural areas (Cushing and Bishop 2005). It is politically significant that although Americans respond to casualties by reducing their support for military operations and for the military leaders waging

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them, they do not do so uniformly. Criticism is most intense among citizens who have experienced the costs of war most intimately in their own communities. Nevertheless, with an increasing burden on members of the lower social classes, the residents of those communities possess fewer of the resources needed to engage in politics, as the social mapping displays (Kriner and Shen 2010, 182, 193). With the social marginality of the ranks and the lower risks posed to soldiers drawn from more privileged families, it was less likely to engender antiwar protest. It is true that the unfairness of the draft system was an important stimulating mechanism of the Vietnam-era antiwar protest; middle-class groups initiated the protests, although many of them could escape the draft owing to college deferments, with campuses playing a key role in inflaming protests (see Burk 2001; Foley 2003). However, as the arguments already noted confirm, to the extent that it was less subject to military call-up with the ending of the draft, it was this middle class that lost its interest in military policies and hence tolerated casualties more. To partially mitigate the need to risk any of its soldiers, even those from the lower classes, more contractors were deployed. In addition to the financial rationale, using contractors not only helped reduce the number of casualties among soldiers, but also the contractors’ lack of bargaining power, together with their lower level of transparency to the public and their image as “working” rather than “serving,” were all instrumental for reducing the public’s interest in the military in general and in casualties in particular (Avant and Sigelman 2010; McCoy 2010, 687). It also helped circumvent military mobilization constraints when opposition emerged to the mobilization of military personnel, and particularly to spare (later, with prolonged deployment) the need for a full-scale mobilization of reserves and the National Guard (Cusumano 2016, 103–106). These were the initial conditions. Nevertheless, a few months after the invasion and the fall of Saddam’s regime, insurgency erupted, directed mainly against the US-led coalition and gradually also against the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). Insurgency was fueled by nationalist groups and Islamist religious groups, both Sunni and Shia. In addition to nationalist sentiments against the occupation, the insurgency was a reaction to the coercive practices of the occupation and mistrust of the US troops for their misbehavior and blame for the violence that erupted following the occupation (Conetta 2005; Hoffman 2004). Legitimacy for this deployment peaked during the invasion and then declined. Formally, legitimacy rested partly on UN Resolution 1483 from May 2003 that legitimized the occupation and the resulting measures to protect the

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Iraqi population by the deployment of the US-led Multi-National Force. In June 2004, a sovereign Iraqi interim government was formed, signifying the transfer of sovereignty from the occupying militaries. Accordingly, new UN Resolution 1546 reestablished the authority of the Multi-National Force to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability upon the Iraqis’ request.2 Iraqi sovereignty restricted the legitimacy of the coalition troops to use force. Domestically, moreover, public opinion shifted from strongly supporting the low-cost invasion (in terms of American casualties, which were around 140) to greater skepticism. While in March 2003, 72 percent believed that it was the right decision to go to war, only 55 percent believed so in March 2004 (Pew Research Center 2008). More significant, whereas the initial decision to authorize action in Iraq was mildly opposed by the Democrats, a shift became apparent a year later. By October 2004, on the eve of presidential elections, mounting casualties had reached about 1,100, the insurgency was growing, and there was no evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction that had initially justified the war or of any operational links to al-Qaeda. At this point, the Democrats became increasingly critical, especially in light of the approaching elections. Thus, the bipartisan consensus was partly shattered, but still without significant pressure to exit (Jacobson 2010, 590–591). To this, add the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in April 2004 that sparked criticism of the United States’s conduct. In early 2005, only a minority believed the war was the right decision (Gelpi et al. 2009, 129–130; Holsti 2011, 40–41; Mueller 2005, 45–48; Pew Research Center 2008). A basic source of legitimation was still the war to eliminate the threat of terror. President Bush proclaimed in March 2005, “Our immediate strategy is to eliminate terrorist threats abroad so we do not have to face them here at home.”3 But the United States could not promote this goal alone, as Bush emphasized, and so it was essential to facilitate the transition of responsibility for security from the Americans to the Iraqis, while tying democratization to security. However, later polls showed that bringing democracy to Iraq by war never gained much traction among the public (Holsti 2011, 75). Increasing criticism, accompanied by calls to withdraw the forces in light of what was viewed as failure to stabilize Iraq, brought the administration in mid-2005 to launch the Victory in Iraq campaign. It was aimed at countering the criticism that the United States did not have a coherent strategy for winning. But this campaign did not have long-term success (54–55). At the same time, the legitimacy of using force was also constrained by the ethos of winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqis, now under a sovereign

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government, in order to defeat the insurgency. Following the first Battle of Fallujah in April 2004 and many other hostile engagements characterized by the doctrine of risk transfer (see Chapter 7), warnings that the coalition troops were losing the battle to win hearts and minds because of overemphasis on protecting their forces were voiced publicly (see, for example, US Congress 2004). Representative Christopher Shays said in his opening statement of the congressional hearing on this issue in June 2004: Welcomed liberators are now viewed in some quarters as resented occupiers. . . . Conveying American good intentions through the cacophony of competing tribal, religious, and factional voices requires patience and a cultural sensitivity that were apparently not part of the original war plan. So today we ask . . . How do we reach the Iraqi people? (Ibid., 1–2)

The endeavor to win hearts and minds is thus a mechanism of taking, rather than releasing, accountability for a hostile civilian population, the opposite of the transformation from a ghetto to a frontier, in Ron’s (2003) terms. Legitimacy of sacrificing declined as well. With mounting casualties, surpassing the number of 1,000 on the eve of the elections, presidential approval dropped steadily during 2004, and more so with the sense of failure to stabilize Iraq despite the transfer of sovereignty toward the beginning of 2005 (Gelpi et al. 2009, 55–56, 129–130). For the first time, bereaved American parents adopted a subversive tone in response to the Iraq War, whereas they had not been prominent in protests against the Vietnam War. In April 2004, Cindy Sheehan’s son was killed in Iraq. Later, prompted by doubts about the grounds for the war, and mounting casualties, she formed Gold Star Families for Peace with other bereaved parents. In August 2005, the group’s members camped outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, to protest the war. Then the number of fatalities rose to about 1,800. Gold Star inspired thousands of people. It experienced short-term success in garnering support and ignited policy debates largely by capitalizing on the vacuum in the peace camp that made Sheehan a powerful symbol of the peace movement (Toussaint 2009, 40–41). Gold Star delegitimized the sacrifice for war, by saying, We as families of soldiers who have died as a result of war . . . are organizing to be a positive force in our world to bring our country’s sons and daughters home from Iraq, to minimize the “human cost” of this war, and to prevent other families from the pain we are feeling as the result of our losses.4

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Sheehan went even further and declared unequivocally that her son’s sacrifice was not “worth it.” “It is . . . ‘worth it,’ ” she said, “to the other companies and individuals who have been enriched by feeding our children to the military industrial complex” (Sheehan 2005). Furthermore, unlike the tone of typical antiwar movements, Celeste Zappala, a cofounder of Gold Star, also considered the lost lives of the Iraqis (Franklin and Lyons 2008, 245). Characteristically, as a social group imbued with the ability to challenge President Bush’s “politics of fear,” this movement could potentially appeal to the Christian liberal middle class (Franklin and Lyons 2008, 243) by offering alternative frames for the war (Kaufman 2007). Against this background, mainstream supporters of the war were motivated to counter the Gold Star movement by voicing a more consensual tone in the bereavement discourse. Indeed, as the protest gained momentum, the White House moved to counter it in summer 2005 by mobilizing conservative war mothers to delegitimize Sheehan (TaussigRubbo 2009, 108–110). Under such conditions, risking soldiers was less legitimized, and remaining in Iraq required alternative options to protect the soldiers. Offensive was one way of countering the insurgency. The two battles to capture the city of Fallujah in 2004 represented the offensive approach (prior to the emergence of Gold Star, when both legitimacies were higher), as detailed in Chapter 7. They were guided by the rationale of risk transfer, forming an active method of force protection. However, they could only temporarily counterbalance concerns about losing the trust of the Iraqi people and violating Iraqi sovereignty, a driver that lowered the legitimacy of using force. Therefore, the large-scale operations that paved the way to the transfer of sovereignty in June 2004 and the Iraqi elections of January 2005 were mostly reduced. From 2005, most of the focus shifted to more limited operations supporting the new Iraqi government and backing the newly established Iraqi forces while also affording more respect for Iraq’s sovereignty (Estes 2009, 73–79). A drop in both legitimacies brought about retreat from the offensive in favor of passive force protection. Passive Force Protection: Forward Operating Bases Using forward operating bases (FOBs) signified the adoption of passive force protection, mainly between 2004 and 2006. As early as April 2003, the military had set up forward headquarters by seizing Iraqi bases. Gradually a new doctrine came into being. Calculations of risk made the FOBs, located mainly on city outskirts, the optimal method for protecting soldiers, distancing them from the

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zones of risk (Gibson 2009). Thus, troops withdrew from the streets to the FOBs. For example, in Baghdad, US patrols fell from 970 per day in June 2005 to 642 in February 2006 (West 2009, 9). Increasingly, a division was created between the military occupation and the civilian population, with the FOB becoming a unique place where soldiers could “find a psychological escape from the rigors of battle” (Wong and Gerras 2006, 1). From these FOBs, troops were dispatched for rapid raids in an endeavor to limit risks (Smith 2008, 153). The mood was described by a Marines officer thus: “A commander who takes no risks and thus keeps his casualties low can be reasonably assured of a Bronze Star with combat ‘V’ ” (cited in Ricks 2010, 11). Gradually justification for this method came from directions other than force protection. As “American troops were seen as an antibody that provoked resistance,” reducing their presence by withdrawing to FOBs became the solution (West 2009, 9). Reduced friction decreased fatalities in Baghdad and other areas, but also increased the risk when troops ventured out of their bases (O’Hanlon and Kamp 2006). Furthermore, the criticism that FOBs prevented soldiers from integrating into the local populations, hence losing their trust, was rebuffed by the argument that “the goal of US forces . . . is to hand the counterinsurgency over to Iraqi forces. The Iraqi army and police are the primary forces working to gain the trust of the local population, not the US military” (Wong and Gerras 2006, 2). Making FOB-based warfare the main doctrine during 2005 was well synchronized with the decline of both legitimacies. By mid-2005, the number of respondents who approved of the deployment had fallen below 50 percent (Holsti 2011, 41); pressures to exit guided by a sense of failure aggravate critical monitoring of the troops’ conduct. Moreover, the legitimacy of using force was further restricted as long as the troops controlled a population for the benefit of rebuilding the Iraqi state rather than repression, and therefore the intensity of the 2004 large-scale operations declined. By October 2005, the number of American casualties nearly reached 2,000, and Cindy Sheehan’s movement started to gather momentum and question the war sacrifice. The FOB became an icon of the deployment in Iraq. Although it protected the soldiers, it also compromised the mission for several reasons. First, troops raided unfamiliar landscapes where they often used excessive firepower that alienated the population (Gregory 2008). Commanders were also isolated, and thus their instructions became increasingly divorced from reality (Synnott 2008, 66). Second, a psychological disconnect was created in the minds of the troops: instead of focusing on the mission, soldiers focused their mental energies on doing the

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minimal amount necessary during the mission and returning safely to the FOB (Gibson 2009, 15–16). Consequently, the population was less protected. Between May 2003 and May 2005, evidently almost all the raids in Iraq were reactive, and only a few were geared toward protecting the Iraqis (Smith 2008, 153). Third, life at the FOB increased connections between soldiers and their families, with the risk of disrupting mission focus (Wong and Gerras 2006, 27). This outcome was reinforced with the supplementary practice of force protection, by “armorizing,” that is, equipping personnel or equipment with armor or other protective devices to better protect the soldiers. Commanders were even required to dress their troops in thirty pounds of body armor. Reduction in the speed of movement and reaction was the result. Furthermore, commanders were prohibited from conducting patrols with fewer than eight Americans, thus also reducing the troops’ stealth (Moyar 2009, 242). In short, practices that reduced the number of engagements with insurgents signified passive force protection in the form of risk aversion. Implementing these practices limited the prospects for strategic success as protecting the population and gaining their trust was the main tool of successful state-building stability missions (Gibson 2009). As Lyall and Wilson (2009) have already identified, with the increasing mechanization of Western militaries since World War I, the interaction of military units with local populations decreased and hence curtailed the military’s ability to collect local information and win the population’s trust, thus affecting the military’s ability to defeat weaker insurgent organizations. Protecting soldiers then prevailed over accomplishing the missions that were of high concern to the US national interest. Intervention in Iraq was premised first on containing the risks of terror, as, to recall, the president said, “Our immediate strategy is to eliminate terrorist threats abroad so we do not have to face them here at home.” This mission was even designed to protect the security and values of Americans by protecting American ideals and way of life (Caniglia 2001, 79–80). From the American perspective, then, compromising the mission by protecting the soldiers meant providing less protection to its own civilians. In this case, a low level of legitimacy of sacrificing was paired with a low to moderate level of legitimacy of using force. As a result, the troops employed a middling strategy. If engagement with the local population could have been averted—as a result of weaker commitment to the occupied population and with a more modest agenda to gain its trust—the legitimacy of using force would have increased, allowing US troops to rely on standoff strikes alone and

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hence increasing the collateral killing of civilians. A drop in the legitimacy of sacrificing requires greater efforts to increase the legitimacy of using aggressive fire to protect one’s own soldiers, but in this case, it could not work. It did work under specific conditions leading to large-scale operations, as we will see in Chapter 7 in the case of Fallujah, but not for the long term since sovereignty was transferred to the Iraqis. Conversely, a much lower legitimacy of using force could have encouraged an exit. Being situated between the two extremes, the troops did not exit the terrain but rather increased force protection. Deployment in FOBs to better protect the troops became the favorable doctrine. Cell C in Table 2.2 captures this situation (a move from cell B that more typified the invasion as when risking soldiers was more tolerated for a more highly legitimized mission). Typical to this cell, the state favors its own soldiers over its own civilians whose security interests are compromised. Table 5.1 exemplifies the overall trend in terms of fatalities. To clarify, the numbers of US-led coalition troops include non-Americans as well (but not Iraqis unless otherwise stated), though the United States bore the main burden (supplying more than 90 percent of the troops). The numbers of fatalities reported among coalition soldiers and enemy noncombatants are fairly accurate. As IBC clarified (Iraq Body Count 2005, 9), the database includes civilians and ordinary police, but not those regarded as Iraqi combatants such as anti-occupation militias. However, additional civilian casualties can be added to IBC’s numbers. Iraq War Logs, which Wikileaks introduced, added 10,325 civilian casualties in the years 2004 to 2009 that IBC has not yet incorporated into its database. It is an addition of about 10 percent to the approximately 90,000 civilian casualties IBC recorded in this period (Iraq Body Count 2010, 2013). Still, I haven’t changed IBC’s number, because we cannot know if this additional number is evenly distributed across years and perpetrators of killings (mainly the US-led coalition versus insurgents). Moreover, as tested in a simulation, these numbers will not affect the overall picture. The main problem is with the number of insurgents. First, we may assume that this number is lower than reported since it represents the formal US perception of the distinction between combatants and noncombatants. In this case, a portion of this number is already included in the number of noncombatants. For example, IBC analyzed numbers reported in Iraq War Logs that Wikileaks obtained from formal US sources and found that roughly 14 percent of deaths could be potentially classified as civilians (Iraq Body Count 2010). However, as

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tested in a simulation, even if we reduce this number by 15 percent, this does not affect the overall picture. Second, and more significant, we do not have data categorizing fatalities among the insurgents according to perpetrators. (We do have data about noncombatants, as included in the bottom section of Table 5.1.) Therefore, to better understand the numbers, the top section of Table 5.1 presents integrated data of fatalities produced by both the coalition and ISF soldiers. Furthermore, because we do not have accurate data about ISF fatalities in 2004, I used the number of 1,300 ISF fatalities that icasualties presented as the total prior to 2005. With the transfer of sovereignty in 2004, ISF forces played a greater role in imposing order, so it is most likely that most of the fatalities occurred during 2004, and thus the inaccuracy is not so critical. It is clear from the table that from 2004 to 2006, US-led troops deescalated the warfare by withdrawing to FOBs, as evidenced by the sharp decline in the number of insurgents killed by more than 40 percent and that of noncombatants, which dropped by nearly 60 percent. At the same time, the coalition losses increased by nearly 40 percent (and even more from 2004 to 2005). Accordingly, the ratios of soldiers (coalition and ISF) to Iraqi combatants and noncombatants declined, and discrimination improved by 20 percent (that is, the decreased percentage of noncombatants killed). However, from 2004 to 2005, the level of discrimination remained stable (the relative drop in the number of both combatants and noncombatants was similar), but the increased number of soldiers killed relative to noncombatants clearly indicates that more risk was taken than shifted. It follows that the coalition forces were only partly better protected by employing passive force protection while still exposed to insurgents’ attacks on their compounds, as reflected in the decreasing ratio of fatalities between the coalition soldiers and Iraqi insurgents by 60 percent. However, risk was not transferred to Iraqi civilians, as the reduced ratio of 70 percent between the coalition soldiers and Iraqi noncombatants attests. ISF troops paid the higher price, reaching a peak of 2,545 fatalities in 2005 relative to 1,300 in the period prior to 2005 (not shown in Table 5.1), while concurrently, the casualty rate among coalition troops decreased slightly (from 757 to 709; see the bottom section of the table). As the cases documented by icasualties reveal, the ISF forces were mostly targeted by the insurgents rather than taking the offense. Indeed, most of the civilians (about 85 percent) were killed by the coalition troops without the Iraqi forces. After 2006, casualty numbers among the ISF gradually decreased.

Table 5.1: Fatality Ratios in Iraq, 2004–2006 Coalition’s Soldiers + ISF to Iraqi Combatants

Coalition’s Soldiers + ISF to Iraqi Noncombatants

Ratio of Iraqi Noncombatants Among Total Iraqi Fatalities Killed by the Coalition + ISF

2004

1:3.3 (2,057:6,801)

1:1.45 (2,057:2,979)

0.3 (2,979/[2,979 + 6,801])

2005

1:1 (3,254:3,247)

1:0.45 (3,254:1,455)

0.3 (1,455/[1,455 + 3,247])

2006

1:1.4 (2,838:3,902)

1:0.45 (2,838:1,252)

0.24 (1,252/[1,252 + 3,902])

Cumulative relative change

−60%

−70%

−20%

the Year/ ratio

Coalition’s Soldiers to Iraqi Combatants

Coalition’s Soldiers to Iraqi Noncombatants

Ratio of Iraqi Noncombatants Among Total Iraqi Fatalities Killed by the Coalition

2004

NA

1:3.7 (757:2,790)

NA

2005

NA

1:1.6 (709:1,137)

NA

2006

NA

1:1.2 (747:902)

NA

Cumulative relative change

--

−65%

--

the Year/ ratio

N ote : Percentages are rounded. The actual number of fatalities is in parentheses. The cumulative relative value measures cumulative changes from 2004 to 2006. Sources: Data about the coalition’s and ISF’s combatants killed by hostile action were taken from icasualties (http://icasualties.org/Iraq/ByMonth.aspx; http://icasualties.org/Iraq/IraqiDeaths.aspx, accessed September 24, 2018). Data about noncombatants were obtained from Iraq Body Count (IBC, https://www. iraqbodycount.org/database/, accessed August 23, 2018). Data about insurgents relied on formal sources (Michaels 2007).

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US-led forces (without Iraqi forces) reduced the number of noncombatants killed directly by nearly 70 percent (from 2,790 to 902, as the bottom section of Table 5.1 presents). Furthermore, the percentage of civilians killed by airstrikes among total civilians killed by the US-led coalition declined from about 50 percent in 2004 to about 30 percent in 2005 and 2006. As the number of coalition soldiers killed remained pretty stable between 2004 and 2006, the ratio of them to Iraqi noncombatants declined by about 65 percent—from nearly 1:4 to around the expected norm of 1:1. Western troops protected themselves by withdrawing to FOBs rather than by shifting the burden to Iraqi noncombatants. However, this was not a classic case of risk taking; risk was taken unintentionally more than intentionally since the original aim had been to reduce the level of risk to the coalition soldiers. To sum up, the middling approach of the years 2004 to 2006 was mirrored in the fatality ratios. Israel offers another example of passive force protection but in the form of mission aversion. 5.2 Mission Aversion in Gaza Risk aversion by means of passive force protection can be elevated to mission aversion. The avoidance of risky missions comes at the cost of not achieving the goals of the war or compromising other security interests. Israel exemplified this pattern (as well as other patterns, as we will see) in the Gaza Strip. Withdrawal from Gaza, 2005 The Gaza Strip has been under Israel’s direct and indirect control since 1967.5 Hostilities escalated in 1987, when the first Intifada broke out. In 1993, the PLO and Israel signed the Oslo Accords, after which Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza’s urban areas in 1994 and handed control over Gaza to the PLO, while leaving the settlements that Israel had established in Gaza in place under the protection of the IDF. In 2000, the second Intifada signified another round of hostilities between Israel and Palestinian armed militias in both Gaza and the West Bank. In summer 2005, Israel completed its withdrawal (“disengagement”) from Gaza by pulling out its forces and evicting the approximately 8,000 Jewish settlers. This was a unilateral withdrawal and was not accompanied by withdrawal from the West Bank. To a large extent, this act signified decline in both legitimacies that hitherto had been relatively high. In a nutshell, the legitimacy of using force declined when Israel’s fire policies, such as the heavy use of airstrikes, were criticized both domestically

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and internationally. Domestically, antiwar protests and disobedience increased (Levy 2012, 161–162). Internationally, the architects of the withdrawal, with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the center, initiated this move to tone down international criticism that might have exerted pressure on Israel to make unfavorable concessions mainly in the religiously and militarily valuable West Bank. Therefore, the withdrawal was leveraged to enhance understandings with the US administration about the principles of a future peace agreement with the Palestinians (Even 2015). At the same time, legitimacy of sacrificing declined again (after the rise during the first years of the second Intifada; see section 4.1). Actors motivated by bereavement initiated a subversive discourse after eleven soldiers were killed in May 2004 when their vehicles were blown up in the Philadelphi Corridor, which separated the Gaza Strip from Egypt and was intended to prevent weapons smuggling into Gaza. As two journalists held: “A dramatic event, caught by the cameras, can change the Israeli public’s view on the need for a major ground operation in the Strip . . . increased public support for then prime minister Ariel Sharon’s [withdrawal from Gaza]” (Harel and Issacharoff 2008). The protest that ensued and gave rise to a new group, Shuvi: Women for Withdrawal from Gaza, was geared toward demanding full withdrawal from Gaza, thus helping to legitimize the government’s agenda to leave this territory (Levy 2012, 87–91, 126, 162). A relatively low level of both legitimacies generated military restraint in the form of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza (cell C on Table 2.2). Though the decision to exit was led by a government headed by the hawkish, retired major general, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, this redeployment was partly criticized, even by generals, as a move sacrificing long-term security interests, even though it eliminated unjustifiable losses, such as those in Philadelphi (Grinberg 2010, 183). Mission aversion thus may afford more protection for soldiers in exchange for compromising security interests. Casualty Sensitivity Breeds Restraint Unexpectedly, the withdrawal did not end the hostilities. As early as 2001, local militias began firing high-trajectory weapons (still from Israel-controlled Gaza) at Israeli civilian settlements near the Israel-Gaza border, mainly targeting the border town of Sderot. These attacks have intensified since Israel’s withdrawal. Despite its redeployment, Israel has maintained indirect control of the Gaza Strip by overseeing its border crossings and impeding the construction of both a seaport and an airport. For the Palestinians, then, the occupation has remained in force. Hostilities escalated after January 2006 when the Islamist movement Hamas

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won a majority in the Palestinian parliamentary elections, defeating the ruling Fatah Party, Israel’s Oslo partner. In response to the hostilities, Israel launched Operation Summer Rains from June through November 2006, during which it bombed civilian infrastructures and made limited incursions into urban areas (see Chapter 7). Hostilities escalated further after 2007, when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip after factional fighting with Fatah militias. A separate Hamas-governed ministate was then created. To end what it perceived as Israel’s siege of Gaza, which Israel tightened after Hamas took control, Hamas intensified its shelling of Israel’s civilian population and increased the range of its rockets (Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center 2007, 26, 41). Israel then planned a large-scale operation in Gaza that would inevitably involve a ground operation. Thanks to the withdrawal, the legitimacy of using force was high enough to justify this operation. As more Israelis were exposed to threat by a perceived militant Islamic organization, Israel increased the level of legitimacy of using force. In May 2007, about 53 percent of the Jewish public believed there was a definitive way to stop the Qassam rocket fire, and 63 percent supported a limited ground operation in Gaza (Yaar and Hermann 2007). In addition to this basic layer of legitimacy, additional factors helped to increase it further. First, Israel’s right to use force for self-protection was largely recognized by the Western powers, with the United States at the center. It also helped that Hamas, with the ministate it had established in Gaza, was boycotted by the international community, including economic sanctions imposed by Israel, the European Union, and the United States (Kurtz 2007, 164). Second, a mechanism of relaxation of responsibility was in place. In Ron’s terms (2003), after Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Gaza effectively reverted from its status as a “ghetto” under Israeli control to that of a “frontier” on the edges of the state but not under its control. Therefore, Israel’s responsibility for the civilian population diminished, at least according to its own perception and that of its allies, and it could justify aggressive responses whenever Hamas and other local militias renewed the shelling of Israeli civilians (Levy 2012, 162). Third, ethical thinking enhanced the legitimacy of using force. In 2003, the IDF’s ethical code of conduct in the fight against terror was unofficially modified (Harel 2009a; Kasher and Yadlin 2005). It placed the state’s priorities on a scale: protecting soldiers’ lives was given higher priority than the obligation to avoid injury to enemy noncombatants when these were not under the effective control of the state. It follows that the ethical code reinforced Israel’s relaxation of responsibility toward the Gazans with the completion of the withdrawal.

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The legal system added a further seal of legitimacy to this code. Since the eruption of the second Intifada, when Israel became involved in what it saw as a war against terrorists embedded in the urban terrain, the legal system played a more central role in both advising and reviewing, and hence also legitimizing, decisions. Much was driven by growing international criticism of Israel’s policies and attempts to indict Israeli commanders for war crimes in foreign courts. Thus, Israel’s Supreme Court of Justice displayed increasing willingness to intervene, even in specific operational questions, in response to appeals submitted by human rights organizations against Israel’s policy. In one case, it approved the policy of targeted killings that Israel had adopted in the occupied territories, under certain conditions that could also be applied to some extent to the conditions under which collateral killing is permissible. In turn, both domestic (the court) and international pressures increased the involvement of military lawyers in the command structure in guiding policies, approving military plans and reviewing them after action (Cohen 2011; Craig 2013, 124–129, 183–186). For their impact, the military lawyers were criticized for legitimizing, rather than restricting, aggression (Feldman and Blau 2009). A high level of legitimacy of using force was met with a moderate level of legitimacy of sacrificing, too low to allow a ground operation in Gaza with the risks to soldiers it involved, including reservists. With the memory of the losses in the Philadelphi Corridor still fresh, the IDF was constrained by “Gaza phobia” from invading Gaza. As former Defense Minister Moshe Arens (2009) explained, a collection of myths had been propagated since the withdrawal to justify military restraint, primarily the myth that a ground operation would result in the loss of the lives of hundreds of Israeli soldiers, including reservists. This phobia was reinforced by the Battle of Jenin (2002) in which the limitations of high risks to reserve soldiers became apparent, and both reinforced the already established “Lebanon phobia” (see section 4.1). In 2006, the Second Lebanon War and the bereavement discourse that ensued struck a further blow. In July 2006, Israel launched a full-scale war against Lebanon in response to the abduction of two soldiers by Hezbollah militiamen on the Israeli-Lebanese border. In response, Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel and eventually claimed the lives of more than forty Israeli civilians. In general, the legitimacy of using force was high enough not only to justify but even to encourage Israel’s aggressive response, as evidenced by the hawkish atmosphere that prevailed publicly, backed by the media beating the drums of war (Levy 2012, 188–189). However, international pressures restrained Israel from targeting Lebanese infrastructure and Lebanese noncombatants (Lambeth 2011, 22, 56–57, 167–172, 177) to speed up a cease-fire.

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A moderate to even low level of legitimacy of sacrificing, informed by fear of mass protest (Levy 2012, 134), further restrained Israel. Initially, then, concern about casualties led the government to rule out a ground operation, and Israel deployed mainly the air force. Aerial assaults, however, failed to stop Hezbollah from launching rockets. Nevertheless, favoring soldiers’ lives over the lives of Israel’s own civilians contributed to the hesitation of approving a ground operation inside Lebanon, which would have been effective in clearing out the launchers (Kober 2008). Ultimately, the IDF was reluctantly dragged into ground operations, which resulted in more than one hundred IDF fatalities, but Israel accepted a cease-fire without achieving its war goals: Hezbollah was driven back from the Israel-Lebanese border but not disarmed as originally intended, the soldiers whose kidnapping had triggered the war were not released, and Israel’s attacks even failed to halt the rocket shelling. Seemingly, for the first time in its history, the IDF had lost a war (see Makovsky and White 2006). In short, with a moderate level of legitimacy of using force paired with a moderate-low level of legitimacy of sacrificing, Israel protected its soldiers and risked its own civilians, a typical approach of force protection by mission aversion. What was widely seen as a failure caused a crisis of faith that triggered protests that eventually led to the resignation of the Chief of the General Staff and prompted the government, headed by Ehud Olmert, to appoint a committee of inquiry to investigate the war (the Winograd Committee). The committee’s reports criticized the performance of both the government and the military (Winograd Committee 2008). Part of the postwar protest was initiated by bereaved parents. The social mapping of the casualties in this war is compared to the first week of the First Lebanon War, which was the “middle-class war.” A clear drop was evidenced in the proportion of casualties from secular middle-class groups from 68.5 percent to about 54 percent, a more moderate drop than from the First Lebanon War to the second Intifada. However, this still reflected a clear change in the social makeup of the IDF, with the traditional, secular Ashkenazi elite groups being partly replaced by lower-status religious ones (see section 4.1). Given the linkage that has already been recognized between the presence of secular middle-class groups in the ranks and antiwar protests, the tone of the bereavement discourse was hawkish and partly subversive. Parents did not question the necessity for the war itself, but instead criticized its management (the reluctance to use ground forces) and the poor military performance. Still, it became clear that even bereaved parents who held hawkish positions—religious

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parents most prominently—who raised their voices for the first time and who had not questioned the rightness of the war, would not tolerate sacrifice that, due to military and political incompetence, did not have a real impact on national security (Levy 2012, 96–103). Thus, restriction extended to the risking of more lower-class groups, and thereby the political threshold for sacrificing life was further raised and restrained deployment to Gaza. Indications about the declining legitimacy of sacrificing are provided by a public opinion survey, conducted in 2007 just a few months after the Second Lebanon War ended (Arian, Atmor, and Hadar 2007, 12, 58, 90–93, 112–117). At that time, after the failure in Lebanon and the emergence of a Hamas-ruled state in Gaza, security issues caused concerns among the Israeli public and underscored the need to rehabilitate the IDF. However, only 27 percent of the Jewish respondents thought that the interests of the country were more important than those of the individual, whereas in 1981, the figure had been 64 percent. Those placing the individual’s personal interests above those of the country rose sharply from 6 percent in 1981 to 36 percent in 2007. A similar drop was found in the public’s readiness to pay more taxes to fund defense matters: only 29 percent of the Jewish respondents were ready to pay more taxes for defense, whereas in 1986, 48 percent had been willing. When asked hypothetically, “If war breaks out, will you be ready to fight for the country?” 70 percent of the Jewish respondents reported that they would be ready to enlist in the army, whereas in 2004, 79 percent had been ready. Two statements indicated how the IDF command, which has a tremendous influence on policymaking in Israel (see Michael 2007; Peri 2006), read the growing casualty sensitivity. First, the Winograd Committee (2008, 252) concluded, “The IDF conducted itself during the war as if its concern about casualties among its soldiers was a central element in its planning process and operational considerations.” Second, this war’s Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz argued: In the history of the IDF, units . . . did everything to reduce the number of casualties, but the mission was at the top of their priorities. Today . . . it became less legitimate that a soldier dies and more legitimate that a citizen dies. For us, a soldier at the age of 20 is “our child,” while the citizen heaven forbid killed in Sderot or Kiryat Shmona [a border town near the Lebanese border] is not “our child.” (Cited in Lam 2010, 31)

Against this background, during winter and spring 2008, the IDF and Defense Minister Ehud Barak resisted political pressure to react more forcefully to

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the escalation of the Qassam shelling that targeted population centers near the border. They understood that while the legitimacy of using force could have internally justified attacking Gaza aggressively, the international community would not tolerate a strong reaction that would transfer much of the risk imposed on Israeli soldiers to the civilians of Gaza by using standoff firepower. It was especially so as Egypt, whose cooperation Israel valued, initiated brokered talks with Hamas on a lull in the fighting,6 in which the US State Department was involved. Politicians, however, estimated that a conventional, less aggressive ground offensive in Gaza might result in 200–300 casualties, among them reserve soldiers, a price that disaccorded with the declining legitimacy of sacrificing. Therefore, Israel decided in June 2008 to refrain from launching large-scale operations in Gaza and accepted a cease-fire with Hamas (Harel and Issacharoff 2008). In other words, Israel was averse to risking its soldiers. It could risk soldiers from lower-class groups in the routine fighting in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the second Intifada without arousing casualty sensitivity (see section 4.1). But Israel faced barriers when it came to the need to risk the lives of soldiers from the middle class, including reservists, who mainly staffed elite units and reserve battalions (as the case of Jenin revealed). Discrimination between soldiers—favoring the sacrifice of low-class soldiers more than that of upper-class soldiers—does not stop here and can be extended to discrimination among civilians. In Israel, communities with a lower socioeconomic standing are located along the borders, next to Lebanon in the north and the Gaza Strip in the south, while higher socioeconomic groups reside closer to the center of the country (Levy 2012, 132–144). The special conditions of state building necessitated the simultaneous absorption of mass immigration and the establishment of the newly expanded borders following the 1948 war. Mizrahi immigrants, who streamed into Israel during the early 1950s from Arab countries, were largely settled by the state along its new borders, where they lived in overcrowded conditions and were employed as cheap labor (Bernstein and Swirski 1982). During the 1990s, large numbers of immigrants from the former Soviet Union joined these communities. These lower-status communities have been the target of Lebanese rocket attacks since the 1980s and of similar Palestinian projectiles since 2001. Twelve citizens, eight of them from Sderot, were killed between 2001 and 2008 by Qassam rocket fire. However, the limited financial resources of the residents of these communities impeded their ability to move away from the border. The greater the degree of choice enjoyed by a group about whether to risk itself and the higher the political

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costs to the state’s leadership that results from that choice, the less freedom the state has to risk members of this group. Conversely, in this case, thanks to these groups’ limited political power and freedom to choose, the government enjoyed extensive freedom to place these residents under a prolonged high level of threat. In contrast, risking the lives of more privileged soldiers, as demanded in large-scale operations, posed a greater political challenge for Israeli governments. Against this backdrop, Israel accepted some degree of risk, at least temporarily, to its own civilians who were exposed to the rocket fire. A drop in the legitimacy of sacrificing requires greater efforts to increase the legitimacy of using aggressive fire to protect one’s own soldiers (a move to cell D in Table 2.2). But when the legitimacy of using force is not high enough to allow such methods and to balance out the low to moderate level of legitimacy of sacrificing, policies are located in cell C, favoring one’s own soldiers over one’s own civilians, and hence the pursuit of less lethal solutions (in this case, at least temporarily). When the state’s imperative to protect its soldiers clashed with its imperative to protect its citizens—and it was nevertheless still constrained by the imperative to respect noncombatant immunity—nonlethal solutions were chosen, as happened in the Gaza cease-fire and the exit from the Second Lebanon War. Therefore, Israel refrained as much as possible from launching large-scale ground operations that would have required such risks (Levy 2012, 137–138). Britain’s decision to terminate Operation Sinbad without achieving its goals, which would have required a sustained bloody presence throughout Basra and pursuit of an exit strategy rather than a winning one (see section 4.2), is another example of mission aversion (a move from cell B to cell C). 5.3 Conclusion When a low to moderate level of legitimacy of sacrificing is paired with a low to moderate level of legitimacy of using force, casualty sensitivity cannot be balanced by shifting the risk to enemy noncombatants. Deployment is thus further restricted, and governments opt for less lethal alternatives that protect the troops (cell C in Table 2.2). Two forms of passive force protection were discussed in this chapter: risk aversion, such as the deployment in FOBs, and mission aversion, such as Israel’s refraining from ground operations in Gaza and Lebanon. In these cases, military missions whose original purpose is to protect national security become subject to constraints imposed by the requirement to protect soldiers, signifying the inverse of the Hobbesian norm governing the state. Troops’ lives are placed ahead of the military objectives being pursued, which may or may not jeopardize the immediate defense of the homeland and citizens’ lives. Simply

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said, images of body bags have higher short-term political costs than those incurred in risking long-term, abstract interests, and therefore the risks are tolerated by society (the demand for using force is not so high). Indeed, intervention in Iraq was initially (and officially) premised on containing the risks associated with the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and later on restabilizing the regime following the invasion (Edmunds 2012, 267). In the United States, military missions are designed to protect the security of its own civilians as well as the American way of life and its values, even though the wars are fought abroad (Caniglia 2001, 79–80). America’s strategy was “to eliminate terrorist threats abroad so we do not have to face them here at home,” in President Bush’s words.7 From the American and British perspectives, compromising the mission in order to protect soldiers means providing less protection to the country, at least according to the policymakers’ original perception of national security. In a different way, part of the Israeli military’s mission is to protect specific regional populations (generally border communities) from immediate physical threats such as terror attacks and rocket shelling. Given that the pursuit of less lethal means, such as risk aversion and mission aversion, has emerged following the failure to use the human resources at the required level of readiness to sacrifice, it is likely that these governments took risks that they may otherwise have refrained from taking. Nevertheless, such compromises are not necessarily wrong. Declining legitimacy of sacrificing encourages critical thinking about the use of force. This may generate better options than the original, more aggressive, but also costly, choices. For example, by deciding to leave Lebanon in 2000, Israel could have escaped from the sunk cost paradox, that is, the state’s difficulty “to extract itself out of a losing situation even though it is aware that it cannot win a war and even if it is well aware that it is going to lose” (Maoz 2006, 172). In this case, domestic constraints encouraged critical thinking about redeployment that eventually did not jeopardize Israel’s security, as Maoz concludes. Similar conclusions can be drawn about the exit from Gaza, as well as that of Britain from Iraq. Even the report of the Iraq Inquiry refrained from concluding that the withdrawal had a negative impact on Britain’s security (unlike its consequence in Iraq) (Iraq Inquiry, Executive Summary 2016). The next two chapters deal with active forms of force protection, where risk is actively transferred to enemy civilians.

6

Strategic Transfer of Risk in the Kosovo War

This chapter opens with a presentation of the essence of shifting risk from one’s own soldiers to enemy noncombatants. It proceeds with an analysis of the strategic form of risk transfer as represented by the case of the Kosovo War of 1999. The chapter demonstrates how the interplay between the two legitimacies changed during the war, allowing NATO to escalate its airstrikes on Serbia and hence increase the collateral killing of noncombatants. To validate the main conclusions, the drone warfare in Pakistan is briefly analyzed. 6.1 The Essence of Risk Transfer As Chapter 5 described, the declining legitimacy of sacrificing created passive forms of force protection that could extend to mission aversion. Nevertheless, compromising security interests and risking one’s own civilians may have high political costs. Apart from the most frequent case of escalation in hostilities that increases harm to and losses among one’s own, these costs may stem from enduring risks and losses sustained by powerful groups or from accusations (or their anticipation by policymakers) against the government for failing to deal with vital security interests or with the suffering of oppressed communities abroad. Bottom-up pressures to act may heighten the legitimacy of using force. Nonetheless, risking soldiers in these cases may still entail the same challenges that hitherto had encouraged policymakers to reduce the risks to their own troops by shifting part of the risk to their own civilians: strong demand for protection

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in terms of using force is not necessarily matched by the declining willingness to sacrifice. This imbalance is typical of the gap between the legitimacies (see section 2.3). The conflicting imperatives of security interests versus casualty sensitivity are evident again. To resolve this, states must overcome the third imperative: noncombatant immunity. Factoring in this imperative, Michael Reisman (1997, 395–396) argues that political elites in democracies must confront two potentially conflicting demands: using force in a limited fashion externally, as prescribed by international norms and expected by liberal sectors domestically, versus retaining support domestically. This dilemma is more acute in cases where soldiers are expected to increase the risk to themselves by using weapons that are more discriminating and less collaterally destructive, and in close engagements with the enemy to protect enemy noncombatants. In this case, however, the public’s tolerance for casualties is lower than in situations where casualties can be justified to protect national security interests rather than to protect noncombatants. This is especially so because the militaries of democracies mainly fight wars of choice, which do not involve direct threats to immediate national interests (Everts 2002). In such cases, domestic support is questionable. Therefore, concludes Reisman, democracies will seek to avoid elective missions—those not designed to remove a substantial threat. This background explains why liberal democracies fail in small wars. Due to domestic restrictions, they fail to find a winning balance between the level of violence and aggressiveness needed to secure victory and the material, human, and moral costs of war domestically. The deployment of firepower-intensive militaries does not accord with the normative criticism against the violence these militaries inflict on enemy noncombatants (Merom 2003). State leaders have several options. First, they can reduce the demand for protection, a demand that may rise as already discussed, by countering pressures to act. The legitimacy of using force to remove a perceived external threat can be high enough to initiate deployment, but not high enough to intensively risk their own soldiers and not so high as to harm enemy noncombatants to compensate for averting the risk to their own soldiers. We saw this in the case of the UK troops in Basra that eventually ended with exit. Second, they can try to increase the legitimacy of sacrificing, though this option is more complicated insofar as aversion to sacrifice is more culturally embedded than the aversion to using force. However, increasing the perception of threat also increases pressures to act concurrent with greater willingness to risk troops. And third, if state leaders are unable to reduce the demand for protection and are even forced to engage in an

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elective mission while also restricted by a diminishing tolerance for casualties, they might endeavor to use a variety of measures to increase the legitimacy of using force (as detailed in section 2.1). By legitimizing the use of excessive lethality, risk could be transferred from soldiers to enemy noncombatants (Shaw 2005), at least in part; this would be a form of active force protection (provided that the use of nonlethal weapons that may avoid casualties is not an option). In this situation, the use of overwhelming force is justified as a last resort, the enemy may be dehumanized, casualty sensitivity justifies harming enemy civilians, and the restraining impacts of international monitoring are manageable. Democracies, then, privilege their internal concerns regarding war costs over their normative values and therefore tolerate the killing of noncombatants (Downes 2008). Risk transfer is similar to what economists call “cost externalization.” A tradeoff between force and casualties is set in motion in which the values involved are as follows (Shaw 2002, 355): The care taken for [enemy] civilians is not only less than the care taken for American soldiers, it is undermined by a policy adopted to keep the latter safe. Risk to civilians is reduced not as far as practically possible, but as far as judged necessary to avoid adverse global media coverage. Civilians’ risks are proportional not to the risks to soldiers . . . but to the political risks of adverse media coverage.

Shaw thus describes how conflicting imperatives are resolved. Trading casualties for additional force is both an old and a new phenomenon. Democracies, with their heightened cost sensitivity and defeat phobia, are more likely than nondemocracies to target civilians in protracted wars of attrition as a means to coerce the adversary into giving up quickly and at minimum cost to their own side, as the atomic bombing of Japan in World War II indicated (Downes 2008). With the advent of precision weapons, risk transfer is applied on the tactical, operational level as well (Smith 2008, 147–148), but with a sharp distinction: it is a shift from the intentional killing of civilians, permissible until the Vietnam War, to the unintentional (so declared), ethically, and in many cases even legally, questionable increased exposure of noncombatants to collateral killing. As Shaw (2005, 81–82) indicated, the transfer of risk occurs both indirectly and directly. Indirectly, militaries use the troops of local allies to engage with their local adversaries, thus transferring a greater share of military casualties to local forces (such as the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan) with fewer limitations on risking enemy noncombatants. Militaries also deploy private security companies

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for risky support missions. Evacuating residents to transform an urban area into a free-fire zone can also be regarded as an act of risk transfer because it allows the troops to increase the damage to civilian infrastructures. As Smith (2002) maintained, the result is long-term harm to public health even if it means fewer immediate deaths. Direct methods include attacking the enemy from a distance by using excessive lethality through artillery, aircraft, drones, and other means, all sometimes with relatively limited discrimination between combatants and noncombatants. Another practice is transforming urban areas into a virtual free-fire zone after calling on the residents to leave, and then the remaining civilians are targeted with fewer restrictions, or making vague distinctions between suspected noncombatants and innocents (Smith 2008). Exercising greater caution to avoid civilian casualties will probably increase the danger to soldiers unless they use nonlethal weapons intended to incapacitate rather than kill targeted personnel. However, because of the limitations of such weapons, the risk of casualties on both sides, especially innocent civilians, cannot be eliminated entirely (see LeVine and Rutigliano 2015; Orbons 2012; Osakwe and Umoh 2013). Examples of such increased caution include (1) deploying ground forces in close engagements with enemy militias (for example, house-to-house fighting); (2) increasing intervisibility between the soldiers and the adversary embedded among civilians; (3) adopting more restrictive rules of engagement, thus requiring combatants to hold their fire when innocent noncombatants are present, except in clear cases of self-defense; and (4) restricting airstrikes in support of ground troops unless the troops are in danger (Luban 2011, 8–9; Reisman 1997, 396–397). Risk transfer, maintained Shaw (2005, 10), is reflected in the fatality ratio between one Western soldier to enemy noncombatants that rose two to five times from the Gulf War (1991) to the first year of the Iraq War (2003). Ultimately, when risk is shifted from one’s own soldiers to enemy noncombatants, the latter are collaterally targeted with fewer restrictions, moving them further down the death hierarchy. Unavoidable death of many noncombatants is then presented as “accidental” but also inevitable (Shaw 2005, 84–86). Risk can be shifted strategically and tactically. Risk is strategically transferred when decision makers decide to refrain from deploying ground forces and therefore use standoff weapons alone and with an intensity that will spare the need to use ground troops, as manifest later in the case of Kosovo. Risk is tactically shifted when decision makers decide to deploy ground forces but also adopt tactics that shift at least part of the risk from their own soldiers to enemy

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noncombatants, as already described and elaborated on in Chapter 7. In between lies the use of drones, unmanned aerial vehicles. Since the 2000s, drones have been a major tool of risk transfer. They can be used to entirely avoid ground deployment (as in Pakistan) or to limit its scope, and hence also the risks (as in Afghanistan and Gaza). Several cases in which risk was transferred are analyzed next. This chapter presents the Kosovo War and drone warfare in Pakistan as examples of the strategic transfer of risk. Chapter 7 focuses on the tactical shift of risk by using the cases of Fallujah and Gaza. 6.2 The Kosovo War of 1999: The Status of the Legitimacies In 1999 (March 24–June 8), NATO initiated Operation Allied Force, an air campaign against the former Yugoslavia headed by President Slobodan Milošević. It was aimed at stopping the alleged ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians by Serb forces and the Yugoslavian Army in the Yugoslavia-controlled province of Kosovo by coercing Yugoslavia to withdraw its forces. The conflict had culminated in 1998 when the Serbian special police and the Yugoslav military attempted to reassert control over the province and put down the uprising of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In doing so, they had harmed the population. Although the UN Security Council (Resolution 1199 of 1998) demanded an immediate cessation of hostilities and NATO threatened that it would use force to make the Yugoslavian government withdraw from Kosovo, it was not until March 1999 that NATO realized its threat, following the failure of the attempt to resolve the conflict diplomatically at the Rambouillet Summit in February. The legitimacy of using force was at a moderate level. Perhaps more than in previous conflicts, leaders ascribed importance to the legitimacy of using force in the eyes of the public (Everts 2001). After all, this kind of intervention, also called the “politics of rescue” (of Albanians), which was not aimed at removing an immediate threat to the national security of NATO’s members, placed a heavier burden of legitimation on the leadership’s shoulders (Miller 2000, 384). As the most extensive military campaign ever launched by NATO, it was the first time that the legitimacy of using force relied on the principles of humanitarian intervention. Ostensibly, NATO went to war to implement the UN Security Council’s call for the cessation of hostilities. Nevertheless, NATO refrained from seeking the council’s approval out of concerns about Russian and Chinese vetoes. Only retroactively was the council’s approval given, which provided the final legal seal to the operation. For this reason, an independent commission, initiated after the war by the Swedish

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prime minister, concluded that “the NATO military intervention was illegal but legitimate” (Independent International Commission on Kosovo 2000, 4). To a large extent, by invoking the idea of humanitarian war, NATO leaders could build a coalition of supporters, including unusual actors such as human rights organizations (Woodward 2001, 333). As part of the building of legitimation bottom up, the public was stirred by the alleged atrocities of the Serbs and the resulting human suffering of the Albanians exposed by the media, and it demanded action. Although the violence in Kosovo could not be regarded as an attempted genocide of the Albanians (Daalder and O’Hanlon 2001, 12), politicians and the media invoked the notion of genocide to dehumanize the Serbs, linking the events to the Nazi experience in pursuing the legitimacy to attack (Hume 2000). When the air attacks began on March 24, US President Bill Clinton stated in his address to the nation: “Sarajevo, the capital of neighboring Bosnia, is where World War I began. World War II and the Holocaust engulfed this region. In both wars Europe was slow to recognize the dangers. . . . Just imagine if leaders back then had acted wisely and early enough, how many lives could have been saved.”1 British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook echoed this tone in the House of Commons: “Not to have acted, when we knew the atrocities that were being committed, would have been to make ourselves complicit in their repression.”2 Mainly humanitarianism-based legitimation could work in this case as both a political tool to mobilize support and as a legal tool to justify the use of force without UN approval (Woodward 2001, 334–335). This was especially so as the effort to legitimize the intervention aroused “debate on whether and when a state or group of states may use force with the stated aim of preventing or ending widespread and grave violations of fundamental human rights of individuals other than their own citizens” (Mertus 2001, 134). Principles of human rights and state sovereignty thus clashed, but the principle of human rights prevailed. Humanitarianism, moreover, legitimated the use of force by creating a barrier that inhibited opposition to wars justified in such terms. “In identifying oneself as ‘humanitarian,’ one correspondingly strips one’s enemies of their humanity, thereby sanctioning extreme violence against them,” while in contrast to the enemy, “Western militaries are figured as the sword of justice” (Barkawi 2000, 310, emphasis in original). In this case, dehumanization of the Serbs, argued Douzinas (2003, 172), even extended to their portrayal as criminals resisting the new post–Cold War order; therefore, the action against them “takes the form of a police operation that aims to prevent, deter and punish criminal perpetrators rather than political opponents.” In this way, it was the

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NATO countries that assumed sovereignty against criminals. Under these conditions, as Booth (2001, 315) held, wars “are dangerous for the targeted enemy and the inevitable victims of collateral damage, but they also degrade the society that convinces itself that it is fighting for Right against Evil,” and hence cripples the public debate about war. To recall (see section 2.1), the legitimacy of using force can arise from active deliberation or the stagnation of deliberation through which the use of force is passively accepted. Humanitarianism-based legitimacy was critical, in particular because the decision to go to war was also motivated by instrumental interests: (1) halting the flow of refugees from Kosovo to other parts of Europe (Daalder and O’Hanlon 2001, 12); (2) reestablishing NATO’s credibility following its failure to resolve this conflict diplomatically and guaranteeing the cease-fire that President Milošević signed in October 1998 (Roberts 1999, 104–108); and (3) maintaining the traditional interest in quelling violence in the Balkans since instability in this region may affect key allies more directly than instability in most other regions of the world, especially with the expansion of NATO’s borders. British Foreign Minister Cook even warned that the violence “would have spilled over into the neighbouring countries of the region, and then NATO would have been forced to act, but in circumstances more difficult and more dangerous than now.”3 Furthermore, critics even argued that the war was necessary for NATO to justify its existence after the collapse of the Soviet Union (Johnstone 2000, 7). Noam Chomsky (2000) used a more critical tone when he challenged the humanitarian rhetoric by making the distinction between Kosovo and East Timor, where the level of atrocities was far beyond that of Kosovo but the West preferred to sit idle. Thus, the banner of a humanitarian cause could conceal other interests that the use of which would probably have fallen short in attempting to legitimize the war. In practice, in March 1999, prior to the start of the campaign, nearly twothirds of the citizens of NATO member countries (most significant, the United States and Britain as the leading countries bearing much of the burden) supported using force to stop the alleged atrocities, but with significant variations across countries (Everts 2001, 224). Most notable, concern about civilian casualties did not much influence support or opposition to the war (Larson and Savych 2007, 82). At the same time, about 40 percent also supported increasing the diplomatic efforts. Public voices demanding action were not restricted to the military option, especially as in this case, a vital national interest was not at risk but rather a violation of human rights in the backyard of Europe (Everts 2001, 222–230). Critics maintained that the level of violence in Kosovo was not high enough to justify

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the use of force that might also affect relations with Russia and China (Daalder and O’Hanlon 2001, 12). Two months before the operation began, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended against carrying out the operation, asserting that Kosovo was not in the national interest of the United States (Feaver 2003, 274). Other critics even blamed NATO for provoking the intervention by offering Yugoslavia unacceptable conditions that practically subjected Kosovo to NATO’s military rule (Herring 2000, 226–228). The multilateral support of all NATO members for the mission was instrumental in quelling such reservations. It confirmed the collective interest in the fulfillment of this humanitarian mission, giving it a seal of legitimacy. Still, the requirement for consensus among the allies restrained aggressiveness since some NATO members were less supportive of the use of force than others (see Everts 2001, 224–225). Among these nations, concerns were raised regarding possible harm to Kosovar and Serb civilians and to civilian infrastructures. The restraining impact of these concerns was reflected in the words of the US Secretary of Defense William Cohen: In this particular case, you had to have a consensus of all 19 countries. . . . So, from a classic point of view, if we were to carry out and act unilaterally, we would have used a much more robust, aggressive, and decapitating type of campaign. But under the circumstances, we were trying to hold that consensus together, because without the consensus, there could be no air campaign. (Emphasis added)4

Specifically, concerns about collateral killing that might shift public opinion against the operation prompted NATO leaders to decide to target only military installations with very clear objectives and by using precision-guided weapons, as British Defence Secretary George Robertson briefed the worried House of Commons at the start of the attacks.5 Here we can see how the trust in technology legitimized the use of force. Ignatieff (2000) summed up this promise vividly: Clinton went to war, believing that new technology would bring speedy, risk-free victory. At the beginning of his Presidency, Tomahawk missiles could take out discrete buildings. By April 1999, the missiles were sufficiently precise to strike the Serbian leader’s very bedroom. Such weaponry appeared to offer America guilt-free war. (2000, 61–62)

Airstrikes (including the launch of cruise missiles) then became the exclusive option. They were mainly aimed at pressing Yugoslavia to withdraw its forces rapidly, in no more than twelve days of strikes (Cordesman 2003, 16). Reliance

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on technology also increased public trust in the ability to accomplish the mission efficiently and swiftly, with minimum collateral damage. This belief was largely inspired by the first Gulf War in 1991, which was the first to show the perceived gains of the RMA. There, the concern to keep the war brief and the casualties few motivated an extremely intense phase of aerial bombing before the launching of the ground campaign and a massive flanking ground operation that would maximize Iraqi casualties to bring a swift end to the war (Reiter and Stam 2002, 176–178). In this war, moreover, smart bombs and precisionguided munitions gained their reputation for helping to reduce the number of unintended noncombatant casualties (Zehfuss 2011, 543–545). Another, and even more relevant, source of inspiration was Operation Deliberate Force that NATO conducted in 1995 against the Bosnian Serb Army to halt its aggression against Bosnian Muslim communities (Clark 2001, 111–112, 116–117; Herring 2000, 227–228). With the positive heritage of air campaigns from the first Gulf War to the Bosnia operation, the public and elites may have been less reluctant about the mission. Finally, another legitimizing effect was also the deployment of mainly volunteer troops, which, by implication, limited the public bargaining around the mission. These legitimizing mechanisms were powerful enough to remedy one more deficit: the avoidance of declaring war on Yugoslavia whereby President Clinton bypassed the need to obtain the approval of Congress, as stipulated by the War Powers Act. Thus, the legality of the operation was somewhat questionable but compensated for by the legitimacy attained through the other mechanisms. Ultimately Congress essentially backed the president as it neither explicitly approved nor blocked the participation of US troops in the NATO airstrikes (Woehrel and Kim 2006, 24). At the same time, moreover, without declaring war, the legality was questioned but the legitimacy benefited. With the passage of the War Powers Act in 1973, following the debate over the Vietnam War, the president’s freedom to commit troops to combat zones was limited in the absence of a congressional declaration of war (Carter 1984). Such an institutional arrangement helped create the conditions that promote public debate before deciding to use force. By bypassing declaration, argued Owens (2003b, 73), the president eliminated “a crucial tool for individuals and groups dissenting against liberal state violence.” In sum, the debate among NATO allies over whether to become involved militarily in Kosovo, where a threat to vital national interests was not an issue, reflected a moderate level of legitimacy of using force: high enough to initiate

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the campaign but not so high as to harm Serbian noncombatants; high enough to “coerce Milosevic, but not enough to dismay the NATO allies” (Nardulli et al. 2002, 44). The legitimacy of sacrificing was in general low. In the United States, the leading actor in NATO, the operation was shaped under the assumption that the public would not tolerate casualties, as inspired by the post-Vietnam Somalia syndrome (Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler 2009, 45; see more in section 5.1). As polls showed, a minor gap existed between supporting the use of force in general and supporting the participation of one’s own country in the war. Nevertheless, across most NATO countries, there was a gap of about 10 percent between the generally strong support for bombing Kosovo and the weaker support for the alternative or complementary strategy of sending ground troops if and when the bombing failed. This gap indicated concerns about casualties in already casualty-averse societies (Everts 2001, 226–229). The fact that only 52 percent of Americans supported a ground operation in April 1999 (Everts 2001, 229) could be considered a narrow enough margin to avert any ground adventure. Furthermore, from March through May, most of the respondents said that they were very or somewhat worried about the possibility that US troops in Kosovo might suffer casualties. The contention that Kosovo, as Europe’s backyard, was not worth a ground invasion was repeatedly expressed (Everts 2001, 229, 236–241; Feaver 2003, 275). At the same time, polls conducted from March through May showed that there were fewer concerns about Serb civilians being killed by airstrikes than about casualties to US troops (Larson and Savych 2007, 80). Concerns about casualties, bolstered by the optimistic belief that air bombing alone would do the job, drove President Clinton to reinforce his previous pledge to rule out a ground thrust: “We have no intention of using ground troops” (Feaver 2003, 276). Alternative methods were not seriously considered, not even the possibility that they may be required if the NATO attack were to push the Serbians to punish the Kosovars, thereby increasing the atrocities (Herring 2000, 230–231; Roberts 1999, 110–112). To some extent, that the administration had peremptorily ruled out the use of ground forces and did not leave this option on the table could have increased public concerns about casualties (see Gelpi et al. 2009, 48–49). It follows that the leadership’s skepticism and the public’s intolerance of casualties were mutually reinforcing. A similar picture was apparent in Britain as well, as reflected in the

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polls, although the public and political discourse indicated fewer concerns about casualties than in the United States (Caniglia 2001, 74). In sum, a culturally embedded aversion to risking soldiers, combined with expectations about casualties and a low level of threat to vital national interests, reduced the legitimacy of sacrificing. These variables were partially balanced out by others that increased the legitimacy: belief in the rightness of the mission and in the ability to accomplish its goals, a relatively strong consensus both domestically and internationally that also promised burden sharing among NATO members, and the professional makeup of the troops that promised political apathy among powerful groups. If we consider the mutual impacts of the two legitimacies, we can see that the pledged reliance on airstrikes to increase the legitimacy of using force among NATO members reduced (at least immediate) concerns informed by casualty sensitivity and in turn stifled critical questions about the logic or the rightness of the intervention. Considerations of this kind may even have intentionally motivated leaders to stick to the aerial option (Perlez 1999). Michael Walzer (2004, 101) described the irony in this situation: our political leaders cannot send soldiers into battle without convincing the country that the war is morally or politically necessary and that victory requires, and is worth, American lives. But there is an easier path for these same leaders. They can fight a war without using armies at all and so without convincing the country of the war’s necessity.

Consequently, the legitimacy of using force was high enough to initiate the campaign but not so high as to harm Serbian noncombatants and risk one’s own soldiers when combined with a lower legitimacy of sacrificing. Cell D (see Table 2.2) captures the situation, but it is also close to cell C. It is no wonder that until the start of the war, this interaction between the legitimacies resulted in passive force protection in the form of mission aversion: the reluctance to attack. Policymakers were then guided by two conflicting imperatives: minimizing the harm to Serbian civilians based on the principle of noncombatant immunity versus minimizing NATO’s own casualties based on the aversion to sacrifice. Kosovo was the first conflict where the dilemma between risking one’s own soldiers and risking enemy noncombatants became a prominent public issue (Luban 2011, 6). But as the legitimacy of sacrificing was lower than the legitimacy of using force, it

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was a typical case of the gap between the legitimacies. Therefore, these conflicting concerns affected the course of the operation, with the legitimacies gap laying the foundation for increasing aggressiveness toward civilians. 6.3 The Course of the Operation Concerned about collateral killing, NATO leaders decided to target only military installations. To ensure restrictiveness, politicians intrusively monitored the targeting process, micromanaging the war (Feaver 2003, 276–277). In submitting targets to Washington, NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark was even asked to calculate the collateral damage and civilian casualties, and his staff used sophisticated methods to do so (Clark 2001, 179, 238). Bombing of strategic assets was restricted, and the preservation of Yugoslavia’s infrastructures was part of the formal policy (Arkin 2001, 7–11). Therefore, options to begin the campaign with an intensive attack or a phased air operation with a gradual and previously agreed-on escalation were rejected (Cordesman 2003, 18–20). NATO was restricted further by the fact that the Serbian forces intentionally operated within the civilian population. To protect civilians, NATO limited its operations, resulting in minimum collateral killing during the first phases of the campaign (Arkin 2001, 15–16). Nevertheless, the restricted airstrikes were ineffective in pushing Milošević to surrender. On the contrary, and as could have been predicted, the strikes actually worsened the situation by encouraging the Serbs to increase the displacement and killing of Albanian Kosovars. Consequently, the number of refugees increased from about 200,000 prior to the airstrikes to about 500,000 with the potential to rapidly reach about 1 million thereafter (Cordesman 2003, 20; Roberts 1999, 113–114). However, NATO refrained from sending troops to halt the displacement and killing. Having determined that many of the most lucrative, isolated targets had been struck, General Clark concluded that it was time to consider targets in more populated areas (Clark 2001, 239). At the same time, since late April, the mission’s initial failure had generated some erosion of public support for the deployment, after support had been stable or slightly higher until then. Still, the majority of both Americans and Britons believed that the operation was not worth the loss of their soldiers’ lives. Overall, restricting the war was the preferred option among Americans who preferred either air bombing or ground troops, although there were also some signs of willingness to incur casualties if the operation succeeded (Everts 2001, 226–230).

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Prompted by the two conflicting imperatives—noncombatant immunity and aversion to sacrifice—NATO leaders essentially disregarded the third imperative derived from the principle of state sovereignty and compromised the security interests that had initially guided the mission. However, informed by this and other interests, the legitimacy of using force was not so low as to conclude the operation without results. Furthermore, given that concerns about defeat often prompt extra efforts to win, especially among democracies (de Mesquita et al. 2004), NATO members could not easily accept a failure. In particular, President Clinton could not tolerate a defeat; he had just survived impeachment (following the Monica Lewinsky scandal) and witnessed the leaks from his senior command about the flawed performance of the military in this campaign (Feaver 2003, 277–278). With the contradictory imperatives of minimum risk to both its own soldiers and enemy noncombatants, only fine-tuning of the legitimacy of using force could tip the balance toward a more decisive result, relaxing noncombatant immunity. Mindful of the potential failure, some leaders, particularly General Clark, again put the option of a ground operation on the table. Some European allies were ambivalent about this. Britain (less averse to casualties among the alliance members) supported the idea of sending troops into Kosovo (Lambeth 2001, 46–48), but the option of a ground invasion remained unpopular among the public in the allies’ countries (Everts 2001, 228–232). More significant, the American leaders, generals, and Congress loudly resisted it (Feaver 2003, 278–280). Secretary Cohen reflected how casualty sensitivity ruled out a land campaign, saying that “if we had started to suffer substantial casualties, I am convinced it would have turned into quite a contentious issue up on the Hill [the US Congress].”6 To illustrate how much the aversion to casualties governed policymaking, President Clinton approved General Clark’s request in late March to deploy Apache helicopters to improve air support capabilities, so that NATO could strike at Serb forces in Kosovo and limit the accelerated ethnic cleansing. However, the generals and the Pentagon dragged their feet and inflated the estimates of the number of expected US casualties (Feaver 2003, 279; Nardulli et al. 2002, 5–6). In any case, the low-level preparation for the ground option was partly visible to the public (Lambeth 2001, 48) and hence also to Yugoslavia. Still, there is a scholarly debate regarding the effectiveness of these signals in urging Yugoslavia to capitulate and the extent to which the allies seriously considered a ground invasion to decide the war (see, for example, Byman and Waxman 2000; Stigler 2002–2003).

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In tandem, and most important, beginning in early April, the ineffectiveness of restricted bombing led General Clark, with the approval of NATO Secretary General Javier Solana, to gradually escalate the airstrikes beyond the original restrictions and thus also relax civilian monitoring (Arkin 2001, 12; McIntosh 2009, 59–60). As part of this effort, NATO targeted Serbian forces perpetrating ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, regarding it as a moral obligation, along with more mobile targets in Kosovo and infrastructures in Serbia and Kosovo, including bridges and oil storage facilities. To this end, NATO deployed more airplanes, from 334 aircraft initially to more than 1,000 by the end of the war (Cordesman 2003, 31–33). Disturbed by the lack of the operation’s success, leaders at the NATO summit in Washington on April 23 unanimously agreed that they would not lose, whatever it took (Nardulli et al. 2002, 36–37). Therefore, they decided to intensify the air campaign, moving from phases 1 and 2—which established air superiority in the theater and focused on military targets in Kosovo and those Yugoslav forces reinforcing the Serbian forces in Kosovo—to phase 3. Within the framework of phase 3, NATO allowed the targeting of forces not only in Kosovo but also in the south of Belgrade by expanding the target set to include the military-industrial infrastructure, media, electric power transformers, and other strategic assets (United Nations 2000, paragraph 45; Nardulli et al. 2002, 37). Nonetheless, although the initial reluctance to hit infrastructures was eliminated, targets in Belgrade were restricted to ensure consensus among the allies (Arkin 2001, 18). Escalation also involved more aerial support for the KLA, which in turn provided help in targeting NATO airstrikes and forcing Serbian troops to concentrate their weapons to defend themselves, thus making them easier targets for NATO aircraft (Lambeth 2001, 54–55). In practice, the KLA’s ground fighting against the Serbs was the real ground operation (Cordesman 2003, 230–234), although NATO refrained from legitimizing the militia’s independent actions and even denied aiding it (Lambeth 2001, 53–54). With the alternative options of admitting defeat or launching a ground operation, Clark in practice traded the less preferred option of a ground invasion for expanded airstrikes and relaxed restrictions (Clark 2001, 236; Coletta and Feaver 2006, 119). For their part, politicians traded noncombatants’ lives for those of the soldiers to win support at home (Miller 2000, 397). Time, moreover, was of the essence. Mid-September was the latest date on which a ground thrust could start before winter set in, so by pushing a decision, Clark used the calendar for his benefit (see Lambeth 2001, 47). Furthermore, in light of the appearance of

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antiwar protests in late April, bolstered by concerns about the ability to preserve NATO’s solidarity had the war continued (Posen 2000, 69), a swift and decisive victory was necessary. As expected, escalation bred more collateral killing. Most controversial was the accidental attack on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade on May 7, claiming the lives of three embassy employees and wounding twenty-seven. US Secretary Cohen publicly blamed “outdated maps and target verification” (Dumbaugh 2000). These and other incidents troubled NATO allies. In a meeting held with NATO ambassadors in mid-May, Clark explained: if we try to prevent all civilian casualties, we’ll never strike another building. We’ve already ceased bombing trucks. There are human hostages under bridges, so we’re not bombing bridges in Kosovo. There’s an intense desire that we’ll never have civilian casualties again. But we will—this kind of incident will happen again. It’s inevitable. (2001, 298)

Nevertheless, the escalation mounted until June 8, when the Yugoslav government conceded and agreed to withdraw its troops from Kosovo, thus ending the war. The number of sorties per day rose from 200 when the operation started to over 1,000 by the end (Lambeth 2001, 62). Hitting infrastructures caused immense damage to Serbia’s economy (ibid., 41–42). Risk was transferred and civilians were killed, as explained in the next section. 6.4 Risk Transfer When the airstrikes ended, and accusations were heard about the extent of the killing, Human Rights Watch investigated ninety incidents that accounted for most of the civilian deaths. It concluded that between 488 and 527 Yugoslav civilians were killed as a result of NATO bombing, about 62 to 66 percent occurring in just twelve major incidents. Of the ninety investigated incidents, one occurred in March, forty in April, forty-five in May, and four in June. Both calculations indicate the correlation between escalation and collateral killing (Arkin 2000, 5). At the same time, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court appointed a committee (hereinafter the prosecutor committee) to review the allegations against NATO. It confirmed that the general number of civilians killed was about 500. The prosecutor committee thoroughly investigated ten of the twelve incidents mapped by Human Rights Watch and confirmed that between 273 and 317 civilians had been killed there (United Nations 2000, paragraph 53). A more accurate number—453 fatalities, roughly half Albanians and half

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Serbs—was documented jointly by the humanitarian law centers in Belgrade and Kosovo and presented in 2015 (Kosovo Memory Book Database 2015). According to this source, 7,903 civilians lost their lives or went missing in connection with the war between January 1 and June 14 (local hostilities continued after the NATO bombings ended) out of a total of 10,317 civilians during the entire war (1998–2000), so most of the civilians were killed during or as a result of the NATO campaign. NATO ended the war with no (direct) casualties (it lost only two men in a training accident). Yugoslavia lost about 600 military and special police (Cordesman 2003, 91, 95). About half of them were killed by the KLA (Fisk 1999), and NATO directly killed 276 members of military groups (Kosovo Memory Book Database 2015, 2). To better understand these figures, it is important to establish the link between risk transfer and military practices. Clearly, the fatality ratio of 0:450 indicates that risk was transferred strategically and tactically. By opting to decide the war without a land operation, with the clear acknowledgment that this option would likely cost the lives of both Albanian and Serbian noncombatants, NATO strategically shifted the risk from its own soldiers to noncombatants. Even the deployment of the Apache helicopters was prohibited. Furthermore, even if the number of 450 casualties is not so high for a three-month armed conflict, it is arguably too high for a military operation motivated by humanitarianism (Bring 2002, 46). While the protection of civilians was the primary concern of the intervention and the source of legitimation for it, NATO placed the protection of Yugoslav civilians lower in its priorities. No less significant, by targeting Serbian infrastructures as a way of turning the population against the leadership, NATO both encouraged the Serbs to increase the harm to the Albanian population and used the Serbian population as a weapon against its government (Cronin 2014). Nevertheless, ruling out the ground option, NATO was not prepared to protect the Kosovar Albanians, many of whom were displaced and became refugees. It is no wonder that, as Whitman (2001) suggested, a distinction should be drawn between “humanitarianism” and the refugees’ human rights. Humanitarianism was NATO’s emergency response to the refugee crisis at the expense of respecting the refugees’ human rights, which also included the right to protection. Collateral killing was intensified due to the selection of targets that also followed the endeavor to damage Serbian infrastructures, which, nevertheless, could not be unequivocally defined as military-industrial infrastructure (United Nations 2000, paragraph 55). However, although the targets were legitimate according to IHL,

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and therefore the prosecutor committee recommended that no further investigation was needed (paragraph 91), they were still located in densely populated areas with a civilian presence within the targeted installations. Therefore, typical mistakes (whether aggravated by the mechanisms to safeguard the pilots as detailed below, or not) almost inevitably produced collateral killing. An example is the bombing of the Chinese Embassy instead of a military headquarters in Belgrade. Errors were especially deadly when NATO failed to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants—for example when refugee convoys were targeted (Arkin 2000, 5, 7, 25–26, 39–40; United Nations 2000, paragraphs 57–89). A critical failure to make such a distinction was evident in the deadliest incident that occurred. In the village of Korisa on May 13, as many as eighty-seven civilians were killed in what NATO thought was a military camp whereas, allegedly, displaced Kosovar civilians had been forcibly contained there as human shields (Arkin 2000, 54–55; United Nations 2000, paragraph 88). Add to this three facts: (1) nearly half of the ninety deadly incidents resulted from attacks during daylight hours, when it was expected that civilians would be on the targeted roads, bridges, and public buildings; (2) one-third of all the incidents occurred as a result of attacks on targets in densely populated urban areas; and (3) 90 to 150 civilians died from cluster bombs (Arkin 2000, 5, 15, 24). Risk was thereby transferred twice: by risking the population from the air and by refraining from protecting it on the ground. Note that I do not calculate the number of civilians killed directly by the Serbs during the campaign, only those killed directly by NATO, which bears direct responsibility for their deaths. However, the overall number reflects the transfer of risk. Against this background, it is less relevant to measure the fatality ratio between enemy noncombatants and enemy combatants. To recall, this ratio represents the extent to which the troops distinguished between combatants and noncombatants in their efforts to shift or take risk. Such a ratio is relevant when troops tactically trade risk for casualties. In such a situation, the more this distinction is made, the greater is soldiers’ risk to themselves. This trade-off worked here to a lesser extent than in ground operations. Still, more than 60 percent of the fatalities that NATO caused (453 of a total 729) were noncombatants, deviating from the 50 percent average. It indicates a low level of caution, since NATO combatants, namely pilots, were at minimum risk, and ground combatants were exposed to almost no risk. Note that the general definition of noncombatants as those residing among the enemy but not participating directly in the fighting is only partly applicable here. In the case of Kosovo, where Serbian forces fought among the Kosovar Albanian

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population without clear boundaries between them, the protection of nonenemy, namely, the Kosovar Albanians, and not only the Serb enemy noncombatants, became complicated. Given that the Albanians were legally entitled to the same level of protection as enemy noncombatants, their proximity to the theater of war posed the underlying dilemma to the attackers. Risk was also tactically traded for casualties and shifted from NATO combatants to Yugoslav noncombatants by safeguarding the pilots. NATO restricted its warplanes to operating above 15,000 feet to protect the pilots from the Serb antiaircraft batteries. Only when the Serbian air defense systems were degraded were height restrictions eased (Cordesman 2003, 92). While casualty sensitivity governed this practice, there is a debate about its implications, mainly regarding the gap between the practice and the formal rules of engagement that ordered that “bombs would not be released on any target unless the pilot could confirm the target and be assured of no civilian casualties” (McDonnell 2002, 40). Cordesman (2003, 92) reviewed after-action military studies and argued that modern strike aircraft provide most of the situational awareness needed for even the most demanding strikes. Medium altitude flight profiles also give the pilot more overall situational awareness than low altitude flight, and the extended time over target also has advantages. This does not mean that “fact and low” does not have tactical advantages, but it does mean that “medium altitude, survival, and accurate” is generally sufficient unto the day.

The prosecutor committee (United Nations 2000, paragraph 56) reached similar conclusions. In the same breath, however, following the inquiry into the devastating incident—the attack on the Djakovica convoy on April 14, in which a convoy of Albanian refugees was mistakenly targeted and seventy-three noncombatants were killed—the committee qualified the overall conclusion by saying that: While there is nothing unlawful about operating at a height above Yugoslav air defences, it is difficult for any aircrew operating an aircraft flying at several hundred miles an hour and at a substantial height to distinguish between military and civilian vehicles in a convoy. In this case, most of the attacking aircraft were F16s with a crew of one person to fly the aircraft and identify the target. (Ibid., paragraph 69)

Human Rights Watch came to a similar conclusion (Arkin 2000, 23). Amnesty International (2000, 17) referred to this incident and stated that NATO officials told Amnesty International that an aircrew flying at 15,000 feet would be able only to identify whether the objective was the intended one according to the

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planning preparations, but would be unable to tell whether, for example, civilians had moved within its vicinity. The 15,000-feet rule thus effectively made it impossible for NATO aircrew to respect the obligation to suspend an attack once circumstances had changed on the ground rendering the objective no longer legitimate.

Consequently, Amnesty revealed, NATO officials reported that “following the bombing of civilians in a convoy at Djakovica, the Rules of Engagement were amended to require visual confirmation that there were no civilians in the target area” (Amnesty International 2000, 17). Amnesty also pointed to the method for balancing the risks between combatants and noncombatants by drawing on A.P.V. Rogers, former director of the British Army Legal Services: If the target is sufficiently important, higher commanders may be prepared to accept a greater degree of risk to the aircraft crew to ensure that the target is properly identified and accurately attacked. No-risk warfare is unheard of. (Amnesty International 2000, 17–18)

Furthermore, as the report submitted to the US Army admitted, by forcing aircraft to fly above 15,000 feet, NATO became limited in its ability to hit the Serbs on the ground. This was particularly true because the Serbs used dispersion and terrain to minimize the effectiveness of the airstrikes, especially by operating in small-unit formations. Thus, despite NATO’s air superiority, the number of Yugoslav ground forces in Kosovo more than tripled during the operation, while the damage to the Yugoslav Army was less than expected (Nardulli et al. 2002, 28, 54–56). Consequently, NATO troops failed to stop the ethnic cleansing, which accelerated during the operation. Another indication of risk transfer was the issue of providing early warnings to civilians about attacks. Amnesty (2000, 18) cited NATO officials’ argument that “as a general policy they chose not to issue warnings, for fear that this might endanger the crew of attacking aircraft.” It follows that NATO traded reduced risk to its soldiers for casualties among Kosovar and Serbian noncombatants, since risk taking could have reduced the number of Yugoslav casualties. All in all, the combination of safeguarding the pilots with the selection of targets exacerbated collateral killing. Analysis of the extent to which NATO’s actions were legal is outside the scope of this study. Suffice it to say that unlike Amnesty International (2000, 26–27), the prosecutor committee found no significant evidence of unlawfulness. The independent commission initiated by Sweden reached a similar conclusion

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(Independent International Commission on Kosovo 2000; see also Murphy 2002). Regardless of the debate over these conclusions (see Cohn 2003), it is more relevant to the focus of this study to contextualize risk transfer within the boundaries of IHL. To recall, IHL prescribes two relevant principles. First is the principle of discrimination between combatants and noncombatants. In the case of Kosovo, allegations were raised about the failure to discriminate, as evident in the cases detailed by the organizations that investigated the war. Furthermore, there is an unresolved debate about how to define a military objective. Article 52 (Protocols Additional to the Geneva Conventions, Protocol 1) defines military objectives as “those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.” According to the US perspective, civilian economic facilities can be considered military objectives (Schmitt 2014, 149–150), as the case of Kosovo demonstrated, and the prosecutor committee legalized postfactum (United Nations 2000, Article 47). The second principle is that of proportionality, which prohibits “an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated” (Article 51). In Kosovo, allegations about deviations from this principle were made, but, again, the prosecutor committee did not uphold them. It follows that IHL is not the major issue here (normative questions are also outside the scope of my study). Transfer of risk is not only a legal but also a political issue. In all cases, regardless of the extent to which NATO could avoid accidents and mistakes entirely, it decided to target specific objectives embedded within populated urban areas with the methods it employed, and with the explicit acknowledgment that collateral deaths were inevitable. As Clark’s statement cited above confirmed, “if we try to prevent all civilian casualties, we’ll never strike another building.” NATO stretched the interpretation of what constitutes a legal action to accord with its political constraints. Increased shifting of risk reflected the governments’ inclination to increase the protection of their soldiers within the confines of what they believed was proportional. Surely, the political decision to rule out a land operation had almost nothing to do with legal considerations. More significant, NATO’s methods reflected a political inclination to decide the war as quickly and inexpensively as possible. By targeting civilian installations, NATO tried to coerce Belgrade into accepting its demands: ending the

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violence in Kosovo and withdrawing its military forces from there. A more cautious approach in discriminating between military and civilian objectives might have led to fewer civilian casualties but would also have eased the pressure on Milošević to capitulate. Failure to coerce him to do so would most likely have led to a ground operation, especially given the approaching winter, thereby risking NATO soldiers. More caution would have increased the risk to pilots had they flown lower to maintain visual contact with the targets. What was to be a quick military operation instead became a complicated campaign that lasted more than two months. The failure to discipline Milošević after the first round of relatively surgical bombing prompted the sacrifice-averse NATO to target civilian facilities and hence to collaterally kill more noncombatants. It is less relevant for this analysis to deal with the controversial use of cluster bombs (McDonnell 2002) and depleted uranium projectiles (United Nations 2000, paragraph 26), or with the long-term suffering inflicted on the Serbian civilian population that contradicted initial assurances that the war was not aimed at them (Independent International Commission on Kosovo 2000, 93). What is more relevant is the strategic choice to attack from the air and the tactics chosen for this attack, which were informed by force protection, while the choice of munitions was not directly derived from considerations of force protection. It is of course reasonable to assume that risking soldiers could have produced the opposite results. For example, a ground assault could have been deadlier than the air campaign. Exposing the pilots to the dangers of Serb antiaircraft weapons, moreover, would have risked airplanes loaded with fuel and high explosives crashing into an urban neighborhood with devastating results (Dunlap 2000, 97–98). However, this is a postfactum analysis; risk aversion guided the original logic. In sum, risk was shifted from NATO’s soldiers to Yugoslav noncombatants— Serbs and Albanians who were collaterally targeted by NATO and Albanians who were killed by Serb troops during NATO’s attacks. Yugoslav noncombatants were put at greater risk to ensure the safety of the soldiers—both the pilots who fought and the ground combatants who were left outside the battle theater (see Ignatieff 2000, 62). On a more normative note, Walzer (2004, 101) cited the evolving death hierarchy in his famous dictum (inspired by this war): “You can’t kill unless you are prepared to die.” Otherwise, he argued, “we cannot accept that those [enemy] lives are expendable, and these [own soldiers] not” (102), especially because the aversion to sacrifice in humanitarian operations may impose risks on the very population that the troops were deployed to protect (Walzer 2002, 937–938).

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A move from cell C to cell D in Table 2.2 was thus at work. With greater legitimacy of using force, expanded airstrikes produced more collateral killing and compensated for the aversion to risking soldiers—the low level of legitimacy of sacrificing. How did the legitimacy of using force increase to support the escalation? 6.5 Legitimizing the Escalation Strategically, with the reluctance to risk soldiers (a low level of legitimacy of sacrificing) paired with the reluctance to end the airstrikes without accomplishing the goals (a higher legitimacy of using force), NATO leaders’ hands were tied. They had no option other than to escalate the fighting, with the collateral killing that this meant. To some extent, the aversion to sacrifice ground troops, which persisted even when the clouds of failure hovered over NATO, encouraged the acceptance of more aggressiveness. Still, leaders had to legitimize this choice, which they did using several mechanisms. Significantly, the promise of precision helped legitimize this choice. Nothing can better attest to the power of this promise than the way it was presented when the war ended. “NATO conducted the most precise and lowest collateral damage air operation in history,” reported Secretary Cohen and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Henry Shelton, to Congress about seven months after the war ended (Cohen and Shelton 2000, xiv). They repeatedly invoked the desire to limit collateral damage. Indeed, even the Sweden-initiated independent commission praised NATO: The Commission is impressed by the relatively small scale of civilian damage considering the magnitude of the war and its duration. It is further of the view that NATO succeeded better than any air war in history in selective targeting. (Independent International Commission on Kosovo 2000, 183–184; emphasis added)

Echoing the rhetoric of precision and minimal, unintended collateral damage testifies to its power not only after the operation but also before and during it. So powerful was this rhetoric that the argument that the allies used precision weapons, though far from being true, was easily sold. In the early stages, indeed, more than 90 percent of the bombs and missiles used precision-guided munitions, but in the later stages, NATO increasingly used unguided weapons, so only about one-third of the bombs and missiles used over the course of the whole campaign were precision guided (Cordesman 2003, 41–42). “These are not facts that NATO emphasized during the war,” argued Cordesman, “and many briefings gave a false impression that NATO was relying almost solely on precision weapons” (41).

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When news about collateral deaths affected public opinion, a related mechanism increasing legitimacy was called into action: relaxing the responsibility for these deaths by presenting them as accidents. Accidents, which could be anticipated, supported legitimation of the war when recounted as unintended and undesired consequences, and consequently those who inflicted them could not be held accountable (Owens 2003a). A discourse that challenged the politically intended policies that might result in accidents was thus muted. Deliberation was limited again. It is small wonder, then, that public opinion among NATO members did not change significantly during the entire conflict (Everts 2001). True, the bombing of the Chinese Embassy (which occurred about three weeks after the widely reported incident of the Djakovica convoy) affected public opinion somewhat, because the media adopted a more critical tone. Doubts then emerged about the air campaign and the allies’ efforts to avoid civilian casualties. However, it had no significant impact on increasing the already minor antiwar activity (including in Europe). Furthermore, Americans’ concerns that innocent noncombatants might be dying as a result of the bombings did not affect overall support for the war (Larson and Savych 2007, 84, 106–121). In addition to the promise of technology, more mechanisms were at work, mainly limiting the deliberations that might delegitimize the escalation. First, the media played their role. It rallied round the flag by covering much of the war uncritically from the perspective of NATO and focused on Yugoslavia’s crimes and the suffering they created. Furthermore, a great deal of information about the bombing operations was misleadingly and selectively disclosed (Owens 2003b, 162–163). The Sweden-initiated independent commission reached a similar conclusion, blaming the Serbs for denying Western journalists access to Kosovo (Independent International Commission on Kosovo 2000, 218–219). It also noted, “Few journalists had access to the pilots and those that did fly on missions found it difficult to do anything more than admire the skill and dedication of the flyers” (218). In its inquiry, Amnesty International (2000, 24) asserted that NATO had a policy of deliberately withholding relevant information about errors. In such events, NATO promised an inquiry to quiet public opinion but revealed the truth only two weeks later, when overall public interest in the event had declined. At the same time, stories about Serb crimes that relied largely on the biased reports of the KLA were exaggerated, concluded Daniel Pearl and Robert Block (1999) of the Wall Street Journal, calling it “mass-grave obsession.” They cited a NATO official: “As the war dragged on . . . NATO saw a fatigued press corps

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drifting toward the contrarian story: civilians killed by NATO’s bombs. NATO stepped up its claims about Serb ‘killing fields.’ ” The second mechanism was the structure of the force deployed. I have already noted that by deploying a volunteer, technology-intensive military, governments reduced the level of mobilization, allowing them to bypass the popular will when they initiated war. This campaign clearly demonstrated the empowerment of the executives in Western democracies by the reliance on airstrikes carried out by professional pilots that obviated the deployment of costly ground forces. Had NATO leaders decided that such a ground deployment was unavoidable to accomplish the goals of the campaign, it would have led to more critical thinking about the legitimacy of intervention and thereby to a challenge against the enduring deployment. But the leaders did the opposite, thereby limiting deliberation. Third, attempts to limit deliberation did not stop there. Probably because of concerns about dissenting public opinion regarding the increasing collateral killing of noncombatants, the decision made at the April summit to escalate the fighting was implicitly announced. Although in practice the NATO leaders had approved a sharp change in the direction of the campaign, they refrained from full disclosure. As Arkin (2001, 16–17) noted, it was not a formal decision to move from phase 2 to 3 (expanding the bombings). The leaders delegated that decision to Secretary General Solana. Cordesman (2003, 24) called it a decision “behind the scenes.” Moreover, Solana presented the transition from phase to phase in a misleading manner. In the press conference following the summit, he responded to a question about the decision to proceed to phase 3: All the targets that have been struck in the last days [referring to the controversial attack on Serbian television a night earlier in which 16 civilians were killed] belong to the same phase in which you are, we are in phase 2, we will continue to be in phase 2, no change, no decision has been taken to move from phase 2 into any other phase.7

By camouflaging their decisions, the leaders made it harder for any opposition to challenge the legitimacy of the escalation. Doing so bolstered the contribution of the media to marginalizing the role of antiwar activity during the war, thereby diminishing its ability to influence (Owens 2003b, 146–184). Finally, and most important, the symbol of humanitarianism legitimized not only the initiation of the war but its escalation as well. Paradoxically, the impact of the failure of the first stages of the operation, which exacerbated the Serbs’ attempts to harm the Kosovar Albanians, did not work against the legitimation of

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the campaign; rather, it further legitimized the use of aggressive force, as NATO leaders effectively capitalized on the aggravated human disaster. British Prime Minister Blair, in a speech to an American audience a day after the NATO summit at which the escalation was formalized, probably laid the foundation for a ground operation that he supported. Blair called on “Anyone who has seen the tear stained faces of the hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming across the border, heard their heart-rending tales of cruelty or contemplated the unknown fates of those left behind” to believe that “We cannot let the evil of ethnic cleansing stand. . . . We have learned twice before in this century that appeasement does not work.”8 Three weeks later, troubled by the prolonged campaign with no clear sign of retreat by Milošević, President Clinton declared, “Kosovo is a crucial test . . . will repression and brutality, rooted in ethnic, racial and religious hatreds, dominate the agenda for the new century and the new millennium?”9 Collateral killing could then not only be legitimized as an accidental, unintended, and even marginal cost of a just war, but could also be eliminated from the discourse altogether in the name of humanitarianism. If by identifying oneself as humanitarian, one’s enemies can be stripped of their humanity (Barkawi 2000, 310), dehumanization politically mitigates, at least in part, the imperatives of IHL. Harming noncombatants and their infrastructures then becomes legitimate since the population bears collective responsibility for the actions of their leaders and thus should suffer (Douzinas 2002, 173). (For a similar but not critical approach, see also Dunlap 1999, 19.) Equally important, risking NATO soldiers could become even less legitimated since the risk was necessary not only to save Albanians but also to show mercy to the dehumanized Serbs. A few years earlier, Samuel Huntington (1993, 42) sharply delegitimized sacrificing one’s own soldiers by arguing that “it is morally unjustifiable and politically indefensible that members of the Armed Forces should be killed to prevent Somalis from killing one another.” Walzer (2002, 936) critically echoed this evolving new concept according to which “soldiers defending humanity, in contrast to soldiers defending their own country and their fellow-citizens, will not risk their lives; or, their political leaders will not dare to ask them to risk their lives.” Here we see how two mechanisms of the legitimation of using force are cojoined: the dehumanization of the enemy is twinned with the relaxation of responsibility—in this case, the transfer of responsibility to the Serbian collective for the targeted civilians. At the same time, we also see contradictory impacts in

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the interaction between the legitimacies: the dehumanization of the enemy may not only legitimize aggressiveness but also delegitimize the sacrificing of one’s own soldiers, especially in humanitarian interventions. To further understand the impacts of dehumanization, in Butler’s (2009) terms, the Kosovar lives were so ungrievable that NATO was not held accountable for the collateral killing even after the war. Indeed, despite the accusations, NATO has never conducted an in-depth inquiry into its actions or published an alternative report to that of the human rights organizations and international bodies cited earlier (see Larson and Savych 2007, 66–67). It has never told its version of the precise number of collateral deaths. In the spirit of Shaw’s (2005) arguments, moreover, the exact number of fatalities for which the KLA could be held accountable as the ground arm of NATO carrying out “dirty” missions for which NATO was not accountable has never been documented by NATO either. Nevertheless, the blame falls not on the government but on apathetic public opinion and the media. Typically, as Chomsky (2000) argued in his retrospective review, the war, with its new symbolic significance, “received scant mention” during the following year that ended the millennium. We can therefore provocatively argue that just as leaders may overestimate public sensitivity to their own casualties (as argued by Gelpi et al. 2009), they may also overestimate public sensitivity to collateral killing. Leaders have more freedom of action than they assume. 6.6 A Comparable Case: Drone Warfare in Pakistan To better understand the pattern of strategic risk transfer, I briefly discuss drone warfare in Pakistan, which shares remarkable characteristics with the Kosovo campaign. To better balance the conflicting imperatives of protecting one’s own civilians, respecting noncombatant immunity, and protecting one’s own soldiers, industrialized democracies have increased the development and use of drones since the 2000s. It is formally justified as replacing indiscriminate firepower with precision that can minimize civilian casualties and protect one’s own soldiers, all at relatively low economic cost (Crawford 2013, xiii, 211–212; Sauer and Schörnig 2012). Initially, armed drones were mostly used for the targeted killing of suspected terrorists, including militant leaders. Drones replaced the option of sending troops into a populated area to arrest a terrorist that would result in losses among both the troops and the local civilians (Crawford 2013, xv). Israel has developed and deployed this weapon since 2004 in its warfare in Gaza for targeted killing and has gradually expanded the use of drones for offensive goals (Rogers 2014, 99). Britain also has increased its use of this weapon.10

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Since 2004 (up to the time of writing), the United States, in collaboration with the Pakistani military, escalated the use of Predator and Reaper drones, mainly activated by the CIA, in Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal areas in the northwest against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which were both undermining stability in Pakistan, a country that stocks atomic weapons. The Taliban also launched raids against NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan (Williams 2010). Drone warfare also erupted in Yemen after 2002. Concurrently, drone strikes in Afghanistan, where US troops were deployed on the ground, increased since 2001 (Crawford 2013, 74–78). In 2009, for the first time, the US Air Force trained more joystick pilots than new fighter and bomber pilots (Sluka 2011, 70). Like Kosovo, the war in Pakistan has continued without deployment of ground forces, keeping American soldiers out of direct action and hence avoiding risk. In the ongoing campaign, the number of noncombatants collaterally killed increased over time with the escalation of attacks under President Obama (since 2008). However, there is a dispute between several sources about the real numbers of civilian casualties. Between 2004 and 2015, the United States killed directly between 2,700 and 3,500 people (not including the thousands killed by the Pakistan military), among them about 160 to 2,600 noncombatants, comprising 5 to 75 percent (Crawford 2016, 10–11). During this period, the United States lost four soldiers in combat on Pakistan soil.11 It follows that the issue of discrimination is highly debated. Nonetheless, as mentioned earlier regarding Kosovo, the fatality ratio is less relevant in this clear case of strategic risk transfer because the level of discrimination does not affect the risk of combatants. Indiscrimination and killing of noncombatants resulted from intelligence shortfalls in identification,12 negligence, and cases in which drones killed many more people than their targets (Friedersdorf 2016), partly because of the “double tap” tactics: firing two Hellfire missiles at each target at the expense of increasing civilian casualties among those rushing to help the victims (Benjamin 2013, 26). Legitimizing the use of force relied on several mechanisms, in addition to basic capitalization of the perceived threat posed by al-Qaeda and the Taliban and the conduct of warfare without risk to own soldiers, a mechanism critical for limiting deliberation. The first mechanism was the promise of humanitarian war thanks to the precision of the drone weapon and its ability to remove soldiers from the battlefield. In this discourse of legitimation, argued Chamayou (2015, 17), policymakers and strategists declared that drones are considered “to be the most ethical weapon ever known to humankind.” This promise was also instrumental when the number of civilians killed mounted, and criticism focused on the legality of using drones, and especially of

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killing American citizens abroad suspected of being involved in terror. Obama rebuffed criticism by saying (in a speech at the National Defense University in May 2013), “Conventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones, and are likely to cause more civilian casualties and more local outrage.”13 Obama bypassed the main criticism (see section 6.7) that without the drone option, it was less likely that the deployment in Pakistan could have been conducted and, nevertheless, compared two unequal modes of action. Indirectly but cleverly, the president touched the sensitive nerve of aversion to sacrifice to relegitimize drone warfare. So the main two legitimacy imperatives—noncombatant immunity and the aversion to casualties—were harmonized with the third imperative of combating terror to protect the Western civilization. Second, the cooperation of the Pakistan regime added a complementary but essential layer of legitimacy. Although the deployment of drones subverted its sovereignty and killed its own people, this warfare nevertheless bolstered the regime of President Asif Ali Zardari (Bhutto 2010). Third, the administration conducted a secret war in terms of lack of transparency about the strikes and their impacts. Much was known, but not necessarily in a formal and detailed manner. A key to this was the subordination of this military activity to the CIA rather than to the military. Secrecy was instrumental for both hampering public oversight and allowing the Pakistanis to deny their tacit involvement (Williams 2010). Even Congress tolerated this mode of action, and for a long time, it refrained from questioning issues such as the legality of the strikes, the procedure of their approval, and their effectiveness. Muted deliberation helps legitimation, and the question why the American polity voluntarily paralyzed itself deserves a broader discussion, but a few clues can be found here. Fourth, the disputed numbers of killed civilians—in this case, greater than in other campaigns—helped defuse antiwar pressures and allowed the administration to count a small and allegedly reasonable number. This was made possible in part because of the reporters’ limited access to the arena. No less important, however, was the administration’s decision to count all military-age males in the zone of a drone strike as combatants unless explicitly proven otherwise (Crawford 2013, 124–126). To indicate the effectiveness of legitimation, in February 2013, even before Obama’s speech, despite the questions raised about drone warfare in Congress, a majority of Americans (56 percent) continued to support the program, even if 53 percent of those surveyed said they were very concerned about civilian victims (Pew Research Center 2013a). A few months later, 50 percent said that drones

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had made the United States safer (Pew Research Center 2013b). What is notable is that the main stimulus for debate at home arose from the killing of American citizens (Pew Research Center 2013a) rather than Pakistan civilians. However, with criticism at home and growing protests in Pakistan against the killing of civilians in 2011 (Crawford 2013, 77, 121–122), policies were slightly changed. In 2012, the administration initiated a codification of the rules of strike (403–404), and in 2016, it released data on the number of casualties (lower than estimated by other sources), whereas until then, it had rarely commented on the attacks (Serle 2016). Obama also pledged in his speech to the National Defense University to increase oversight in cooperation with Congress. Evidently the number of people killed by drones declined from 2014 to 2015 (Crawford 2016, 10). Legalization, codification, and transparency were all useful to legitimize this kind of disputed warfare, which, despite being reduced in Pakistan, was increased in other arenas, such as Yemen (Bergen and Sterman 2017). Gradually the number of strikes declined from the peak of 117 attacks in 2010 to a few from 2016 to 2018 (De Luce and Naylor 2018), meaning the war was almost halted. This change originated from the inclination not to antagonize Pakistan, where opposition to war had risen. Furthermore, the need for the deployment diminished with the reduction in American troop numbers in Afghanistan whom the drones had protected against raids from Pakistan (Bergen and Sterman 2017). What arises again from the drone case is that policymakers enjoyed greater freedom than in previous deployments for several reasons: 1. The United States had perfected methods of risk transfer since Kosovo. In this case, not only ground combatants but also pilots were kept off the battlefield. Hence, risk was reduced and, by implication, so were the cycles of those who might be affected by the war. Furthermore, the limitations produced by aversion to risk, which in Kosovo had interfered with identification of targets to better protect the pilots, were also reduced as a result of the deployment of unmanned vehicles. 2. In unmanned warfare lies the foundation for a secret war, especially one for which motivations do not emerge bottom up (to eliminate a concrete threat or offer humanitarian help). Thus, there are no criteria for success, and the demand for public accountability is reduced. 3. A ground operation, in this case on Pakistani soil to offset deficiencies in the drone strikes to accomplish (nonconcrete) goals, thus expanding the already acknowledged adventure in Afghanistan, was not on the agenda. Therefore, when pressures emerged, the administration could swiftly respond and restrict

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the attacks. The encounter of the two legitimacies at a low level (cell C in Table 2.2) brings about deescalation. It follows that once again, we can see the power that policymakers can accrue because of reliance on technology. Amazingly, the public remained quiet and thereby facilitated the use of drones as a presidential weapon. A key to hampering deliberation was the combination of discursive mechanisms that reinforced the legitimacy of using force and a risk-free war that reduced those affected by the policy. With this combination, the United States could legitimize the use of force far away from American territory up to a certain limit. The “dronization” of the military replaced the citizen-soldiers by technological means, freeing leaders from the constraints associated with the mobilization of human combatants—the main factor in internalizing the costs of war and evaluating the political fallout—thereby expanding their autonomy (Chamayou 2015, 186–189). Thanks to that, the administration hampered various bipartisan initiatives to improve transparency, oversight, and accountability (Stohl 2016). Still, this was a short-lived freedom, built on the peculiarity of drones as new weaponry shrouded in secrecy. When the magic had worn off, pressures mounted to treat drones like any other weapon system. 6.7 Conclusion Operation Allied Force in Kosovo was the first to be conducted as a large-scale humanitarian intervention. As such, it brought to a head the controversies about the legality of humanitarian intervention conducted without prior authorization from the Security Council and about the moral and humanitarian justification for the action, and the carnage it created (International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty 2001, vii). Against this backdrop, an international effort to determine the criteria for military intervention under the title “The Responsibility to Protect” was initiated. In 2005, the United Nations World Summit institutionalized the principles. My goal in this chapter was not to expand on the aspects of the debate about humanitarian interventions or deal with the legality or morality of the operation. Rather, my purpose was to analyze the manner through which NATO shifted the risk from its own soldiers to Yugoslav noncombatants and explain modifications in this shift in terms of the interplay between legitimacies. With the legitimacy of sacrificing remaining stable at quite a low level and with limited ability to raise it, increasing the legitimacy of using force remained the main tool at NATO leaders’ disposal to initiate the campaign and sustain it

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to a successful conclusion. The main mechanism for increasing the legitimacy of using force was, first and foremost, portraying the war as a humanitarian effort against brutal, inhuman Serbs. This mechanism was so successful that it balanced out the legal issue of bypassing the Security Council and allowed NATO to leverage the failure to protect the Kosovars to legitimize the escalation of the airstrikes and the killing of civilians that ensued. Second, the promise of precision in the attacks was instrumental not only for launching the campaign but also for relaxing responsibility for predictable incidents of collateral killing that were presented as accidents. Third, deliberation was limited due to the deployment of vocational pilots belonging to volunteer forces, the invocation of the powerful symbols of humanitarianism, and not communicating the escalation to the public. Boxed in by conflicting imperatives, states maneuver to promote favorable policies. In this case, with limited maneuvering space to contain the threat to security and other interests posed by Albanian refugees, but also with the need to cope with the aversion to sacrifice, the only method left was to soften the third imperative: immunizing noncombatants. Using the analytical approach presented in this book, we can contextualize the sequence of decision making to better understand the deep tensions with which democracies cope and the ways in which they resolve those tensions. Risk transfer thus serves as the reigning doctrine. Remarkable is the gap between legitimacies. To the extent that the legitimacy of using force is higher than that of sacrificing, and when the demand for security cannot be reduced (in this case, in light of the difficulties in exiting the war without accomplishing its goals), infrastructure for increased aggressiveness is laid out, regardless of the opening conditions. To further validate these conclusions, the case of the drone warfare in Pakistan was briefly analyzed. Common to these two cases is the decisive role of aversion to sacrifice inherent in military policies. Initially, this aversion inclines policymakers to opt for risk-free methods that were perfected from Kosovo to drone warfare. Dynamically, when the dilemma of whose life is worth more becomes apparent during operations in which goals are hardly achievable, Western militaries are pressed to risk noncombatants, pushing them to the bottom of the death hierarchy, as the case of Kosovo shows. Legitimation of using force worked effectively to allow it. In contrast, when this dilemma is less acute, policymakers have more freedom, as attested by the drone warfare in Pakistan until collateral killing mounted.

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The cases of Kosovo and Pakistan help us challenge the argument that the use of direct methods of strategic and tactical risk transfer should not be considered as a trade-off between force and casualties. To recall (see section 2.1), the use of force is often legitimated by the promise of precision weapons to secure the lives of enemy noncombatants. Nevertheless, this is not always the case. First, by lowering the threshold for initiating war and overcoming domestic political costs (Chamayou 2015, 186–190; Sauer and Schörnig 2012, 373), more wars can be fought, and thus these weapon systems put more civilians at risk and may lead to more innocent civilians’ deaths (Rasmussen 2006, 76). It can be assumed that neither of the campaigns studied could be launched without the promise of “humanitarian” war. This is especially true about drones. As philosopher Grégoire Chamayou (2015, 189) argued, “in a situation of moral hazard, military action is very likely to be deemed ‘necessary’ simply because it is possible, and possible at a lower cost.” Furthermore, technology such as drones helps not only to initiate war but also to extend war over time (Rogers 2014). Second and relatedly, the faith in precision weapons has encouraged policymakers and generals to target installations that previously would have been considered impossible to attack (Zehfuss 2011, 552–553). We can assume that without guided weapons, the number of casualties would have been greater, thus imposing legitimacy restrictions on the use of force and thereby reducing the threshold for launching an offensive in urban areas (see Graham 2004, 16–17). Third, with reference to the expanded use of drones, Walzer (2016, 18) argued that drones not only make it possible for us to get at our enemies, they may also lead us to broaden the list of enemies, to include presumptively hostile individuals and militant organizations simply because we can get at them—even if they aren’t actually involved in attacks against us [such as drug dealers in Afghanistan].

In this spirit, the United States could target militants who were increasingly lower down the “terrorist food chain” (Brooks 2016, 113). Fourth, by bombing urban installations, Western troops actually encourage the adversary to locate its forces in these urban areas, using the population as a human shield (Dunlap 1999, 6–9; Graham 2004, 12–13). Fifth, although the attacks are more precise, they are also more intensive, more destructive, and closer to civilian areas, and thus they inflict many civilian casualties (Shaw 2005, 81–82, 109–112). Finally, the promise of precision is not always fulfilled, especially with small safety margins for noncombatants. A gap exists between the calculated confidence in bombing close to noncombatants and the reality that eventually

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harms noncombatants (Zehfuss 2011, 548–550). Even small miscalculations or mishaps in using precision weapons may have devastating implications for civilians located in proximity to the intended targets (Cronin 2013, 182), as the case of Pakistan demonstrated. These conclusions are further validated in the next chapter, which moves from strategic to tactical methods of risk transfer.

7

Tactical Transfer of Risk in Fallujah and Gaza

Chapter 6 presented the Kosovo War as an example of risk transfer at the strategic level, characterized by the decision to refrain from deploying ground forces from the outset. However, risk can be shifted at the tactical level as well, such as when decision makers decide to deploy ground forces but also to adopt tactics that shift at least part of the risk from their own soldiers to enemy noncombatants, as described in section 6.1. Risk transfer can be demonstrated by comparing cases or deployments to identify variations over time, although single cases can also give us a fairly credible picture. I therefore present two sets of serial cases: the two US-led campaigns to capture the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004, operations that symbolized US aggressiveness in Iraq, and Israel’s campaigns in Gaza—operations Summer Rains (2006), Cast Lead (2008–2009), and Protective Edge (2014). The cases in each set are largely comparable, providing the opportunity to measure variations in risk transfer from one operation to the next by controlling arena-related variables. Therefore, the proximity in time between the operations is important. These cases typify an armed dispute between a democratic state (where the dilemma leading to risk transfer is more acute than in nondemocracies) and a nonstate actor in an urban terrain (where the underlying dilemma is most relevant). These criteria exclude such cases as Israel’s two Lebanon wars (separated by twenty-four years) or nondemocratic Russia’s Chechen wars. No less important, these cases are more complicated than those studied in previous chapters in terms of the inferences

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produced by the (disputed) fatality figures; therefore, they also contribute methodological insights, and the chapter is accordingly organized to highlight this contribution. I describe each serial case, beginning with the operations and the fatalities that occurred, and then I explain variations in fire policies that resulted from changes in the interactions between the legitimacies during the operations. 7.1 The Battles of Fallujah Risk transfer, an active form of force protection, typified the conduct of US troops in Iraq from the eruption of the insurgency until at least the surge of 2007 (see Chapter 8), together with passive practices of force protection as typified by the forward operating bases (FOBs) from 2004 to 2006 (see section 5.1). Burton and Nagl (2006, 304) and Smith (2008, 151–157; 2017, 70–79) mapped a series of policies and practices indicating risk transfer. First, the language of self-defense received a central place in the rules disseminated to the troops. At the same time, the criteria for defining the threat against which the use of force was allowed were relaxed to “perceived threats,” a more subjective determination. Second, estimates of collateral damage from air attacks, which had been stringently applied during the invasion and the first period of the occupation, were gradually relaxed; by implication, so too were the restrictions on strikes in proximity to civilians. Third, practices like area targeting, punishing artillery fire, and cluster bombs caused the death of noncombatants, sometimes also because indirect artillery fire and airstrikes were employed in close proximity to civilian areas. Fourth, airstrikes compensated for a lack of troops on the ground, but their increasing use also caused more collateral civilian deaths. Evidently airstrikes accounted for about 50 percent of the civilian deaths caused by the US-led coalition in 2004.1 Fifth, returning fire was conducted in a less-than-discriminate fashion when troops were attacked. Sixth, preemptive deadly responses took place at checkpoints with limited discrimination between insurgents and civilians, following which the Pentagon issued revised rules. Seventh, standoff bombing of targets, such as suspect houses, replaced more cautious but also risky ground assault. Finally, “clearing rounds” were fired in house-to-house combat. To demonstrate changes over time in policies and practices of risk transfer, we examine two campaigns focused on the battles of Fallujah. The Operations In 2004, the US-led coalition in Iraq initiated two campaigns to capture the Iraqi city of Fallujah. A year after the ousting of Saddam Hussein, the Sunni

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area of Fallujah had become a center of anti-American activity, and US troops often intervened to quell violence. On March 31, 2004, four American contractors, from Blackwater Company, were ambushed and killed. In a few days, the first campaign (also known as Operation Vigilant Resolve) began. It was the largest operation after Iraq’s defeat and was carried out by forces with the Marines at the center. Iraqi noncombatant casualty rates intensified pressures to halt the operation before its goals were attained. In November and December, the second campaign was launched (the two parts of which were known as Operation Al-Fajr and Operation Phantom Fury) and the coalition forces effectively occupied the city. In both operations, the goal remained the same: to regain control of the city from which the Sunni insurgency had been mounted, although the first battle was largely guided by an attempt to retaliate for the killing of the contractors. Figures for fatalities come from the following sources: 1. Information about the coalition’s fatalities was taken from Keiler (2005) for the first battle and Head (2013, 47) for the second. 2. Information about Iraqi fatalities killed directly by the coalition, both combatants and noncombatants, in the first battle, was taken from Iraq Body Count (IBC) (Hamourtziadou 2016). 3. Figures for Iraqi noncombatants in the second battle were obtained from the Red Cross report2 and from alternative sources. 4. Figures for Iraqi combatants killed in the second battle were obtained from Head (2013, 46) and are similar to those published by other sources.

As in former cases, a combination of three categories of fatality ratios should be considered to measure variations in risk transfer. Table 7.1 presents the combinations. As the ratio between the coalition’s soldiers and Iraqi combatants shows, the US-led coalition reduced the risk to which its soldiers were exposed from the first to the second battle by about 150 percent. In the first round, the forces imposed a siege on the city and tried to capture it without evacuating the population. They clashed with the local insurgents when they moved to capture key positions in the city in an attempt to cut it off (see, for example, West 2005, 1184–1185, 1229, 1350, 1942). In the second round, risk to the civilian population was initially reduced by calling on the residents to leave the city prior to the assault or to remain inside their homes (Crawford 2013, 286). By “sterilizing” the city, the troops could allow a more liberal fire policy, thus also reducing the soldiers’

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Table 7.1: Fatality Ratios in Fallujah Coalition’s Soldiers to Iraqi Combatants

Coalition’s Soldiers to Iraqi Noncombatants

Ratio of Iraqi Noncombatants Among Total Iraqi Fatalities

First battle

1:5 (39:200)

1:15 (39:600)

0.75 (600/[200 + 600])

Second battle

1:13 (107:1,350)

1:7–1:56 (107:800–6,000)

0.37–0.8 (800/[800 + 1,350]– 6,000/[6,000 + 1,350])

Relative change

+150%

−50%–(+)260%

−50%–(+)10%

The Operation/ Ratio

N ote : Percentages are rounded. The actual number of fatalities is in parentheses. When a range is presented, the first figure was obtained from the Red Cross and the second from alternative sources. A range is not presented when only one source exists.

risk. Nevertheless, we cannot determine yet how the reduced risk to the coalition troops affected Fallujah’s noncombatants who remained in the city. More ratios should be analyzed. Yet even when we bring in the ratio of the coalition’s soldiers to Iraqi noncombatants, we are left without adequate answers. Unlike the data on the first battle that have not been significantly refuted (around 600 fatalities), there is disagreement about the number of noncombatants killed in the second operation. The Red Cross reported about 800 civilian fatalities, but this report was released on November 17, while the operation, especially its riskiest stages, lasted until December 23. IBC counted between 581 and 670 fatalities (Hamourtziadou 2016). However, in general, IBC relied on public reports of deaths that are incomplete, and the real numbers may be significantly higher (Crawford 2013, 136, 139; Bennett et al. 2015, 32–35). In this case, IBC drew on a UN agency’s report that did not include all the recovered bodies and was also limited to nine out of twentyseven neighborhoods. It follows that the real numbers are significantly higher. Alternatively, analyst Ross Caputi (2013, 11), who as a Marine fought in the second battle, estimated the number to be between 3,000 and 6,000. Iraqi NGOs and medical workers estimate between 4,000 and 6,000 dead, mostly noncombatants (Marqusee 2005). Probably reliance on the alternative numbers

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may reduce the number of combatants killed (some combatants were categorized as noncombatants). However, I left the number of combatants (provided by Head 2013) unchanged because of the lack of more accurate figures; moreover, inaccuracy doesn’t change the overall picture provided by the alternative sources. In light of this disagreement, we cannot determine whether the declining risk to the coalition soldiers, as the previous ratio indicated, was reflected in a decreasing risk to Iraqi noncombatants by about 50 to 60 percent, as IBC and the Red Cross suggest, or, as alternative sources imply, the coalition traded less risk for its soldiers for increasing death to Fallujah’s noncombatants by up to 260 percent. In sum, the first two ratios leave us with ambiguity; nonetheless, even the lower numbers indicate risk transfer as the ratio largely exceeds 1:1. This disagreement is reflected in the ratio of Iraqi noncombatants among the total fatalities, representing the level of discrimination. According to the Red Cross/IBC, this ratio declined by more than 50 percent, from 75 to about 35 percent, moving from a situation in which significantly more noncombatants were killed than combatants in the first battle, to the opposite in the second battle. Discrimination increased. Nevertheless, the alternative sources show a murkier picture. According to the highest estimate of 6,000 noncombatant fatalities, there was an increase of about 10 percent, from 75 to more than 80 percent, indicating decreased discrimination. However, if we take the lowest number of about 3,000 civilians, the ratio of Iraqi noncombatants among total Iraqi fatalities decreases slightly from 75 to about 70 percent and discrimination improves. If we combine the three ratios, we infer two contradictory conclusions. According to the Red Cross/IBC narrative, US-led troops reduced their risk (the soldiers/ enemy combatants ratio) by sterilizing the city of civilians, thereby also reducing the exposure of civilians to risk (the soldiers/enemy noncombatants ratio), thus improving their ability to discriminate between combatants and noncombatants (the ratio of enemy noncombatants among total fatalities). In contrast, using the figures from the alternative sources, we would conclude that the US-led troops reduced their risk by sterilizing the city but also increased the exposure of the remaining civilians to risk (the soldiers/enemy noncombatants ratio), as further evidenced by the indiscriminate use of force. An analysis of practices may partly clarify this debate. It is safe to argue that the US forces increased the use of risk-transfer practices from the first to the second operation. In the first operation, the assumption was that the city was saturated with civilians. Therefore, artillery was not used at all initially, and the troops used accurate AC-130 gunships and laser-guided

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bombs with restraint (Hills 2006, 626; Kahl 2007, 30–31). Airstrikes were launched only after the death of many soldiers; once force protection became paramount, the Americans exercised disproportionate force to counter heavy resistance on the ground, as Hills argued. Furthermore, restrictive rules stood at odds with troop shortages that could have been compensated for by increased firepower (Keiler 2005). Both the fatality ratio of 1:15 (39 American soldiers to approximately 600 Iraqi noncombatants) and the proportion of Iraqi noncombatants among the total war dead of 75 percent, a figure far above the 50 percent average, indicate the risking of noncombatants to transfer the risk away from the coalition soldiers. In the second battle, the picture became more complicated. Evacuating residents to transform the city into a free-fire zone can be regarded as an act of risk transfer, though in a more moderate form because it allows the troops to increase the damage to civilian infrastructures. As Smith (2002) maintained, the result is long-term harm to public health, even if it means fewer immediate deaths. Nevertheless, deaths in the short term also result from this evacuation. To recall, exercising greater caution to avoid civilian casualties probably increases the danger to soldiers. Therefore, the more the troops use force with fewer restrictions with weaker commitment to conform to the requirement to respect the immunity of enemy noncombatants, the more they can reduce their own immediate risk, but at the expense of local civilians. This was the case here. Rules of engagement were blurred. Formally, rules prohibited targeting civilians to minimize collateral damage, except in cases of “self-defense to protect yourself,” or targeting insurgents but with a positive identification required prior to engagement to ensure they were a legitimate military target (Camp 2009, 2338–2340). Rules were thus restrictive; the command at the Baghdad level approved strikes on fewer targets than reported from the field, out of concerns about adverse press coverage and collateral damage (West 2005, 4699–4701), especially when identifications were not positive (see Camp 2009, 999–2323). Restrictions created tensions among the levels of command (ibid.), and even cynicism as a Marine provocatively said, “In stark contrast to what our crazy, liberal whackjob media insists, Marines and soldiers do not wantonly kill innocent civilians” (Smith 2014, 7). Practically, however, anyone who remained in the city could be considered an insurgent and could be legitimately targeted, even if the troops knew that many or some noncombatants had opted to stay (Crawford 2013, 286–289; Gott 2006a, 113, 160, 290). Approximately 50,000 civilians remained, and the coalition

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forces prohibited all males aged between fifteen and forty-five from fleeing the city (Crawford 2013, 285–292), so many noncombatants remained at great risk. At the level of the unit, the rules were applied in a more flexible manner. “Our ROE [rules of engagement] was pretty simple. What we see is what we shoot. . . . We were briefed that the ROE was: anything that moves, anything we see is fair game,” one of the soldiers stated (Gott 2006b, 213). Similarly, soldiers were allowed to shoot at any vehicle, even if it was just sitting on the side of the street with no one in it (69), and even every moving vehicle could be considered a car bomb, while the ROE was very loose when it came to situations where people were shooting out of minarets and schools, although families were used as human shields (104). Such rules, or the way they were interpreted, contradicted the formal prohibition against shooting an unarmed civilian. But the flexibility increased and the rules were dynamically relaxed as the operation progressed from capturing the city after ten days of fighting to the next risky stage of clearing it, room by room (Ricks 2006, 400–402). Local resistance then increased, thereby also increasing the risk to the soldiers (the number of US casualties progressively mounted, as icasualties data illustrate). As a Marine sergeant testified: We changed Rules of Engagement more often than we changed our underwear. At first it was, “You follow the Rules of Engagement. You do what you’re supposed to do.” Then there were times when it was, “You can shoot any suspicious observer.” (Cited in Crawford 2013, 290)

To offer a concrete example of top-down flexibility, Major General Richard Natonski, Commander of the First Marine Division, explained: If there was a rifleman in a building we would use small arms. If there was more than one person and they were firing RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] then maybe we’d shoot a Hellfire into the building. As the battle progressed, because of the intensity of the resistance and if we knew there were insurgents in buildings, in some cases we’d drop the structure [bombed the building] before we’d risk soldiers’ or Marines’ lives by sending them into the buildings. (Cited in Camp 2009, 2395–2398)

Flexible interpretation also created gaps between the Marines (complaining about rigidity, as stated above) and the Army, as the testimony of an Army staff sergeant revealed: I know on the Army side of the house our ROE was great. We could use every weapons system we had. The 25 millimeter, the tank main guns—if we needed it we got to

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shoot; we didn’t have to call and request for missions. When we finally did interact with some Marines and talk with some of them on the ground, their armor units had a lot of restrictions. They had to call up and get clearance of fire to fire their 25 millimeters and their tank main gun rounds. I thought that was ridiculous. (Gott 2006b, 234)

Another indication of the autonomy of the local command and its weak monitoring can be seen in the example provided by British Brigadier Nigel AylwinFoster (2005, 4): During preparatory operations in the November 2004 Fallujah clearance operation, on one night over forty 155mm artillery rounds were fired into a small section of the city. Given the intent to maintain a low profile prior to the launch of the main operation, most armies would consider this bombardment a significant event. Yet it did not feature on the next morning’s update to the 4-Star Force Commander: the local commander considered it to be a minor application of combat power.

Aggressive tactics were thus used, such as throwing grenades over the courtyard wall of every cleared house (Catagnus et al. 2005, 80–81; West 2005, 4799–4811), under the assumption that anything could be done when the soldiers felt unsafe (Crawford 2013, 290), though these tactics increased the harm to noncombatants (Smith 2008, 153). Other techniques of clearing buildings included heavy fire from tanks, firing rockets, and using bulldozers to destroy them. In cases of withdrawal without clearing, the troops blew up or burned the buildings down (Ricks 2006, 403–404). Civilians were further harmed because the Americans did not have interpreters with them, so noncombatants could be killed because they did not speak English (Crawford 2013, 289–290). However, it is possible that the number of noncombatant casualties could have been higher had the Marines used more tanks to support their infantry during the fierce house-to-house clearing operations (see Matthews 2006, 81). White phosphorus was also used for target marking and to drive the insurgents out of their shelters, but the long-term consequence of this was probably higher rates of birth defects in children (Crawford 2013, 291–292). While in the first operation, 150 airstrikes destroyed 75 to 100 buildings, in the second operation, there were 540 airstrikes, 14,000 artillery and mortar shells, and 2,500 tank rounds fired, damaging or destroying 18,000 buildings (West 2005, 5662–5664). It follows that while many noncombatants fled this second battle, more civilians were at risk relative to the first because of the duration and intensity. Evidently, as all sources agree, the number of civilians killed increased from 600 to at least 800. Although this analysis cannot resolve the disagreement about fatality numbers, the practices described here support those arguing that the US-led troops reduced

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their risk by sterilizing the city, but also increased the exposure of the remaining civilians to risk by practicing risk-transfer techniques. Even if we assume, in accordance with the lowest estimates of the alternative sources (3,000 noncombatant fatalities), that the distinction was slightly improved—the ratio of Iraqi noncombatants among total Iraqi fatalities decreased from 75 to 70 percent—such a high ratio still indicates indiscriminate fire whereby risk was shifted. It follows that the troops increased their advantage over their adversaries by using weapons more liberally and, by implication, shifted a high amount of risk to civilians. Other motivations to intentionally target noncombatants were not recorded. True, both Caputi (2013, 5) and Marqusee (2005) ascribed motivations of collective punishment to the US-led coalition. However, the gaps between the initial, formal, relatively restricted rules of engagement and the practices on the ground, as Crawford (2013, 285–292) indicated, and the policymakers’ and senior command’s interest in avoiding the adverse press coverage and collateral damage already caused by the failure of the first round refute this argument, at least with regard to the intentions of the senior command. For a general comparison, we can look at the overall fatality ratios in Iraq in 2004, a year characterized by increasing insurgency against the coalition, which responded with counterinsurgency operations (see section 5.1). The ratio between the coalition’s combatants killed by hostile action (including Iraqi forces) to Iraqi noncombatants stood at about 1:1.5, much lower than the ratio of Fallujah according to both sources. If we check the ratio between the coalition combatants to Iraqi insurgents, it stood at 1:3.3, lower than in both campaigns; and these ratios were reflected in improved discrimination (about 30 percent of civilians among total deaths) relative to the high estimates of Fallujah according to both sources. In every way, this further validates the conclusion that risk was shifted in Fallujah to a higher degree than had been the case elsewhere in Iraq. Remember that these ratios calculate the conduct of all troops, including non-Americans, as well as a combination of offensive operations together with defensive deployments, including in FOBs, so it can be assumed that we will find similar ratios to those of Fallujah in other US-led offensive operations. How can we explain the different policies between the two rounds in Fallujah? Let’s go back to the legitimacies. The Legitimacies In the first round, a strong legitimacy of using force interacted with a low-moderate level of legitimacy of sacrificing. To recall (see section 5.1), the legitimacy of using force declined in general terms with the eruption of the insurgency. Now, however, this legitimacy was

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reinforced by the need to regain control of the city from which the Sunni insurgency had been mounted. No less significant, Washington strived to retaliate for the killing of four contractors, whose bodies were dragged through the streets of Fallujah and at least two corpses were hung in public, reminiscent of the scene from Somalia in 1993 (Gettleman 2004). This televised event provoked a powerful response in Washington and down the chain of command (Ricks 2006, 332). Washington was very responsive to the public outcry for a swift reprisal on the eve of the 2004 elections (Lindsay 2014, 25). For policymakers, the issue was no longer a purely military challenge but a symbol of the nation’s humiliation and a challenge to its occupation (West 2005, 1118–1119), “the most grievous display of overt resistance to American control since the war began,” said Brigadier General Stanley McChrystal (2013, 127), then Commanding General of the Joint Special Operations Command. Surveys clearly showed that the public’s response to the event was one of decisive support (about 70 percent) for escalating the country’s military commitment. Support for escalation was correlated with the opinion that the attack on the contractors was conducted by extremists. To this, add the administration’s confidence that escalation would be effective—confidence that affected public trust (Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler 2009, 161–164). Furthermore, the crisis of April even reinforced the president’s status: over a few weeks during that month, President Bush’s approval ratings improved from 43 to 48 percent, although the percentage of those saying that it was the right decision to go to war continued to decline.3 Under such conditions, the sensitivity to Iraqi fatalities was not high. Indeed, a 2014 poll found that 52 percent of Americans agreed that “the U.S. would be more likely to win its wars if we didn’t care so much about avoiding killing foreign civilians” (Valentino 2016, 133). Planning reflected the policymakers’ reading of the legitimacy. In the planning stage, the local, more prudent commanders preferred a more gradual operation. Major General James Mattis, Commander of the First Marine Division, suggested, “Let’s find out who did this, and get them [the insurgents]; this is a city of three hundred thousand in which a few hundred people did something” (cited in Ricks 2006, 332). However, Washington dictated the tempo in favor of an overwhelming attempt to capture the city (Hills 2006; McChrystal 2013, 127–130). As Lieutenant General Ricardo Sánchez, Commander of Coalition Ground Forces in Iraq, reported, President Bush had instructed that it was “going to be a pretty ugly operation, with a lot of collateral damage” (cited in Camp 2009, 824). At the same time, on the eve of presidential elections and with mounting casualties that affected presidential approval, legitimacy of sacrificing was moderatelow, as explained in section 5.1. Putting aside the dispute about the real level of

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casualty sensitivity, it was considered low when it came to the administration’s flexibility to take risks (Lindsay 2014, 1–2). In other words, the general belief that the public would not tolerate casualties could be reinforced on the eve of elections, but also partly balanced out by the eagerness to retaliate. Cell D in Table 2.2 represents this situation in which restrictions on harming civilians were not at the top of the agenda, thus allowing the trade-off between force and casualties. On the surface, restrictiveness formally guided the fire policies, but in practice, once the troops were risked, commanders could relax the rules and expand airstrikes. To indicate how the high legitimacy of using force was reflected in the minds of local commanders, Marine units were not asked by the command for any systematic estimates that distinguished between casualties among enemy combatants and noncombatants (West 2005, 1719–1721). However, even if the legitimacy of using force was high, it was not high enough to act aggressively in a manner that could shake the coalition. Iraqi noncombatant casualty rates intensified pressures to halt the operation. The media, led by the Arab press, played a major role by creating the impression of massive civilian casualties and destruction (West 2005, 1711–1714). Especially in Britain, pressure was exerted on Prime Minister Blair to convince Washington to adopt a new approach to the insurgency, with a mix of diplomacy and benefits, not only force (2898–2917). At the same time, Iraqi protests convinced Washington that Iraqi support for the American presence was under threat of fracture and risked the process of restoring sovereignty to Iraq, without which the US presence on Iraqi soil would become illegitimate (De Lira 2009, 16–17; Ricks 2006, 342). A cease-fire was therefore imposed before the goals were attained (Crawford 2013, 284–285). As already seen in the case of Kosovo, the requirement to sustain a coalition restricts aggressiveness, reducing the legitimacy of using force. In November 2004, US forces, together with British troops and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), opened the second assault on Fallujah. The legitimacy of using force that may harm civilians declined relative to the first battle. Having learned the lessons of the first assault and in an effort to limit criticism about overaggressiveness, the coalition that had been shocked in the first round imposed restrictions, especially in the interim period between the transfer of sovereignty in June 2004 and the Iraqi parliamentary election of January 2005. Domestically as well, criticism was heard. For example, in a congressional hearing in June 2004 titled “Iraq: Winning Hearts and Minds,” the first battle was presented by some as a “paradigm shift,” following which anti-American sentiments were significantly inflamed (US Congress 2004, 133).

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Against this background and with the determination to succeed this time, a slower operation was planned with strict rules of engagement, as detailed above, of which the troops were highly aware (see, for example, Camp 2009, 999–2323). Calling on the residents to leave the city or stay inside their homes served the need to both spare the lives of innocent civilians but also increase the troops’ freedom of action. Nonetheless, Fallujah noncombatants were put under a higher level of risk relative to the first round. Increasing the soldiers’ risk accorded with the initial, relatively higher level of legitimacy of sacrificing, as the operation was delayed and began only after President Bush had won reelection, so concerns about casualties could be tempered (Lindsay 2014). Furthermore, public tolerance for casualties increased between June and November 2004, following the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government, which heightened the impression that the mission may accomplish its goals (Gelpi et al. 2009, 56, 141–143). For example, in September 2004, despite the perception that casualties were rising, this did not affect opinion regarding the war itself.4 Only later (toward 2005) did this legitimacy decline, and the reinforcement of passive force protection ensued (as detailed in section 5.1). However, it is possible that the administration had even broader freedom to risk low-class soldiers, whose death attracted limited public attention. As journalist Ralph Begleiter (2009) argued, despite the Dover Ban—the administration’s ban on publishing photographs of coffins carrying deceased soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan through Dover airbase so as to reduce sensitivity to losses—US news organizations did not protest and did not even use photographs that were later made available. The post-9/11 atmosphere even discouraged news organizations from asking tough questions about policies, while they also came to acknowledge that Americans didn’t want to watch news of the war. Apathy helps legitimation by weakening subversiveness. And to recall, Gold Star’s protest would mature only a year later. All in all, cell B represents these opening conditions. These conditions notwithstanding, as the operation progressed and local resistance increased, thereby increasing the risk to the soldiers, the rules of engagement were dynamically changed, leading to fewer restrictions on harming noncombatants. What allowed this shift to take place? Rules were modified locally without public pressures motivated by casualty sensitivity. In other words, we cannot identify any decline in the legitimacy of sacrificing. However, it is safe to assume that two factors encouraged this change. First, the troops worried aloud that many of them would not survive this operation (Head 2013, 39). Second, and

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less specifically, policies guided by casualty sensitivity might have stemmed from the command’s lack of confidence in the political leadership’s ability to sustain the operation were the number of casualties to mount (see Feaver and Kohn 2000). This was especially relevant to this case since political pressure had already humiliated the military, especially the Marines, in the first unfinished round (for example, see Chandrasekaran 2004). It follows, as shown in section 2.2, that the legitimacy of sacrificing is largely derived from the way actors read the prevailing political culture. In this case, motivational factors affected the military’s conduct and the way it understood the freedom it had. At the same time and despite the previous restrictive mood inspired by the agenda of winning hearts and minds, the troops could discern more freedom of action and benefited from a legitimacy of using greater force with its flexibility to harm noncombatants. Surely, moreover, it is safe to assume that the encouragement given to civilians to flee the city helped legitimize this policy and calm public opinion and that it served as a mechanism for transferring responsibility from the troops to the population. In a retrospective view, two indications show that the command accurately read the political atmosphere that allowed more freedom to risk noncombatants. First was the disagreement about the number of noncombatants killed in this operation, as the numbers already presented show. As in the case of Kosovo, the lack of an in-depth inquiry may indicate the limited public concerns and even knowledge of the American public about the ungrievable Iraqi civilian casualties (see Tirman 2011, 255). Increasing the troops’ freedom of action was the result. To demonstrate the extent to which this perception of the level of legitimacy infiltrated the ranks, the Marines’ official history summed up the number of combatants killed on both sides (McWilliams and Schlosser 2014, 1620) but, remarkably, made no mention of the casualties among noncombatants. Nor did the Fallujah Marines who documented the battles while attesting to their restrictive rules of engagement (see Camp 2009; Catagnus et al. 2005; Smith 2014). After all, whether the rules were restrictive or not, hundreds of civilians were killed. The UN Human Rights Council (2013, 1) accused the United States of indifference even after action, as most of the alleged human rights violations were not properly investigated. A second indication is the killing of twenty-four Iraqi noncombatants by Marines in November 2005 in the city of Haditha, an event that attracted a lot of public attention. The battalion commander in charge publicly testified that despite the number of civilian casualties, he did not see the event as particularly unusual or deserving of investigation (Ricks 2010, 6). Major General Eldon A. Bargewell, who investigated the incident, reported:

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All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties, even in significant numbers, as routine and as the natural and intended result of insurgent tactics. . . . Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation . . . suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get “the job done” no matter what it takes.5

So, even if in error, this was the commanders’ reading of the scope of legitimacy that had also guided them a year earlier in Fallujah. Under these conditions, a move from cell B to cell D in Table 2.2 took place: an increase in the legitimacy of using force paired with a decrease in the legitimacy of sacrificing, allowing a shifting of risk from the coalition soldiers to the Fallujah noncombatants. “Winning hearts and minds” had not yet penetrated the commanders’ minds or those of their political supervisors. However, it is safe to assume that stretching the boundaries of tolerance of harming Iraqi civilians could survive to a limited extent, as in unique operations, but not as a general policy. This was especially so since the Iraqis assumed authority from the transfer of sovereignty in June 2004 onward. Therefore, a hybrid strategy was implemented: operating within the confines of cell D (risk transfer) in unique operations like that of Haditha in November 2005, while mostly operating in cell C (passive force protection) when the ability to increase the legitimacy of using force was limited. 7.2 Israel’s Wars in Gaza Israel’s operations in Gaza offer another example of the modification of the death hierarchy with increasing risk transfer.6 The Operations To recall (see section 5.2), Israel unilaterally pulled out its forces from the Gaza Strip in 2005. However, hostilities escalated from 2006 with the empowerment of Hamas. To end what it perceived as Israel’s siege of Gaza, in terms of Israel’s control over Gaza’s land, air, and sea borders, Hamas intensified its firing of high-trajectory weapons at Israeli civilian communities near the Israel-Gaza border. Israel then launched four operations to suppress the rocket fire, three of which involved ground incursions in which the dilemma about risk transfer was evident. The first operation was Summer Rains, conducted from June to November 2006. It was a five-month small-scale operation in which Israel bombed civilian infrastructures and made brigade-size incursions into urban areas. With the intensification of rocket attacks that threatened almost 750,000 Israelis, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 and January 2009, the largest

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operation since the 2005 withdrawal. After a week-long aerial attack on Hamas installations, in which Hamas refused to agree to a cease-fire on terms favored by Israel, Israel launched a division-size ground invasion that lasted another two weeks. Against a similar background, Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012, but it was carried out without a ground invasion (and therefore is not discussed here). The last operation was Protective Edge, conducted from July to August 2014. After ten days of aerial assaults, during which Hamas made several attempts to enter Israeli territory through tunnels it had dug along the border, the government set a new goal: to destroy the tunnels by launching a ground incursion that lasted almost three more weeks. A cease-fire was achieved only after another three weeks of IDF shelling from the air, ground, and sea. In all three ground operations, Israel’s goal remained the same: to protect its civilian population by stopping the rocket attacks rather than pursuing the unrealistic goal of unseating the Hamas regime or making territorial gains. However, in each of these operations, complementary goals were also defined. In Summer Rains, Israel reacted to the abduction of the soldier Gilad Shalit (a day before the operation began), seeking to prevent his transfer to Egypt. In Cast Lead, Israel also attempted to stop weapons smuggling from Egypt into Gaza. In Protective Edge, Israel destroyed tunnels leading from Gaza into Israel. Information for Israel’s fatalities was taken from formal Israeli sources: the Israel Prime Minister’s Office and Israel Ministry of Defense, both undated. Israeli soldiers include only those directly killed in ground operations (including by friendly fire). Information about Palestinian fatalities killed directly by the IDF came from two sources. One is the IDF through Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2015, A2)7 and public information in the case of Summer Rains.8 The other, an alternative to the formal Israeli sources, is B’Tselem,9 whose numbers lie between Israel’s figures and those published by Palestinian organizations and the UN. B’Tselem is less institutionally biased than the government of Israel or the Palestinian NGOs and, moreover, conducted exhaustive investigations in which its field researchers questioned the Palestinian sources and cross-referenced their information with other publicly available sources. In Cast Lead, the United Nations’ inquiry report (2009) refrained from providing final figures, while in Protective Edge, there are minor differences between the numbers provided by the UN commission of inquiry that investigated this operation and provided conclusive figures (United Nations 2015, 153), and those provided by B’Tselem. However, the latter conducted its

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investigation and published it two years after the operation had ended, making its numbers more credible than those of the UN. It is timely to focus on the disagreement between the sources. As expected, the numbers of Palestinian civilian deaths reported by Israel are significantly lower than those provided by B’Tselem and, by implication, the latter lists lower numbers of deaths among Palestinian combatants. Such discrepancies raise the question of how to apply the principle of distinction in operations like Cast Lead (A. Cohen 2009). Application of this principle affects the body count and thus helps explain the discrepancy in the numbers provided by different sources. As both B’Tselem (2009, 6, 11–13) and Amnesty International (2009, 13–14) reported, Israel justified attacks on civilian installations and the deaths that resulted by claiming that these installations were actually being used for military purposes. Israel considered Hamas a terrorist organization and therefore disavowed any civil element in its government (Craig 2013, 195). In short, Israel categorized noncombatants as combatants. However, Israel is formally and morally committed to the principle of distinction, and its fire policy is monitored by legal advisors (Cohen 2011). Empirically, the sources also disagree on the final number of fatalities killed directly by the IDF rather than those that resulted from natural death or hostilities between Palestinian militias. In any event, the level of documentation of death is higher than is customary in the United States and Britain where, unlike Israel, the governments do not count bodies, systematically and completely. However, in one case I reclustered B’Tselem’s numbers. In Cast Lead, 248 policemen were killed by Israeli attacks, 99 of them during the first minutes of the military operation. Israel clarified that “an overwhelming majority of the police forces were also members of the Hamas military wing or activists of Hamas or other terrorist organisations . . . [therefore] considering Hamas ‘police’ casualties as civilians is inappropriate” (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2009, 94–95). True, the UN report of inquiry (United Nations 2009, 110) rejected Israel’s position, claiming that “there is insufficient information to conclude that the Gaza police as a whole had been ‘incorporated’ into the armed forces of the Gaza authorities.” Yet this is not a typical case of collateral killing resulting from an attempt to shift the risk away from its own soldiers, but rather a direct targeting of what Israel considered armed forces. Methodologically (and, of course, without judging Israel’s interpretation of the law), accuracy suggests clustering police and combatants together, so the number of 600 combatants informed by B’Tselem includes 248 police and 352 combatants. Furthermore, such categorization further validates the

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argument that Israel shifted risk, even using its own numbers or interpretations, as explained in more detail below. Surely, if I categorize police as noncombatants, the trend is more blatant. To isolate the impact of shifting risk, those killed by attacks on military compounds within Israeli territory in Protective Edge (twenty-one soldiers) are excluded from these numbers. These casualties could not be reduced by further risking Gazan civilians (and therefore I also subtracted the fifteen Palestinian combatants killed in these attacks). This isolation is less relevant in other deployments where the troops were stationed at the theater, whereas in the case of Gaza, soldiers were injured by shelling during their deployment outside Gaza. A combination of four categories of fatality ratios should be considered to identify variations in risk transfer by measuring their impact. They include the original three combinations and the ratio between Israeli civilians and Palestinian civilians, relevant to this type of border war. Table 7.2 presents the combinations. Remarkably, the cumulative values are almost the same, regardless of the differences between the sources; both show the same relative trend. As the table shows, the ratio between Israel’s soldiers and Gazan combatants declined by about 75 percent, meaning that the Israeli troops were exposed to a significant level of risk from one operation to the next. While in Summer Rains, the campaign generally relied on aerial and artillery attacks and the troops conducted limited incursions, larger forces were deployed to Gaza for a longer period of time in Cast Lead. More important, in Cast Lead, the government set the minimalist goal of achieving a long-term cease-fire by reinforcing Israel’s deterrence (Eiland 2009). A flexible plan evolved from this goal that allowed a limited ground offensive and minimal, close, direct confrontations with Hamas forces, without going deeper into the urban areas and incurring likely casualties (Cordesman 2009). It is worth mentioning that among the nine soldiers killed in Cast Lead, four were killed by friendly fire, which is included in the ratio because it reflects the extent to which the firing troops calculated the level of risk and therefore fired indiscriminately (see Collins 2008, 1661–1668). In sharp contrast, in Protective Edge, the operation was expanded to a ground invasion aimed at destroying Gaza’s tunnel system. This thrust lasted for nearly three weeks. Because these tunnels were deeply embedded in densely populated areas ruled by Hamas, Israeli troops were engaged in direct frontal assaults on Hamas forces, unavoidably increasing the risk to Israeli soldiers and claiming more of their lives than in Cast Lead. Furthermore, relative to Cast Lead, Hamas had significantly improved its ability to cause damage, which was evident in the

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Table 7.2: Fatality Ratios in Gaza The Operation/ Ratio

Israel’s Soldiers to Gazan Combatants

Israel’s Soldiers to Gazan Noncombatants

Ratio of Gazan Noncombatants Among Total Gazan Fatalities

Israel’s Noncombatants to Gazan Noncombatants

Summer Rains

1:90 – 1:66 (3/270 – 199)

1:39 – 1:71 (3/116 – 212)

0.3 – 0.5 (116/[116 + 270] – 212/[212 + 199])

1:58 – 106 (2/116 – 212)

Cast Lead

1:79 – 1:67 (9/709 – 600)

1:33 – 1:86 (9/295 – 775)

0.3 – 0.55 (295/[295 + 709] – 775/[775 + 600])

1:98 – 258 (3/295 – 775)

Protective Edge

1:21 – 1:17 (44/921 – 750)

1:17 – 1:32 (44/761 – 1,391)

0.45 – 0.65 (761/[761 + 921] – 1,391/[1,391 + 750])

1:127 – 232 (6/761 – 1,391)

Cumulative relative change

−75%

−55%

+50 – +30%

+120%

N ote : Percentages are rounded. The actual number of fatalities is in parentheses. When a range is presented, the first figure was obtained from formal Israeli sources and the second from B’Tselem. The cumulative, relative value measures cumulative changes from Summer Rains to Protective Edge.

defense system it deployed against Israeli troops and the increased effectiveness and cohesion of its ground combat forces (White 2014). Nevertheless, we cannot determine yet whether the Israeli troops shifted part of the increased risk to the Gazan noncombatants. Indeed, the declining fatality ratio between Israeli soldiers and Gazan noncombatants by about 55 percent (although the sources disagree about the transition from Summer Rains to Cast Lead) indicates risk taking. It follows that Israel did not shift the increasing risk to which its soldiers were exposed in relation to Gaza’s combatants toward Gazan noncombatants. To test this, let us look at the level of discrimination. Again, we see agreement between the sources in the overall trend. Cumulatively, both agree that from Summer Rains to Protective Edge, Israel reduced the level of discrimination between combatants and noncombatants by 50 to 30 percent. The ratio of Gazan noncombatants among the total Gazan fatalities climbed from 0.3 to

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0.45 according to Israel’s figures or from 0.5 to 0.65 according to B’Tselem’s data. In other words, as confirmed by both sources, Israel nearly doubled the number of Gazan civilians killed by the troops for every Gazan combatant. In sum, Israel shifted part of the risk assumed by its troops to the civilians of Gaza. One may see it as a partial risk taking, but the relative increase in civilian fatalities, that is, decreased discrimination, categorizes this situation as a partial transfer of risk. Incredibly, Israel implicitly admitted that it had reduced discrimination to a greater degree than B’Tselem alleged. After all, Israel’s numbers largely reflect its intentions regarding the permissible level of risk to which it might expose Gazan civilians and its perceptions about who is a civilian and therefore protected against direct, intentional attack. Nevertheless, while Israel argued that in all three operations it killed fewer noncombatants than combatants, that is, below the ratio of 50 percent, B’Tselem’s figures suggest that Israel deviated from the average by killing more noncombatants than combatants. Practically, even when the IDF deliberately increases the risk to its own soldiers, it cannot always symmetrically shift it to enemy noncombatants to reduce its own casualties. For example, by using aerial bombardments in Protective Edge, Israeli forces could have flattened the villages from which they suspected the tunnels were being built and then sent in the ground forces; nevertheless, that action could have severely weakened Israel’s legitimacy internationally. Alternatively, the government could have minimized the soldiers’ risk by refraining from conducting a ground operation. However, in Cast Lead, it could not have achieved its goal of a long-term cease-fire on its terms, based on deterrence, without a ground thrust (Eiland 2009, 8). In Protective Edge, it could not have destroyed the tunnels just by using aerial attacks. Boots on the ground were needed to detect, and then destroy, the tunnels (Mitnick 2014). In other words, Israel increased the number of its own soldiers killed because it had limited ability to avoid this. But even if Israel was willing to sacrifice more soldiers from one operation to the next, it still reduced the risk to which its soldiers were exposed by transferring part of that risk to Gaza’s civilians. Had Israel not done so and fired more cautiously (and given that it failed to better protect the soldiers), the number of fatalities among Israeli soldiers would have been higher than they actually were. Alternatively, Israel could have shifted even more risk had international restrictions not been in place. In other words, partial risk transfer takes place when a decline in the ability of one’s own soldiers to kill or to protect themselves against the adversary is partly balanced out by killing a larger number of noncombatants, thus allowing a more liberal fire policy.

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This conclusion is further validated by linking numbers to practices. In Summer Rains, soldiers were risked to a limited degree. Israel used aerial attacks and artillery fire to reduce the need to resort to costly ground operations and therefore increased aggressiveness. Indeed, as a thorough inquiry by Human Rights Watch (2007) found, the rise in Palestinian civilian deaths occurred following changes Israel made in its artillery practices after Hamas took over Gaza. The IDF greatly increased the number of artillery shells fired and increased its artillery attacks in the immediate vicinity of civilian residences by narrowing the minimum distance required between a potential target and the nearest homes or populated areas. By putting this policy into practice, Israel could target nearby rocket-launching sites and Hamas installations. Here we see a typical practice of transferring risk—increasing the use of standoff weapons to do the job without ground incursions at the cost of more collateral deaths among noncombatants. In Cast Lead, Israel adhered to previous practices but also developed new ones: 1. A kind of rolling fire–induced smokescreen preceded the advancing ground units to protect them (Bart 2009; B’Tselem 2009, 6–7). 2. Cluster bombs or shells that endangered civilians were used (Amnesty International 2009, 22). 3. The use of inaccurate mortar shells was unprecedented. In one case, the army fired a mortar shell into the Jabalya refugee camp, killing over forty civilians (B’Tselem 2009, 7). 4. Sterile zones were created by warning civilians to leave their homes, whereupon the rules of engagement stated that those who stayed could not be considered “innocents,” and in case of any doubt whatsoever, the soldiers were to shoot (United Nations 2009, 129). At the same time, Israel also accused Hamas of using the population as human shields by encouraging them to protect military sites and firing from schools and medical facilities (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2009, 7, 43, 69). 5. Rules of engagement prescribed treatment of a suspected combatant in a moment of doubt thus: “If you are not sure, shoot. If there is doubt, then there is no doubt,” according to testimony by Breaking the Silence (2009, 20), the organization of reservists documenting soldiers’ testimonies about misconduct in the West Bank and Gaza. When in doubt, the forces returned fire toward the source of hostile fire, even if civilians were around, and they even initiated firefights to avoid risk. Another soldier testified, “Instead of using intelligence to identify a terrorist . . . here you do the opposite: first you take him down, then you look into it” (quoted in Pfeffer 2010). Similarly, division commanders were allowed to strike any house suspected of being booby-trapped (B’Tselem 2009, 8). An

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Israeli brigade commander explained, “I will not send 10 soldiers into a house suspected of being booby-trapped in order for them to blow up, before I have created the conditions that will guarantee their safety” (quoted in Harel 2009b). 6. Israel targeted buildings that usually served civilian purposes, claiming that these were actually being used for military purposes or were the homes of Hamas leaders. Apparently, unlike the practices already described, this is not a typical case of risk transfer. However, the greater the sensitivity to Israel’s own casualties among the soldiers and the greater the suffering of its own civilians, against whom Hamas escalated its rocket attacks during the operation, the stronger the propensity was to escalate aggressiveness to shorten the war. The longer the operation, the stronger was the pressure to achieve a decisive victory. In this case, prolonging the operation intensified pressures to expand the ground operation to overthrow the Hamas regime (see Eiland 2009), with the casualties that might be expected. To recall, escalated air attacks in the Kosovo War were triggered by similar motivations. Consequently, most of the civilian fatalities among women and children occurred during the ground offensive (B’Tselem 2009, 4), validating the transfer of risk. In sum, the greater exposure of IDF soldiers to risk, evident in the decreasing ratio between Israeli soldiers to Gazan combatants, was partly compensated by shifting risk to Gazan noncombatants. This conclusion supports B’Tselem’s numbers more than the formal numbers published by Israel. In Protective Edge, sources might agree that the fatality ratio between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians and combatants declined in comparison to Cast Lead but was partly balanced out by increasingly indiscriminate attacks. Indeed, the numbers reflect the descriptions provided by Israeli civil rights organizations and the UN about Israel’s fire policies. Among the practices implemented in this operation were these: 1. Explosive weapons and imprecise artillery with wide-area effects were used in densely populated areas to better protect the soldiers (United Nations 2015, 106–109). During the operation, the IDF changed policies by giving junior officers greater discretion about the amount of firepower to use and the acceptable degree of collateral damage that might be caused by reducing the safety range between the target and civilians (Breaking the Silence 2015, 20–21). 2. “Sterile combat zones” were created by warning civilians to leave their neighborhoods before Israeli troops entered. The working assumption was that residents had abandoned the neighborhoods, thus making anyone in the area a legitimate target (Breaking the Silence 2015, 16–17). One soldier testified that

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the military eased the rules of engagement to protect soldiers by saying that when in these zones, anyone “you see in the neighborhoods you’re in, anything within a reasonable distance, say between zero and 200 meters—is dead on the spot. . . [Because] he isn’t supposed to be there” (65). However, in many cases, warnings were absent or ineffective (B’Tselem 2015a, 54–57). It is safe to assume that relative to Cast Lead, Israel expanded the use of this method, such as when its troops dealt with tunnels embedded in densely populated areas. 3. At the same time, the UN commission of inquiry documented calls by Hamas’s spokespersons to the people in Gaza to adopt the practice of shielding their homes from attack by going up on their roofs after being warned by the IDF to leave, thereby encouraging the use of human shields (United Nations 2015, 128). Israel even cited instances of such calls (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2015, 74, 99, 100) and the use of schools as rocket-launching sites (162). 4. To support rescue operations for soldiers, the IDF used artillery and air attacks at very close range to civilians, disregarding the required distance from the civilian population. The most famous case was the rescue operation in the city of Rafah on August 1. The firing, which included artillery, drones, jets, and helicopters, was indiscriminately aimed at urban areas and at pedestrians and vehicles on the streets (Amnesty International 2015). Israel claimed the lives of about one hundred Gazan noncombatants with no IDF casualties.10 The UN commission of inquiry that investigated the event indicated (United Nations 2015, 102), “when soldiers’ lives were at stake or there was a risk of capture, the IDF disregarded basic principles on the conduct of hostilities, namely the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions.” 5. A similar picture emerged from the report published by B’Tselem (2015a), which investigated seventy incidents in which the military launched strikes from the air, sea, and land against residential buildings. It estimated that more than 70 percent of the people killed in these attacks were either under eighteen, over sixty, or women. Similar to the logic mentioned with regard to Cast Lead, Israel intensified its aerial attacks during the final week of fighting, lifting some of its self-imposed restrictions. One example was the destruction of luxury towers in the heart of Gaza City. This action was among the factors that compelled Hamas to accept a cease-fire arrangement (Perlov 2014, 113–114; Siboni 2014, 33). Failure to compel Hamas to accept the cease-fire could have expanded the ground operation, with attendant risks to Israeli soldiers, in an attempt to reoccupy Gaza and topple the Hamas regime, as some senior politicians, including the foreign minister, were urging the government to do (Ahren 2014).

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These practices reflect partial gaps between the strategic decision making aimed at decreasing collateral killing and practices on the ground. As the Israel State Comptroller (2018, 48–49) identified, while strategic targets and those planned in advance prior to the campaign were largely examined by legal advisors, the legal counsel for the military divisions in combat was less effective, and it was the commanders, not the jurists, who assessed the collateral damage against the military value of the target. To sum up, Protective Edge presented the IDF with more risks and challenges because it required the Israeli Army to deal with military targets embedded among civilians. However, IDF troops transferred part of the increasing risk to which the soldiers were exposed in Protective Edge relative to Cast Lead to Gazan noncombatants and, hence, partly improved soldiers’ protection. In effect, however, if the opponent uses noncombatants as human shields to deter the attacker by placing them in locations of strategic importance, harming those civilians is not necessarily risk transfer. Nevertheless, these noncombatants still retain all the protections to which they are entitled as civilians in war unless they acted voluntarily as shields for the attacked forces (Schmitt 2008). It is even conceivable that the stronger party is ethically required to place its soldiers at greater risk by taking “exceptionally rigorous steps to ensure that civilians are not placed at risk of collateral harm” (Rodin 2006, 162). In any case, the assessment of the amount of risk shifted or taken is the issue here, not the legality or legitimacy of doing so within the framework of IHL. If from one operation to the next or throughout the same protracted operation, the defending militia increases its use of human shields (even by increasing its embeddedness within the civilian population), it presents a dilemma to the attacker. The latter’s decision to reduce or stabilize the level of risk to its own soldiers signifies the shifting of risk. Such a decision was accurately captured by the rhetoric of the Commanding General of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, Lieutenant General James Conway. In addressing the troops in Iraq, he said, “when the enemy used human shields or put legitimate targets next to mosques and hospitals, he, not we, endangered those innocents” (Fick 2005, 182). Such was the US military strategy in Somalia in 1993 during Operation Michigan, when Somali militia tactics, which risked both American soldiers and local civilians, presented the Americans with this dilemma. US troops opted to prioritize casualty aversion over Somali civilian protection (Kaempf 2018, 108–154). Alternatively, abstaining from operations that may inflict harm on civilians, or issuing advance warnings, or selecting alternative modes of attack

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that may risk soldiers by using more discriminate firepower are all reflections of intentional decisions to take risks. It follows that the fatalities ratio reflects decisions, reactions, and counterreactions made by both sides of a conflict and these are therefore relational. Thus, the pursuit of similar policies against different rivals may yield different casualty ratios. To the extent that risk assessment is applied to the estimation of the risk of death to noncombatants and to the extent that commanders monitor the implementation of fire policies (even if poorly) to detect unintended civilian harm (see Crawford 2013, 296), the ratios do reflect policies. From a different angle, the ability to discriminate between enemy combatants and enemy noncombatants may be due to the availability of information rather than intentional policy. Still, the principle of discrimination precludes the indiscriminate use of weapons (Schmitt 2014, 148), and this principle extends to the obligation to “do everything feasible to verify that the objectives to be attacked are neither civilians nor civilian objects” and to avoid the loss of civilians (Protocols Additional to the Geneva Conventions, Protocol 1, Article 57). Thus, it requires risks that soldiers must accept in order to reduce the risks to noncombatants by getting information that distinguishes them from combatants (Margalit and Walzer 2009). Justifications for relaxing such duties legally and morally are often portrayed as a way of reducing the risk to soldiers, to whom the state has a higher duty than to enemy noncombatants who are not involved in fighting, when they are not under the effective control of the state (Kasher and Yadlin 2005). Again, a policy decision is taken that affects risk transfer and taking. Still, it is conceivable that rather than risking noncombatants to shift the risk away from one’s own soldiers, the troops may be motivated by other factors, such as deterrence, punishment, and even revenge. Therefore, we must analyze the motivations very carefully. To test this option, we look at the fatality ratio between Israeli and Palestinian noncombatants. This ratio is relevant only in border wars, including ethnic wars, in which troops fight to directly protect their own civilians; thus, it is irrelevant to overseas campaigns such as those that Western armies fight. Given that protecting one’s own civilians legitimates the use of force, increasing the risk to one’s own civilians (ostensibly a failure to protect them) may increase aggressiveness toward enemy noncombatants to obtain benefits, unrelated directly to risk transfer. Such benefits include curtailing the war to reduce one’s own civilians’ suffering (see Downes 2008) or increasing the visible suffering of the enemy population to legitimize one’s own sacrifices (see Boettcher and Cobb 2006).

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Both sources are in agreement about the overall trend: that for every Israeli civilian killed in these operations, Israel increasingly claimed the deaths of Gazan civilians by about 120 percent. Clearly, Hamas’s increased firing of rockets at the Israeli population claimed only a limited number of Israeli civilian casualties, mainly due to the effective performance of the active defense of the Iron Dome antimissile shield in Protective Edge (Landau and Bermant 2014, 37) and the passive defense system created by the infrastructure of shelters and protected areas (Klein 2009, 41). It follows that Israel gradually claimed a disproportionate sacrifice from Gaza’s civilians relative to the sacrifice borne by its own civilians. However, risk transfer remains the major explanation for increasing aggressiveness to partly reduce the soldiers’ risk, for several reasons. First, as already noted, aerial bombings of Hamas installations, which claimed the lives of many noncombatants, helped press Hamas to accept a cease-fire as a means of curtailing the war and averting the risk entailed in an expanded ground thrust. Although the number of fatalities among Israeli civilians was low, the routine life of millions of Israelis was disrupted. When the suffering of one’s own civilians is intertwined with casualty sensitivity and a perceived fruitless ground operation (which failed to stop the rocket fire from Gaza), pressures mount to expand the ground operation, with the casualties it may incur, ultimately encouraging the intensification of risk transfer to counter such pressures. Furthermore, although aggressive bombing of civilian objects from which rockets were launched against Israeli civilians reduced not only Israel’s soldiers’ risk but also that of Israeli civilians (Bohrer and Osiel 2013, 776–777), only some of the attacked objects were armed with launchers. Second, extensive coverage of the damage and death caused to the Palestinian side played a role in justifying the sacrifice on the Israeli side, and hence reduced public pressure on politicians and generals to escalate the ground operation (Levy 2015b, 69). Third, it is safe to assume that international monitoring restricted Israel’s aggressiveness (Israel State Comptroller 2018, 70), prohibiting any attempt to harm the Gazans for purposes that were not purely military, such as revenge and punishment. Otherwise, Israel could have increased rather than reduced the fatality ratio between its soldiers and both Gazan combatants and noncombatants. Finally, as reports from Breaking the Silence note (2009, 2015), there were some indications of “battlefield frenzy.” Nonetheless, since many of the Gazan civilians were killed by artillery or aerial attacks and since there was no indication of a formal policy aimed at intentionally targeting civilians, misconduct on the ground cannot

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account for the rise in civilian deaths. Nevertheless, even if some readers remain skeptical about this explanation and insist that Israel was motivated by other factors, the bottom line is that whatever the motivations, risk was transferred. It is now timely to show how the interaction between the legitimacies explains the increasing shift of risk. The Legitimacies Clearly, Israel’s policies were captured in cell D on Table 2.2, leading to the harming of enemy noncombatants as a means to trade more force for less own casualties. As detailed in section 5.2, the high sense of threat that intensified as the range of Hamas’s rockets improved, thus increasing the exposure of Israeli citizens to threat, was the main factor legitimizing the use of force against Gaza. In addition to this basic level of legitimacy, other factors helped to raise it. These were international recognition of Israel’s right to use force for self-protection, especially against the internationally boycotted Hamas, and especially after Israel had ostensibly transferred rule over Gaza to the Palestinian Authority; and ethical thinking, which placed a premium on force protection at the expense of enemy noncombatants, backed by legalizing mechanisms. A high level of legitimacy of using force was encountered with a moderate level of the legitimacy of sacrificing. Chapters 4 and 5 present the overall decline in this level of legitimacy since the First Lebanon War (1982–1985), its partial restoration during the second Intifada (2000–2005), and then the renewed decline that Israel experienced following the withdrawal from Gaza (2005) and the Second Lebanon War (2006). With this interaction between the high legitimacy of using force and the moderate legitimacy of sacrificing, Israel was not restricted domestically in its ability to harm Gazan noncombatants as an alternative to risking its own soldiers, or to providing less security to its civilians, but it was restricted internationally. However, while this was the overall picture, dynamic changes altered fire policies. Operation Summer Rains This operation, which ran in tandem with the Second Lebanon War, gained legitimacy to use a large-scale force against Gaza, a scale that exceeded previous levels of assault. This legitimacy was derived from two factors in addition to those already summarized. First, Hamas escalated its attacks. From 2001 to 2005, about 650 rockets were fired from Gaza and landed in Israeli territory (an average of about 130 per year); the numbers climbed to about 1,000 in 2006 (Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center 2007, 26).

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Significantly more rockets were fired but did not land in Israel.11 At the same time, Hamas also increased the range. While in the first years, it mostly relied on Qassam rockets with a range of a few miles that mainly risked the Israeli population residing near the border, in March 2006 it used improved rockets with a range of about 15 miles, which, for the first time, hit the city of Ashkelon (41). To the extent that the firing of rockets intensified, and the range improved, and thus more Israelis were exposed to threat, Israel increased the level of legitimacy of using force. Further escalation occurred after the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, through infiltration into Israel. A few days later, Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers on the Israel-Lebanese border, which triggered the Second Lebanon War. Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah linked the two kidnapping incidents in an attempt to advance the release of Arab prisoners held by Israel (Kurtz 2007, 164–165). Second, by managing two campaigns simultaneously in Gaza and Lebanon, Israel could use the world’s relatively limited interest in Gaza to operate there, while the focus of politicians and the media was on Lebanon (Kurtz 2007, 165). In addition, the methods that Israel chose and apparently targeted Hamas installations helped alleviate international criticism (Brom 2006). At the same time, the moderate level of legitimacy of sacrificing constrained Israel to embark on an aerial-artillery attack, combined with methods that transferred the risk from Israeli combatants to Palestinian noncombatants, as the fatality ratios clearly indicate. To recall, Israel was averse to risking upper-class and reserve soldiers, those still staffing the elite units and reserve battalions needed for deployment in any large-scale ground operation in Gaza. Simultaneously, a similar restriction hindered the deployment of ground troops in the Second Lebanon War. Operation Cast Lead Since Summer Rains brought about only temporary relief without solving any of the basic problems underpinning the Israel-Gaza conflict, a new round of escalation developed in 2007. To recall (see section 5.2), in 2008, concerns about military casualties mounted in spite of the rocket fire against Israeli civilians, inhibiting decision makers who were considering a ground offensive into Gaza and forcing a cease-fire. With the legitimacy of sacrificing at such a moderate level, the offensive into Gaza could be launched only when it became legitimate to use aggressive fire to transfer much of the risk from soldiers to the Gazan noncombatants.

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In December 2008, the pretext was provided that allowed the launching of Operation Cast Lead: Hamas had violated the six-month cease-fire, or at least this was the general impression, and it had refused to renew the truce agreement under the original conditions. Meanwhile, it intensified its rocket fire against Israel’s civilian population: about 450 rockets landed in Israel during November and December 2008, compared to only a few in the preceding months during the lull.12 Hamas also expanded the range of its rockets to about 25 miles (Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center 2014, 6), so that about 750,000 Israelis were under threat. To further indicate the extent of escalation, by late 2008, 55 percent of the inhabitants of the border town of Sderot had witnessed Qassam missile blasts (Catignani 2009, 66). The stakes were raised: from protecting a narrow strip of border communities to securing more than 10 percent of Israel’s population, including the kibbutzim, which are part of the social elites even as residents of geographically peripheral areas (Levy 2012, 166–167). Indeed, the legitimacy of using force was on the rise with pressure from the bottom up to act. “I’m embarrassed to walk in the street and hear people talk about you as a big nothing,” one of the ministers said, berating Defense Minister Ehud Barak at an internal party meeting for his lack of response to the rockets (Bronner 2009). To indicate public support, a few days after the operation was launched, the attacks on Gaza enjoyed overwhelming support (94 percent) among the Israeli Jewish public, with 92 percent justifying the airstrikes despite the damage they caused to Gaza’s infrastructure and the suffering of the civilian population there (Yaar and Hermann 2008). Furthermore, during the operation, in the Israeli press (that had reflected earlier sentiments) there were expressions of a sense of historical Jewish victimhood that extended even to equating Hamas to the Nazis, and a narrative of the world as hostile to Israel (Biran and Bar-Tal 2017). In line with Butler’s (2004, 36) argument, moreover, that the enemy population is dehumanized when its existence is not acknowledged, only about 25 percent of the news covering victims at large dealt (sometimes empathically) with Palestinian victims, including civilians (Biran and Bar-Tal 2017, 15, 19–21). However, news about civilian fatalities in Gaza focused narrowly on numbers and failed to include personal details about the fallen, in line with their lives being ungrievable (Lloyd 2017). From the international perspective, moreover, the timing for Israel was convenient. It launched the operation during the last days of the Bush administration when both the incumbent and the president-elect were incapable of playing any role in restraining Israel (S. Cohen 2009, 7). In practice, the United States

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justified Israel’s taking action to defend itself,13 while in European countries, the reaction was mixed (Berzi 2009). Still, to gain international legitimacy, Israel refrained from any attempt to expand the ground invasion to destroy Hamas’s capabilities completely and favored a more limited and rapid operation (Catignani 2009, 68). Nevertheless, a new mechanism was in place: the religionizing of politics through the religionizing of nationalism. Jewishness transmuted into a nationalist territorial cult, legitimizing the settlement project and the derived hard line toward the Palestinians (Ram 2008, 69–71). The IDF reflected this trend by expanding the role of the Military Rabbinate and tasking it with socializing the troops. It even tolerated attempts by military rabbis to paint the battle against Gaza as a religious war and dictate the appropriate code of conduct in the field by declaring, “When you show mercy to a cruel enemy, you are being cruel to pure and honest soldiers. This is terribly immoral” (Levy 2016a, 315–331). As much as it further legitimized the sacrifice claimed from the soldiers, it also legitimized the violence against the dehumanized enemy. Prominent rabbis and the Military Rabbinate thus provided the IDF with a theological seal of approval for the ethical code of conduct in the fight against terror (see Israel-Vleeschhouwer 2014). Intramilitary legitimation is instrumental to minimize dissent springing up among the ranks and arousing extramilitary antiwar voices. Unlike in the United States, the promise of precision played a more minor role in legitimizing the use of force, especially as public opinion was less active in voicing concerns about collateral killing. However, the IDF highlighted its efforts to improve the capacity for precision strikes to reduce collateral damage (see Lambeth 2012, 100–101). Nevertheless, the promise of precision also imposed more responsibility on Israel in cases where the weaponry used allowed a high degree of precision but nevertheless killed civilians, and therefore it was concluded that Israel had intentionally targeted specific civilian objectives (for example, United Nations 2009, 24, 165, 209, 251–252). At the same time, the legitimacy of sacrificing further declined in the aftermath of the Second Lebanon War, as detailed in section 5.2. Now, Israeli policymakers were further restricted even to risking the lower-middle-class soldiers—not only reserves and elite units that drew on higher-class soldiers who staffed the armor and infantry regular brigades and who shouldered the main burden in the Second Lebanon War and initiated protest. So the legitimacies moved in different directions, further capturing Israel in a transition from cell C (when it opted for cease-fire) to cell D in Table 2.2. Thus, a high level of legitimacy of using force

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that would reduce the projected Israeli casualties compensated for the lower level of legitimacy of sacrificing. Politically, when the military command presented the plans to the cabinet, it emphasized that “the lives of our soldiers take precedence” and “the civilians in Gaza won’t have many places to escape to [after the attack is launched]” (Harel 2009c). Testimonies from the soldiers further validated the link between risktransfer practices and casualty sensitivity as the soldiers internalized the aversion to casualties. One soldier testified: He [the battalion commander] said . . . : “Not a hair will fall off a soldier of mine, and I am not willing to allow a soldier of mine to risk himself by hesitating. If you are not sure, shoot. If there is doubt then there is no doubt”. . . . Fire power was insane. We went in and the booms were just mad. The minute we got to our starting line, we simply began to fire at suspect places. (Breaking the Silence 2009, 20)

Public opinion did not set any barriers to the government’s freedom of action. In the final stages of the campaign and despite images depicting massive destruction and a large number of wounded and killed in Gaza, 82 percent of the public believed that Israel had not “gone too far” in its use of military force against Hamas (Verter 2009). Here we see how a state deals with conflicting imperatives, as when it fails to mitigate the tensions inherent between its duties toward groups on the highest rungs of the death hierarchy—for example, middle-class reserve soldiers (the imperative to respect aversion to sacrificing) versus middle-class border citizens (the imperative to protect). Under these conditions, it cannot place civilians under prolonged threat, and it is compelled to use force unless more peaceful solutions are at its disposal. At the same time, the state is limited in risking its soldiers. Therefore, policymakers will leverage the opportunity to build up the legitimacy of using force (facing the imperative of noncombatant immunity) and then to reduce soldiers’ exposure to risk by using excessive lethality that shifts part of the risk to enemy civilians, the group located at the bottom of the death hierarchy. All in all, as cell D in Table 2.2 typifies, a trade-off between force and casualties was set in motion as the fatality ratios clearly demonstrate. In light of the scale of killing and destruction, the Human Rights Council established the United Nations Fact Finding Mission, headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, to investigate the violations of IHL in the operation. In its findings, the mission concluded that both sides had violated IHL (United Nations 2009).

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Cast Lead clearly indicates changes in the legitimacies that had taken place since the Battle of Jenin in 2002 (see section 4.1). To recall, international restrictions together with much higher legitimacy of sacrificing constrained the IDF to refrain from using airstrikes and artillery in occupying the Jenin refugee camp. Taking, rather than shifting, risks was reflected in the ratio of 1:1 between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian noncombatants, not 1:33–1:86. Unlike Jenin, in Cast Lead, the urban areas were bombed by airstrikes and artillery. Furthermore, rules of engagement allowed firing on civilians in zones declared sterile, while in Jenin, the IDF acted otherwise, and despite warning civilians to leave, the rules did not allow soldiers to strike suspected houses before entering them to search. With the lessons of Jenin, together with the declining legitimacy of sacrificing following the Second Lebanon War, the IDF shifted a far higher level of risk to the local civilians, and it did so even though the main burden in Jenin was borne by reserve soldiers, not the regular brigades that were deployed to Gaza. Furthermore, in Jenin, the mission was riskier—to occupy and clear—than the more flexible maneuver that was the case in Gaza. Operation Protective Edge In November 2012, Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defense, a week-long operation carried out by airstrikes to avert casualties on the Israeli side (and therefore categorized as signifying a strategic, rather than tactical, transfer of risk). According to a minimal estimation, Israel killed sixty-eight noncombatants (Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center 2012) with no casualties among its own troops. Two years later, Israel initiated Operation Protective Edge, again a tactical endeavor to transfer risk. Clearly, a high level of legitimacy of using force was required here, but also a higher legitimacy of sacrificing to tolerate the increased number of soldiers killed, from nine in Cast Lead to sixty-five in Protective Edge, forty-four of them directly in the ground thrust. Although the operation broke out following a relatively less violent period across the border between Israel and Hamas-ruled Gaza, it resulted from an escalation that had a life of its own, even when the interests of the sides did not support reinitiating such a large-scale conflict, as the IDF itself testified to the Israel State Comptroller (2017, 66). In this case, the escalation followed an incident in which three Jewish teens were kidnapped by Hamas in the West Bank. In response, the IDF searched for the teens in the West Bank and arrested many Hamas activists there. The killing of the three boys was framed in the public discourse in a far wider context than the event itself and the conflict with the Palestinians; it

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reactivated past Jewish traumas (Keynan 2016). This killing, together with sporadic rocket fire by Gaza militants who were not under Hamas’s control and the ensuing Israeli Air Force reprisals, all gradually triggered the outbreak of hostilities (Shalev 2015a, 441–444). While the policymakers planned an aerial attack, Hamas used tunnels that it had dug along the border—some reaching into Israeli territory—and through which it infiltrated into Israel to attack soldiers and civilians. The kidnapping and the exposure of the tunnel system, wrote Haaretz columnist Chemi Shalev (2015a, 453–456), touched a raw nerve in Israel’s collective psyche, exposing a sense of vulnerability that was shortly compounded by the exposure of the extensive Hamas underground network of tunnels. These sparked a blind outrage made all the more furious by a sense that the 2005 disengagement from Gaza was a giant swindle. Israelis were convinced that their might was right, even if that meant bombing Hamas into submission.

The dynamics, however, were more complicated. Initially, the Jewish majority almost unanimously (95 percent) justified the launch of the operation (Yaar and Hermann 2014a). But the main legitimacy challenge was external, not internal. At first, Israel enjoyed international legitimacy to attack, supported for its “right to self-defense” against Hamas rockets (Shalev 2015b, 146–153). Israel reinforced its legitimacy by arguing that Hamas and the other militias in Gaza had increased the size and strength of their rocket arsenal to around 10,000 rockets. These included long-range rockets, which could cover most of Israel’s territory, endangering about 6 million Israelis.14 However, the IDF managed its fire policies more cautiously than in Cast Lead to avoid allegations such as those documented in the UN report of the mission headed by Goldstone. This report was read by Israeli decision makers as an attempt to delegitimize Israel, but it also amplified the legal discourse in Israel to legitimize its conduct (see Craig 2013, 200–203). No wonder the Israel State Comptroller (2018, 70) noted that since the decision to embark on the operation, senior ministers and generals “explicitly considered the limitations and rules set forth in international law regarding the conduct of the fighting in Gaza.” Concurrently, the legitimacy of sacrificing was at the same level as in Cast Lead, or at least nothing happened to change the perception that in general the public would not tolerate many casualties. This interaction between a high-moderate level of legitimacy of using force and a moderate level of legitimacy of sacrificing dictated a cautiousness—captured

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between cell C to D in Table 2.2—that could have led Israel to compromise its security interests. Therefore, preferring to avoid a ground operation, Israel accepted an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire after ten days of aerial attacks, adhering to the initial goal to restore calm to the border,15 even at the cost of not dealing with the tunnels (see Harel 2014a; Israel State Comptroller 2017, 117). Conflicting requirements, that is, concern about international investigations versus domestic pressure to increase aggressiveness to deal with casualty sensitivity and the need to demonstrate a decisive victory, resulted in hesitations. With Hamas’s rejection of the cease-fire proposal, Israel’s international status was reinforced (Shalev 2015b, 151–158). Furthermore, at least to placate the decision makers in Washington, Israel further emphasized its technological ability to distinguish terrorists from civilians, largely due to the increasing use of drones for attacking targets (Rogers 2014, 103). At the same time, with the exposure of the tunnels, residents living close to the border translated their fear into pressuring the government to attack the tunnels (Harel 2015, 118), so Israel expanded the operation and set a new goal to destroy the tunnels. With stronger legitimacy of using force, Israel could now use more aggressive tactics to shift a great amount of risk from the soldiers to the Gazan noncombatants. Only when the war escalated and the scale of death and destruction became apparent did pressures mount with calls for Israel to cease its “disproportionate” raids and with President Obama pressing Israel to restrain its attacks (Shalev 2015b, 147, 161–166). In was only after action that Israel justified the killing of civilians. It held Hamas accountable for risking civilians by using them as human shields, thereby confirming the killing of civilians but also abrogating its responsibility to protect them (Sharvit-Baruch 2016). Domestically there was no challenge. Even after the ground operation had ended and despite public debates about the extent to which the campaign had accomplished its goals, 92 percent of the Jewish population still believed that the operation was justified. More important, only 6 percent of the public believed that the IDF had used too much firepower, while 45 percent thought the IDF had made too little use of it (Yaar and Hermann 2014b). The Jewish public remained untouched, even when it had been exposed to the demolition of the Gaza Strip, immunized by its fears of Hamas’s rockets (Shalev 2015a, 458–459). Practically, the IDF increased indiscriminate attacks more than in Cast Lead. Breaking the Silence (2015, 16) reflected the intramilitary atmosphere: “The guiding military principle of ‘minimum risk to our forces, even at the cost of harming innocent noncombatants,’ alongside efforts to deter and intimidate the

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Palestinians, led to massive and unprecedented harm to the population and the civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.” With the rising death toll of soldiers, the IDF increased its aggressiveness to reduce the risk to them in densely populated areas (Harel 2014b). Religionizing the ranks, moreover, could help mute potential dissident voices among the troops (Levy 2016a, 316–317). Nevertheless, Israel could not transfer risk as much as it had done in Cast Lead because of the need for boots on the ground to destroy the tunnels. But mounting casualties could have increased pressures to halt the mission. So, in tandem with increasing the legitimacy of using force, Israel benefited from two factors increasing the legitimacy of sacrificing (see Levy 2015b). First, because the tunnels were portrayed as a genuine security threat to the Israeli civilian communities in proximity to the Israel-Gaza border—a threat presented in the public discourse in a demonic way, striking chords of fear in the average Israeli—and the public perceived the tunnel-destroying operation as effective (Ben Meir 2014, 131–132), Israeli society tolerated the death of sixty-five soldiers. The media even glorified their personal bravery, regardless of the price they had paid (Israeli and Rosman 2015, 46). As in the US case, tolerance for casualties increased with public expectations that the military operation would be a success (Gelpi et al. 2009). Second, it is important to look at the social composition of the fallen. Although the rate of casualties from among secular middle-class groups had been similar during the Second Lebanon War and Protective Edge, the low absolute number of fatalities from these groups during this operation—thirty-four versus sixtythree during the Second Lebanon War—made it even more difficult to form a critical mass to initiate a protest; there was little potential for this from the outset in light of the operation’s concrete goals relative to those that had been vague in Lebanon. Moreover, the infrastructure for protest was further weakened because of the low percentage of casualties among reservists (15 percent in Protective Edge compared to 45 percent during the Second Lebanon War) who had played a key role in past protests. In sum, increasing the legitimacy of sacrificing expanded the government’s freedom to risk soldiers. Apart from the few voices that criticized the government for the flawed performance of the military, the overall tone was submissive (Levy 2015b). And as the polls cited above showed, public support for the military endeavor, or for the leadership running it, remained stable despite the casualties. Israel’s conduct was thus captured in cell D but closer to cell B relative to Cast Lead, closer to the situation where risking lower-class soldiers is permissible.

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7.3 Conclusion Two main insights arise from the study of these two sets of serial cases. First, the interaction between the legitimacies modifies fire policies dynamically from one operation to the next, and even during an operation. To some extent, this dynamic governs initial policies. In Fallujah, having learned the lessons of the first assault and in an effort to limit criticism about overaggressiveness, a slower operation was planned in the second round with strict rules of engagement, forbidding the targeting or striking of any noncombatants except in self-defense. Nevertheless, relative to the first round, the second operation ended with more fatalities among Iraqi noncombatants and heavy destruction of the city. In Gaza, having learned the lessons of Cast Lead that culminated in a UN investigation accusing Israel of crimes against humanity, Israel in Protective Edge was initially more cautious and restrained when it came to collaterally harming the civilian population. However, again like its American counterpart, the operation ended with a higher number of civilian fatalities in Gaza. In both cases, noncombatants were collaterally targeted even if this went against the initial, and surely the formal, intentions, while policies dynamically changed during the operation. In both cases, concerns about casualties encouraged commanders and policymakers to change policies and shift more risk to the Iraqis and Gazans. They traded more force for fewer casualties. In Fallujah, this happened mainly during the second operation as it progressed and local resistance increased. In Gaza, in both Cast Lead and Protective Edge, Israel increased airstrikes as Hamas showed its unwillingness to cease firing under conditions favored by Israel. In both cases, the Western side leveraged the means to enhance the legitimacy of using force to balance out the declining legitimacy of sacrificing, or at least concerns about its potential decline. In the case of Fallujah, troops expanded their freedom of action by leveraging the limited public concern in the United States about ungrievable Iraqi civilian casualties. In the case of Gaza, the main barrier was the international community, but it tolerated escalation since the internationally boycotted Hamas harmed the Israeli population and was perceived as rejecting diplomatic solutions. In both cases, attempts at limiting the legitimacy of using force and concerns about the declining legitimacy of sacrificing could have produced a deadlock, leading to a cease-fire without accomplishing the mission—hence, the encouragement to further justify the use of aggressive force. Conflicting imperatives were thus balanced: both the United States and Israel accomplished the missions in a manner that accorded with the states’ perceptions of how the missions served their security interests and protected their civilians,

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directly or indirectly. When this imperative clashed with the aversion to sacrifice, risk was transferred away from the soldiers, and the sacrifice was adapted to socially permissible levels. Still, even if the imperative of noncombatant immunity was then compromised, what mattered most from the policymakers’ perspective were the political costs incurred by such deviation, internationally and domestically. However, enhancement of the legitimacy to use force mitigated such costs. Similar to the cases of strategic risk transfer, the gap between legitimacies encouraged the use of more aggressive force and efforts to legitimize it when the domestic demand for security could not be directed towards choosing less lethal options. A second insight is methodological. Earlier, I highlighted the need to monitor variations in risk transfer to specify the conditions under which we can determine that risk has indeed been transferred. In other words, we can determine whether a smaller number of enemy noncombatants would have been harmed had the military taken, rather than transferred, a greater amount of risk. Using the tools presented here, we can infer that both cases suggest a shift in risk transference. This inference refutes conclusions presented by scholars of US policies that highlight the steps commanders took to reduce collateral deaths (see, for example, Kahl 2007, 30–32). In terms of policy, moreover, the case of Gaza challenges Israel’s formal denial of allegations that it intensified the risk to Gazan civilians (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2015, viii–ix). Chapter 8 offers another shift, back to risking one’s own soldiers.

8

Re-Risking One’s Own Soldiers in the Surge in Iraq and Afghanistan

Recognizing situations in which harming noncombatants provides less, rather than more, protection to their own civilians and ultimately risks the soldiers themselves and thwarts the mission may cause political and military leaders to remodify the death hierarchy. Following a general overview of this shift in Iraq, which formed the surge of 2007, this chapter presents a more detailed analysis focused on Operation Moshtarak of 2010 in Afghanistan. 8.1 The Surge, Iraq 2007–2008 With growing insurgency in Iraq and mounting US casualties, surpassing 3,000 at the end of 2006, public opinion in the United States gradually shifted against the Iraq War, with most Americans regretting the decision to go to war, believing it was not going well, and that troops should be brought home as soon as possible (Keeter 2007). A sense of failure and the resulting drop in support of the mission engendered reviews of the military policies. Policies and Legitimacies Since 2005, American commanders in Iraq have acknowledged (largely following their British colleagues) that force-protection-informed violence against noncombatants embittered the Iraqis and incited the insurgency by creating more enemies after every killing of Iraqis (Smith 2008, 160–161). Early postinvasion warnings about losing the hearts and minds of the Iraqis, and thereby losing the

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battle, were now better acknowledged by commanders and policymakers. For example, a colonel and commander of the Third Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar told his troops, “Every time you treat an Iraqi disrespectfully, you are working for the enemy” (cited in Caldwell 2011, 234). Recognizing that the main objective should be to win over the local people, the colonel ordered the soldiers to move into the city from the outskirts and patrol on foot rather than in armored vehicles (ibid.). He and other commanders concluded that soldiers were further exposed to risk because force protection limited their effectiveness rather than the contrary. Gradually, wrote Burton and Nagl (2006, 310–311), American soldiers began to rethink the war, “viewing their primary duties as population protection and support for Iraqi forces rather than actively rounding up insurgents.” Consequently, the military revised the doctrine of force protection, implemented by deployment at forward operating bases (FOBs; see section 5.1) and risk transfer (see section 7.1). With the drafting of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual in 2006, a new doctrine came to be formulated: the Petraeus doctrine, named for Major General David Petraeus, the newly appointed (in 2007) commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq. This manual established doctrine for military operations in a counterinsurgency, now termed COIN; it was based on lessons learned from previous and contemporary operations but also acknowledged that military knowledge had been neglected since the previous large-scale counterinsurgency in Vietnam. In the new manual, the paradoxes of the current counterinsurgency directives were highlighted. One example was this paradox: “Sometimes, the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be” because of losing the connection to the local population. Similarly, “Sometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is” because more mistakes and collateral damage occur and hence the insurgents’ legitimacy is reinforced together with their ability to mobilize. From this derived another paradox: “The more successful the counterinsurgency is, the less force can be used and the more risk must be accepted” (Petraeus and Amos 2007, 48). In tandem, Washington recognized that the strategy for winning the war had been eroded. An important catalyst was the failure of the large-scale Operation Together Forward in Baghdad in summer 2006 that triggered escalation in the insurgents’ attacks and the rise in civilian deaths (Burton and Nagl 2006, 316–317). Formally, a group of intellectual officers, later known as the Council of Colonels, reviewed several alternative strategies. It rejected the option to withdraw precipitously, as well as the alternative of significantly increasing the troops, and recommended a short-term increase in the number of troops (Caldwell 2011,

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230–231). At the same time, in 2006, Congress appointed a bipartisan committee, the Iraq Study Group. At the end of 2006, the committee recommended that all combat brigades not required for force protection could be out of Iraq by the first quarter of 2008, while the other combat forces should be deployed only in units embedded with Iraqi forces (Baker and Hamilton 2006). Following these revisions, President Bush announced the initiation of a new strategy in January 2007: the surge.1 He admitted that contrary to expectations, the 2005 elections in Iraq had brought more violence rather than stability. Bush committed to sending more than 20,000 additional US troops to Iraq, mainly to Baghdad and Anbar, in order to hold the areas after they were cleared of insurgents, thus enabling Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to establish its authority. He praised the Iraqi government’s commitment to allocating troops, as a result of which the US involvement further signified an effort to “help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad.” Karl Rove (2010, 477), White House Deputy Chief of Staff, explained the president’s strategy: “Bush’s strategy was not driven by polling—it was strengthened by it. . . . What we needed to do was rally public support by demonstrating that we had a plan with a high chance of success.” In other words, the administration hoped to rally support by linking the surge to success. However, with the legitimacy of using force at one of its lowest points, driven by mistrust in its effectiveness, and after dismissing the recommendation of the bipartisan group, Bush’s plan immediately drew broad opposition and triggered increased partisan polarization in the debate over Iraq policies (Pew Research Center 2007). Weakening the antiwar movement was then instrumental for increasing the legitimacy of the surge against hostile public opinion. With the success of the Democratic Party in the 2006 midterm elections to control Congress, the antiwar movement declined. As Heaney and Rojas (2015, 4) argued, after this success, “it was no longer ‘necessary’ to have an antiwar movement in the streets because the Democratic Party was the antiwar movement” (emphasis in the original). Therefore, they claim, the movement declined in the midst of the surge instead of growing as expected. A similar fate, affected by the Democrats’ conduct, awaited Cindy Sheehan’s Gold Star Families for Peace (see below). Furthermore, an important engine of protest promoted by war veterans had almost vanished, certainly in comparison to its height during the resistance to the Vietnam War. Among the reasons for this was that the installation of an allvolunteer force produced a military with troops disproportionately composed of self-identified political conservatives and Republican partisans (Krebs 2008).

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Owing to this development, public opinion was not translated into antiwar collective action. Nevertheless, the leadership of the Democratic Party tried to shut down the surge in Congress by linking war-funding legislation to a withdrawal time line; however, it failed. Ultimately, after Bush vetoed a bill making this linkage, Congress approved another bill in May 2007 that provided about $95 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.2 Later, with the impression of success in Iraq in September 2007—with Petraeus’s impressive congressional testimony on the surge’s progress—more barriers were lowered for legitimizing the escalation (Feaver 2011, 88). As the media analyst Mark Jurkowitz (2007b) asserted after this testimony and Bush’s crediting Petraeus for improving the conditions in Iraq, [it] seemed to have made it more difficult for critics to use the media to challenge Bush policy. They were now challenging the respected commander in the field, the man with the most information. That may have become even more difficult to do after the liberal anti-war group MoveOn.org bought a full page ad in the New York Times last week attacking Petraeus as “General Betray Us.”

Petraeus’s testimony showed how the military can cripple deliberation. That the military enjoyed a high level of public confidence was the key. It was the only institution that had a notable gain in public confidence, surpassing that among other organizations such as religious institutions, big business, and Congress (Taylor et al. 2011, 61). For clarification, the military can be simultaneously both socially marginalized (as reported in section 5.1), in the sense that it attracts limited public attention, and publicly trusted, either to compensate for this limited interest or precisely owing to a lack of knowledge about military affairs. Therefore, the decision-making process was significant. As Schiff (2011) described it, the normal military-planning process, according to which civilians determine the goals of the war and then let the military run the actual war, was altered. Rather than taking orders from civilians, the militarily led team developed an integrated civil-military campaign plan based on a political strategy for achieving reconciliation in Iraq from the bottom up. Thus, the generals stepped into the vacuum left by the politicians’ failure to produce a successful plan for Iraq. However, by its very involvement, the military helped sell the plan (Feaver 2011), legitimizing the continuing US presence in Iraq over less belligerent options. Consequently, in the middle of 2008, antiwar activity declined to almost nothing (Ricks 2010, 254–255). It went together with waning press attention to the war entwined with diminishing public interest in news about Iraq (including

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accurate knowledge about casualties).3 In tandem, increasing public optimism about the effectiveness of operations in Iraq from 2007 to 2008 (Pew Research Center 2008) and the consequent rise in the approval of Bush’s handling of the war between the end of 2006 and the 2008 election, from 27 to 33 percent (Jacobson 2009, 4), further defused antiwar sentiments, despite the rise in the number of US casualties, which was now more tolerable (Holsti 2011, 55–56, 64–65). Certainly, relying on the Iraqis’ demand for assistance from the US-led coalition was also instrumental in restoring legitimacy, moderating the depiction of the United States as an occupier. Since the surge plan entailed more willingness to assume risks, rather than shifting them to the Iraqi side, the reduction in the legitimacy of using force, namely to harm Iraqi noncombatants, could not be decoupled from an attempt to increase the legitimacy of sacrificing. This legitimacy was basically moderate to low, with mounting US casualties peaking at 3,000 at the end of 2006. As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (2011, 467) experienced: Newspapers worldwide were filled with dire stories of suicide bombings, roadside attacks on coalition forces, and–most poignantly–US troop casualties in the Washington Post’s “Face of the Fallen.” I made myself look at every photograph of each soldier so that I wouldn’t become inured to the war’s human cost.

However, in addition to the role of the sense of success during late 2007 in increasing tolerance for casualties (as predicted by Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler 2009), two more factors helped raise this legitimacy, at least hampering its translation into effective protest. First was the leadership-led resurrection of the citizen-soldier tradition as a rhetorical practice despite, or maybe owing to, the shift away from conscription. The praise heaped on soldiers as representing the highest form of citizenship, public debates over veterans’ benefits that were suffused with republican rhetoric, and the characterization of soldiers as heroes deserving of the nation’s gratitude rather than as employees all reflected this shift (Krebs 2009). On top of this, the growing visibility of soldiers in the public sphere and the honor they received indicated the post-9/11 “transformation of soldiers into uniformly heroic subjects and objects of national reverence” as Henry Giroux argued (2014, 1835). Rewarding positively increases motivation for sacrifice. A complementary effort was to increase soldiers’ pay; most important were the enlistment bonuses to meet the demands for recruiting more personnel to deploy more troops. Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter briefed the Senate in

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March 2008: “Incentive programs were a key component of our enlisted recruiting success in 2007” (US Department of Defense 2008, 78). A second, and more important, factor was the weakening of the antiwar movement that otherwise might have energized a subversive bereavement tone. Most crucial was the collapse of the bereavement-motivated Gold Star Families for Peace in 2007 that had effectively folded much earlier after relative success during 2005 (see section 5.1). Following Gold Star’s temporary success, more conservative women organized to counter the group (Taussig-Rubbo 2009, 108–110). Their lobbying group, Freedom’s Watch, presented a submissive bereavement discourse. In its advertisements, women bereaved by the war expressed their conviction that their loved ones had died in the name of fighting al-Qaeda and terrorism (Franklin and Lyons 2008, 247–248). This submissive tone was also encouraged by political mobilization. When President Bush met with grieving families, the mothers invariably were in the spotlight. The meetings often ended with the president, “the patriarchal national leader,” paternally reassuring these women that their sons and daughters had not died in vain, and therefore their motherhood had contributed honorably to the national cause. Mothers therefore remained faithful to the femininity of militarized motherhood (Repo 2006, 112–113), confirming their role as those who stay at home and out of politics (Franklin and Lyons 2008, 243). In contrast, Gold Star, led by Cindy Sheehan, seemed to sunder the presumed natural connection between being a good mother and being a patriot (244). The mothers’ dominant tone is best understood if we remember that the vocational American military draws its soldiers mainly from socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. Conservatism is more pronounced among the lower classes and negatively affects the initiation of a subversive bereavement discourse (Levy 2018). Mothers even directly attacked Sheehan (Bumiller 2005), especially her argument that her son’s sacrifice had not been worthwhile. Invoking the theme of free choice, Debbie, whose son returned to service after he had been wounded in Iraq, said: What she’s doing is not only dishonoring her son, she’s dishonoring mine. . . . [Casey Sheehan] didn’t die for nothing, he died in the United States Armed Forces. There’s nothing more honorable than that. These kids volunteered, they were not yanked from their cradle by an evil government to send them someplace they didn’t want to go. (Kovacs 2005)

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President Bush, in an attempt to offset Sheehan’s protest, quoted Tammy Pruett, whose husband and five sons fought in Iraq: I know that if something happens to one of the boys, they would leave this world doing what they believe, what they think is right for our country. And I guess you couldn’t ask for a better way of life than giving it for something that you believe in. (Cited in Bumiller 2005)

Here we see how the discourse of free choice implicit in the notion of the vocational military is invoked to justify sacrifice, pulling the carpet out from under the theme of “dying for nothing” that Gold Star tried to advance. Furthermore, this notion of free choice also absolves the state and the community of citizens of part of the responsibility and transfers it to the individual soldiers (see also Bacevich 2007). Indicatively, most of the Americans who admitted that military sacrifice is not equally distributed said that disparity is part of military life (Taylor et al. 2011, 63). Volunteer soldiers are viewed as mature and fulfilling an occupation, a perception that distances them from society, thus decreasing the propensity for participation in antiwar protests (Freeman 2017). In contrast, for conscripts, military sacrifice cannot be presented as the result of free choice but as a state-mandated sacrifice, from which also derived the state’s and citizens’ responsibility to those coercively sent to risk their lives. It is worth clarifying that the two factors increasing the legitimacy of sacrificing—the resurrection of the citizen-soldier tradition and the demise of the antiwar movement produced by social marginalization—are apparently contradictory. However, while the first factor directly affects those who sacrifice and their social communities, the second affects the entire society, drying up the potential for the translation of critical public opinion into antiwar collective action. Taken together, a protest emerging around the all-volunteer forces, with their reliance on less privileged and more conservative groups surrounded by general public apathy toward the military, is less likely to succeed (Levy 2013b). Furthermore, Secretary Rice mentioned the Washington Post’s project “Faces of the Fallen.”4 As argued with regard to the British case (see section 4.2), naming the fallen may not only raise political attention to the fallen, as Rice worried, but also the opposite, by corrupting deliberation as “the political now obscured by the personal” (Stow 2008, 238). Indeed, gradually Gold Star’s protest collapsed, especially following the congressional vote (May 2017) to continue funding the war without troop withdrawal timetables (Jurkowitz 2007a). After that, casualties did not trigger an effective

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subversive bereavement discourse. Evidently even the rise in the yearly number of US casualties from 823 in 2006 to the peak of 904 in 20075 did not trigger protest, especially as this number significantly fell in 2008 to 314. All in all, it was a movement from the hybrid strategy captured in both cell C (passive force protection) and cell D (risk transfer) closer to cell B in Table 2.2, allowing the re-risking of lower-class soldiers. The Surge and Its Outcomes Improving security for Iraq’s population by separating rather than killing the enemy became the overriding objective of the new surge policy. It was implemented by increasing the presence of military personnel in local neighborhoods, establishing “joint security stations” and smaller “combat outposts” within the cities (Smith 2008, 160), and erecting protective barriers and establishing checkpoints to create “safe neighborhoods” and “safe markets” (Odierno 2008). Living among the people by abandoning the remote FOBs was the new approach, even though it increased the short-term risks for the coalition forces (Caldwell 2011, 229–241). Moreover, adopting this policy meant a decrease in firepower and a prohibition against using artillery to minimize collateral damage (Petraeus 2009). As the manual prescribed (Petraeus and Amos 2007, 241), risk taking is “particularly important during COIN operations, where insurgents seek to hide among the local populace . . . [is that] commanders may need to accept substantial risk to de-escalate a dangerous situation” (emphasis added). In other words, restraint was presented as preconditioning the achievement of long-term mission success (Sewall 2006, 104). Gaining the confidence of local civilians became a primary goal, thereby creating an environment that was inhospitable to the insurgency. Success was now measured by the declining level of civilian violence (Hall and Stahl 2008, 40). These are all components of a population-centric counterinsurgency operation. Everything was designated to transfer power to the Iraqi government to allow long-term withdrawal. As Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, Petraeus’s deputy, briefed his commander: to break the current cycle of sectarian violence, we must set the conditions for the [Iraqi Security Forces] to emerge as the dominant security force, able to protect the population and provide security in a fair and impartial manner. This operation will be Iraqi-led with Coalition support.6

Hierarchy of risk is also a cultural construct that values enemy lives relative to own soldiers’ lives. A cultural turn from force protection to a population-centric

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approach had indeed taken place (Gregory 2008). When Petraeus’s central message to the troops was, “What have you done for Iraqis today?” (Caldwell 2011, 233), this symbolized the partial inversion of the hierarchy from placing soldiers on top to prioritizing the local Iraqis. In a similar vein, an advisor to the military testified, “In [2003], the guys [commanders] were Christian crusaders seeking revenge for 9/11. Today they are advising Iraqis in a way they couldn’t back then” (cited in Ricks 2010, 163). Still, this came at the expense of patronage, as the United States put itself in the position of knowing what was good for Iraq. To a large extent, the revised doctrine supplanted the 1990s’ Powell doctrine by arguing that instead of placing emphasis on overwhelming force to accomplish a brief and decisive victory, “armed conflict will be protracted, ambiguous, and continuous—with the application of force becoming a lesser part of the soldier’s repertoire” (Bacevich 2008). To reinforce the military endeavor, civilian projects such as economic development and recruiting locals to the police forces were promoted (West 2009). Assessing the surge, which lasted from February 2007 through July 2008, is outside the scope of this study, but its outcomes in terms of fatalities are indeed relevant. In 2008, the number of Iraqi civilians killed (by US-led coalitions, insurgents, and intercommunal violence and other actors) dropped significantly to 8,315–9,028 from 25,774–27,599 deaths reported in 2006, and 22,671–24,295 in 2007, with the most notable reduction in Baghdad (Iraq Body Count 2008). However, the decline in violence was attributable not only to the shift to counterinsurgency but also to other developments, particularly the defeat of Sunni militias by Shia militias in Baghdad and the decision by many Sunni leaders to collaborate with the United States and rise up against al-Qaeda in Iraq (Biddle, Friedman, and Shapiro 2012; Branch and Wood 2010). Zooming in on the US-led forces, the number of fatalities (by hostile action) among soldiers belonging to the US-led coalition (without ISF) peaked from 747 in 2006 to 809 in 2007,7 indicating a higher risk associated with more presence in the cities and less risk transfer. For example, the daily patrols in Baghdad conducted by the coalition or Iraqi forces increased from 600 in February 2006 to 4,500 in February 2007 (Campbell and O’Hanlon 2007), and they played an important role in protecting the population, even by interposing between the insurgents and the population (Ricks 2010, 193–194). However, the picture is more complicated, and it is possible that the risk to the troops was not rising significantly. First, most of the casualties, nearly 70 percent, occurred during the first half of 2007 when the surge was in its first stages.

Table 8.1: Fatality Ratios in Iraq, 2006–2008 Coalition’s Soldiers + ISF to Iraqi Combatants

Coalition’s Soldiers + ISF to Iraqi Noncombatants

Ratio of Iraqi Noncombatants Among Total Iraqi Fatalities Killed by the Coalition + ISF

2006

1:1.4 (2,838:3,902)

1:0.44 (2,838:1,252)

0.24 (1,252/[1,252 + 3,902])

2007

1:1.8 (2,639:4,882)

1:0.83 (2,639:2,187)

0.31 (2,187/[2,187 + 4,882])

2008

1:1.6 (1,300:2,028)

1:0.86 (1,300:1,122)

0.36 (1,122/[1,122 + 2,028])

Cumulative relative change

+15%

+95%

+50%

The Year/ ratio

Coalition’s Soldiers to Iraqi Combatants

Coalition’s Soldiers to Iraqi Noncombatants

Ratio of Iraqi Noncombatants Among Total Iraqi Fatalities Killed by the Coalition

2006

NA

1:1.2 (747:902)

NA

2007

NA

1:1.7 (809:1,346)

NA

2008

NA

1:2.3 (230:536)

NA

Cumulative relative change

--

+90%

--

The Year/ Ratio

N ote : The actual number of fatalities is in parentheses. Percentages are rounded. The cumulative, relative value measures cumulative changes from 2006, prior to the surge, to 2008, when the surge ended. Sources: Data about the coalition’s and ISF’s combatants killed by hostile action were taken from icasualties (http://icasualties.org/Iraq/ByMonth.aspx; http://icasualties.org/Iraq/IraqiDeaths.aspx, accessed September 24, 2018). Data about noncombatants were obtained from IBC (https://www .iraqbodycount.org/database/, accessed August 23, 2018). Data about insurgents killed in 2006–2007 relied on formal sources (Michaels 2007) and in 2008 on a report by the Iraqi government (https://www .washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/05/fewest-killed-since-invasion/, accessed September 23, 2018).

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Mounting casualties were explained as a consequence of moving from FOBs to smaller outposts among the population and conducting operations in May and June to take back neighborhoods (Odierno 2008; Ricks 2010, 179). Later, the numbers dropped steadily. In 2008, the number of soldiers killed fell from 809 to 230 (189 until July), in tandem with decreasing Iraqi civilian deaths. Second, overall violence declined, and this affected the troops as well. For example, daily attacks by insurgents and militias increased from 110 in February 2006 to 180 in November 2006 and to 210 in February 2007 but dropped to 80 in November 2007.8 So risk declined even if this is only in part attributable to the US troops’ new mode of conduct (Odierno 2008). Overall, there were fewer wounding incidents during the surge, and thus the fatality rate of US troops was lower than it had been previously (Goldberg 2010, 225). Third, despite the new directives, risk was partly transferred, as Table 8.1 shows.To clarify again, as explained in Chapter 5 (Table 5.1), even if the number of insurgents had been lower than reported by 15 percent and the number of noncombatants higher by 10 percent, this would not have affected the overall picture. It is also problematic to isolate the number of insurgents killed by ISF. And since we do not have numbers of insurgents killed per month, the data relate to the whole of 2008, although the surge effectively lasted until July. In the top section of the table, we see the joint effect of the US-led coalition soldiers with ISF. The ratio between the coalition plus ISF soldiers and insurgents increased slightly, meaning that the troops claimed a relatively higher price from the insurgents and thereby balanced out their risk. However, while the coalition increased its burden from 2006 to 2007 by about 8 percent (from 747 to 809) and only in 2008 decreased it significantly by more than 70 percent (to 230), ISF decreased its casualties by about 12 percent from 2006 to 2007 (from 2,091 to 1,830) and more than about 40 percent to 2008 (from 1,830 to 1,070). So in the transition from FOBs to surge, the coalition troops bore the main burden and assumed the most risk. Nevertheless, much of this risk was shifted. As the ratio between combatants to noncombatants reveals, the coalition together with ISF almost doubled the ratio, thus shifting a great amount of risk to the Iraqis. The same trend is seen if we isolate the coalition troops (in the bottom section), with the noncombatants they killed directly. Still, it was not a typical risk transfer as more coalition and ISF soldiers than Iraqi civilians were killed, below the expected norm of 1:1 (although in 2008 the coalition alone produced a fatality ratio of about 1:2). Consequently, discrimination decreased by 50 percent, as the ratio of Iraqi

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noncombatants among total Iraqi fatalities killed by the coalition increased accordingly (from about 24 to 36 percent). Although the percentage of civilians killed is lower than the average of 50 percent, the numbers indicate indiscriminate fire. To better indicate, a comparison between the first and second half of 2007 shows that although the level of violence declined and the coalition lost significantly fewer soldiers, the ratio between the coalition soldiers and the Iraqi noncombatants doubled from 1:1.25 to 1:2.6. Similarly, a look into Baghdad, where the main surge activity took place, also shows that the percentage of those killed by airstrikes in the city more than doubled from about 23 percent in 2006 to about 50 percent in 2007 and 57 percent in 2008. Even during 2007, this percentage increased from about 39 percent in the first half of the year to about 59 percent in the second half, despite the declining number of US fatalities. Again, the United States increased, rather than decreased, the use of these risk-transfer methods. Air Force and Navy aircraft dropped five times more bombs and missiles in Iraq in the first six months of 2007 than in the first half of 2006 and three times more than in the second half of 2006, with the greatest effect coming from close air support for ground operations (Hanley 2007). More collateral killing was thus inevitable and predictable. It follows that US soldiers assumed more risk in absolute terms during 2007 relative to 2006 but moderately shifted part of it to local noncombatants, even in Baghdad. They better protected themselves by increasing the price they exacted on the Iraqi insurgents, but they also fired more liberally, thereby shifting more risk to Iraqi civilians with less discrimination between combatants and noncombatants. Alternatively, they could have assumed much more risk especially given the impact of other factors that reduced risk, that is, the declining insurgency, the troops’ increasing numbers, and even the increased integration of ISF, but they opted otherwise. Thus, the counterinsurgency did work when it came to the deployment of more troops and presence within the population, though this doctrine worked to a lesser degree when it came to taking more risks by restraining the use of force and limiting air support. As Kaempf explained (2018, 232–233), the increasing risks caused the troops to fire more aggressively in ambiguous situations with stillpermissive rules of engagement. Indicatively, the Field Manual, and especially its implementation in combat, did not attract the same level of criticism for risking the soldiers, as was the case in Afghanistan (see below). Defense analyst Jim Lacey (2011) reflected this observation in cynically assessing the practices on the ground:

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R e - R i s ki n g O ne’s O w n So l dier s in Ir aq and Afghanis tan A new [counterinsurgency] doctrine did not break the back of the counterinsurgency in Iraq. That was done by the addition of 50,000 more soldiers and Marines to the fight. Note: These were not aid workers or even forces imbued with a new doctrine (most of them had never read it). . . . And it was a hard and vicious fight—one that often required the full combined-arms panoply (armor, artillery, close air support) to win. Somehow, much of the true narrative of this fight is being lost in favor of one that emphasizes getting along with the locals, building schools, and helping farmers. . . . One brigade commander captured it perfectly when he said, “I know all about counterinsurgency doctrine. It means shake hands in the light and kill at night.”

In sum, increasing both legitimacies for a short-term effort to stabilize Iraq enabled re-risking lower-class volunteer soldiers, but with part of this greater risk transferred to Iraqi noncombatants. Initially, the troops were deployed to risk themselves more than Iraqi noncombatants, but the practices on the ground mitigated the ultimate impact. A more detailed analysis of how this hierarchy modification works can be obtained from the surge in Afghanistan. 8.2 Operation Moshtarak, 2010 Between February and December 2010, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) initiated an offensive, symbolically named Operation Moshtarak (“Together” in the Dari language), in the town of Marjah, located in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. Moshtarak was considered the largest operation in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The United States led the assault with 3,000 Marines, 4,400 Afghan troops (Afghan National Security Forces, ANSF, consisting of both the army and the police), nearly 1,000 British, and hundreds of US Army soldiers and supporting troops from other allies (Van Ess 2010, 8–9). Moshtarak was conducted in response to increasing insurgent operations in Marjah, produced by about 400 to 1,000 organized insurgents among 75,000 people (Cordesman, Mausner, and Lemieux 2010, 196; Van Ess 2010, 6). Insecurity increased in 2007 and 2008 with the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and suicide-bomb attacks against Afghan police, army forces, and civilians. Significantly, the town became a major site for opium production with trade controlled by the Taliban (Cordesman et al. 2010, 194). Since 2008, the Taliban had consolidated its control over the town. Previous ISAF operations to reseize control, sometimes with antidrug operations, failed because of the lack of sufficient resources to clear and then hold the town (Van Ess 2010, 4–6). Against this backdrop, the goal this time was to launch a large-scale operation to seize control

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over the town. Concurrently, Britain led an operation in the district of Nad-e-Ali with similar goals. This analysis focuses mainly on the more complicated Battle of Marjah, especially as it signified a shifting approach for the Americans and less so for the British (see Farrell 2010). The Legitimacies Both legitimacies were at a moderate level. They should be seen in the broader context of the surge in Afghanistan. Since nearly nine years had passed from the invasion until the surge, it is less relevant to focus on the legitimation of the initiation of war and more so to focus on the legitimation of protracted deployment and the shift toward the surge. Starting with the legitimacy of using force, formally, the NATO-led ISAF acted under the mandate of UN Security Council Resolution 1386 from 2001, which has been renewed and reaffirmed in subsequent resolutions. In this resolution, the UN authorized an international security force deployment to Afghanistan, welcomed by the Afghan government, “to assist the Afghan Interim Authority in the maintenance of security in Kabul and its surrounding areas, so that the Afghan Interim Authority as well as the personnel of the United Nations can operate in a secure environment.” 9 Legitimacy, moreover, was awarded not only by the UN but also by NATO, so that the main actors, the United States and the United Kingdom, were legitimized to act on behalf of a broader community. But legitimation was more complicated. On taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama got sucked into the troubles in Afghanistan. In light of warnings of “mission failure” with the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and mounting ISAF casualties, the president conducted a three-month review following which he favored the escalate-then-exit strategy by sending 30,000 more troops. Other options, such as immediate withdrawal or focusing on training the Afghans, were rejected. Obama responded to the request of Major General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of the ISAF, to surge against the Taliban by providing enough resources to accomplish the mission. According to the US counterinsurgency doctrine, it was necessary to secure adequate numbers of forces needed for executing the clear-hold-build operation, thus preventing the Taliban from restoring its strongholds in areas evacuated by ISAF (Johnson 2011, 390). Therefore, the decision announced at the end of 2009 was to send the troops as quickly as possible, hit the Taliban, and then begin the withdrawal in July 2011. Here lies the difference between the theaters: in Iraq, the escalation was

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not tied to a timetable for exit and, as such, engendered opposition. This strategy in Afghanistan was backed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s pledge to take charge of securing population centers. A political debate and tensions between the military and civilians accompanied the review, with politicians and diplomats warning against the “Vietnamization” of US involvement in Afghanistan. With many Democrats criticizing the war, the administration secured the Republicans’ support (Baker 2009, 181–193). Consensus, even in part, within the elite about deployment is an important factor in legitimizing the use of force. It was especially effective in this case since an antiwar Democrat was elected president. Democrats traditionally distinguished between their support of the mission in Afghanistan, viewing it as the central front of the War on Terrorism, and opposition to the Iraq War, especially viewing it as diverting forces from Afghanistan. Thus, when Obama took power, public opinion became a bit more supportive of this war, after a period of reduced support prompted by mounting casualties. Bipartisan support was galvanized (Jacobson 2010). Linking the surge in Afghanistan with a tight schedule for withdrawal from this theater and with former President Bush’s commitment to withdrawing the forces from Iraq was instrumental in gaining support for this unpopular war. Indeed, CNN showed that 59 percent backed Obama’s plan, even as 54 percent opposed the war in general, but the majority seemed comfortable with the agenda of sending more troops to lay the conditions for withdrawal (Good 2011). Trust in the ability to accomplish the mission increases legitimacy. Broader interests were invoked to strengthen the legitimacy. When Obama presented his plan in December 2009, he linked the strategy of defeating the Taliban with combating al-Qaeda, which was harbored in Pakistan.10 At the same time, the president also portrayed the new deployment as a kind of humanitarian intervention. He said: The people of Afghanistan have endured violence for decades. They have been confronted with occupation—by the Soviet Union, and then by foreign al Qaeda fighters who used Afghan land for their own purposes. So tonight, I want the Afghan people to understand—America seeks an end to this era of war and suffering.11

Furthermore, the commitment was not only to defeat the Taliban but also to rebuild the Afghan state. As General McChrystal put it (2013, 321, 368), the operation was part of a general endeavor to install new local administrations in the province. This was especially complicated in Marjah, where more than sixty

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tribes were represented. He believed that the main source of the Taliban’s power was the weakness of governance. Therefore, the goal was to separate insurgents from the people by reducing their capabilities and physically evicting many of them to protect key population centers and then expand the authority of the Afghan government. This could be accomplished by rapidly instituting as many Afghan government services as possible in order to build legitimacy among the local populace. To this end, it was critical to gain the loyalty of local civilians so they would see the benefit of supporting the expulsion of the Taliban, thus restoring the legitimacy of the Afghan government (McChrystal 2013, 363, 367; Johnson 2011, 386–387). In this spirit, Moshtarak was the first major offensive by ISAF that had an “Afghan trigger” (Farrell 2010, 3), a population-centric counterinsurgency operation (Johnson 2011, 386–387). Unlike former operations, in this operation, military means were used in coordination with supporting the population needs, as derived from NATO’s revised doctrine of “comprehensive approach.” It integrated the political, civilian, and military components on the understanding that an effective counterinsurgency campaign is not exclusively military (Johnson 2011, 383–384; Van Ess 2010, 2–3). Part of this shift can be related to the development of the COIN doctrine in 2006 that had inspired the surge in Iraq, rooting out the conventional, purely military mind-set that cultivated enmity among the Iraqis and Afghans (McChrystal 2013, 243). Now this concept was extended from Iraq, where it had been extolled as a success, to Afghanistan in general and Operation Moshtarak in particular. Nevertheless, in large part, it stemmed from the intention to transfer control and exit in a short time. The legitimacy of the surge in Afghanistan was thus largely associated with the needs and consent of the Afghan government. Consensus therefore was built, with different sectors of American politics empathizing with a strategy aimed at winning popular support by also showing the military’s soft side in a humanitarian-like mission (see Svet 2012). It is worth emphasizing that the general level of legitimacy of using force that may harm noncombatants was not so low. Evidently, as mapped by Keeble (2011), the United States led other aggressive endeavors but mainly in secrecy, such as targeted assassinations, CIA night raids, and drone warfare in Pakistan (see section 6.6). The difference lies in the visibility of the surge operation in Afghanistan to both local and international eyes and the need to adjust the methods to the escalate-then-exit strategy. In general, legitimacy rests on political considerations rather than moral imperatives.

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Britain, the main US partner in Afghanistan, was committed to 9,500 soldiers (the United States was committed to about 90,000—about 100,000 altogether out of a total of around 131,000; Livingston, Messera, and O’Hanlon 2010, 5). In Britain, the picture was somewhat similar to that in the United States. From the outset, with the start of the British deployment in Afghanistan, the public held a less negative perception of the mission in Afghanistan than in Iraq in terms of the success of the mission and support of its goals (Gribble et al. 2015, 137). Since 2006, Britain had deployed more forces in the province of Helmand, but the lack of sufficient resources caused the failure of this deployment and the need for more US troops to achieve further gains (King 2010). It is no wonder that by 2012, the majority opposed the war and public support had decreased progressively since the invasion, with decreasing belief in its success (Scotto et al. 2011). As argued in the case of Basra, with opposition not being translated into collective action, policymakers’ confidence in their legitimate freedom of action was reinforced. Since 2006, when casualties mounted in Afghanistan, media coverage of the war became negative and highlighted the costs and mission setbacks, and therefore the British political elites could not maintain majority support for the war. It was a clear demonstration of how declining legitimacy of sacrificing (see more below) depresses the legitimacy of using force. Still, as the leaders of the main parties remained united in supporting the war (Scotto et al. 2011, 7), they retained the capacity to rally modest public support for the continuation of the UK deployment to Afghanistan (Kriner and Wilson 2016). Consequently, “rather than managing to change public opinion, the political elite simply stopped listening to it,” argued Bennett (2014a, 511). Still, Parliament increased pressure to monitor the deployment and terminate it, and consequently, in order to overcome shortfalls in human resources, the government increased the use of contractors (Cusumano 2016, 106–112). Furthermore, whereas in the United States the counterinsurgency doctrine in Afghanistan indicated a shift, the British approach had always been populationcentric—as the case of Basra showed—and reflected the dominant political culture in British society. In Afghanistan, this was the policy the British forces had practiced since 2007 (Farrell 2010, 4), and it was now reenhanced, as the commanding officer of the Nad-e-Ali Battlegroup said: “Our business was to work with the people. If we had to fight our way to work, we did it. But our business was not to fight” (cited in ibid.). In both cases, moreover, the glorification of the troops played a militarizing role. Campaigns like Moshtarak were presented as wars despite the overwhelming

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advantage of the Western armies over the guerrilla troops. Operations were largely exposed in the mainstream media, and public relations events helped claim victory (Keeble 2011). While such PR events are necessary to signal power to the locals, such as the celebrated visit of President Karzai to Marjah in March 2010, they were also necessary for forging consensus around military actions and mitigating the effects of skeptical public opinion (Farrell 2010). Both variables of threat and success-cum-trust (which also affect the legitimacy of sacrificing) were at work. To recall, both armies were volunteer forces, drawing largely on lower-class groups with obviously less inclination than in a conscript army to prompt antiwar protests among the ranks and with limited public interest in the troops; thus, the legitimacy emerged from strangled deliberation. Planning reflected the legitimacy, which was largely drawn from the locals. In the first stage, the plan was to take control of the key positions in Marjah, and in the second stage to conduct clear-hold-build operations for extending the authority of the Afghan government to the previously ungoverned areas, while ISAF would remain in the theater to support the new government institutions (Van Ess 2010, 2). In the spirit of a population-centric approach, the plans were developed in full consultation with the local governor (Farrell 2010, 3). For the first time, moreover, President Karzai’s authorization of the operation was sought, and this represented “a paradigm shift” (McChrystal 2013, 365). Moreover, unlike other operations, such as those in Helmand River in 2009, where there was only one Afghan soldier for every ten US troops, reportedly there was now one Afghan for every two Americans. “This is a ratio that the Afghan people want to see, and the American people need to see,” said a State Department representative (Chandrasekaran 2010). This ratio reflected the growing role of ANSF in NATO’s grand plan to leave Afghanistan by taking control over local security, while the point of departure was that the ISAF-ANSF partnership hitherto had been “episodic,” as McChrystal defined it (2013, 318). To this end, the size of ANSF grew by about 75 percent, from about 148,000 in October 2008 to about 261,000 in October 2010 (Livingston and O’Hanlon 2017, 6). Yet collaboration with the local forces was not a naive endeavor. As shown later, it helped shift risk from NATO soldiers to Afghans. Inevitably, then, the nature of legitimacy entailed restrictions. McChrystal (2013, 365) acknowledged that asking Karzai to assume the role of Commander in Chief by asking him to authorize Moshtarak and, by implication, making the counterinsurgency his own war rather than just a war conducted on his soil, was meant to compromise some of the independence of ISAF. More significant,

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one of the conditions the Marjah leadership presented to ISAF for supporting the operation was the commitment that “the operation must be conducted in a manner that avoids killing civilians or destroying our homes” (363). ISAF took on this commitment. A few months before the operation, McChrystal (2009, 6–7) explained the new approach, applicable to the broader counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan: We must redefine the fight. The objective is the will of the Afghan people. We must protect the Afghan people from all threats: from the enemy and from our own actions. . . . When we fight, if we become focused on destroying the enemy but end up killing Afghan civilians, destroying Afghan property or acting in a way that is perceived as arrogant, we convince the Afghan people that we do not care about them.

McChrystal reshaped the military mind-set by setting new criteria for success: “It’s not the number of people you kill; it’s the number of people you convince. It’s the number of people that don’t get killed. It’s the number of houses that are not destroyed” (Georgy 2010). Incredibly, McChrystal in practice even called for limiting the killing of insurgents, not only civilians. He coined the term “COIN mathematics,” according to which each insurgent killed “has a brother, father, son and friends, who do not necessarily think that they were killed because they were doing something wrong” (McChrystal 2009, 2), so killing insurgents only gives birth to more insurgents. Emulation of some British principles of counterinsurgency was at work. Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, went even further by saying when the operation started that it was “critical” to have no civilian casualties, as this operation was focused on the people, not on the Taliban.12 The traditional approach viewing collateral killing as inevitable was ruled out. Crawford (2013, 306) perceived this shift as the moment from which the US military acted out of moral agency, taking moral responsibility. Here again, modification of the risk hierarchy entails a cultural shift in the way the other side, the Afghans in this case, was viewed by Western troops. Practically, in July 2009, McChrystal changed the tactical directive from which also derived the rules of engagement. As clearly indicated in the new directives, the ISAF troops took risks to limit the probability of harming noncombatants. For example, McChrystal restricted airstrikes, the cause of most Afghan civilian deaths, in support of ground troops unless the troops were in danger; limited night operations; restricted attacks on homes controlled by insurgents; and ruled that soldiers could not shoot an unarmed man setting an IED in place (Scarborough

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2010). Later, when insurgents fired behind the thick walls of compounds, the rules prescribed that commanders would not employ indirect fire unless they verified that no civilians were endangered (West 2011, 205–206). In sum, the legitimacy of using force was high enough to initiate this and other counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and secure the minimal numbers of troops needed. However, it was not high enough to unduly harm Afghan civilians. It is safe to assume that the main factor of legitimation was the ability of the president to shape consensus around the escalate-then-exit strategy, on which the legitimacy of sacrificing was also built. Indeed, the surge accompanied by efforts to rebuild the legitimacy of the Afghan government required restraint. More restraint explicitly necessitated a greater risking of soldiers, as the new directives indicated, and hence, a higher legitimacy of sacrificing. This legitimacy in the United States was initially moderate to low, as explained in previous chapters; however, several specific factors helped raise it. First, it is safe to assume that the revised doctrine of COIN helped increase this legitimacy by creating faith in success. As already noted, success matters for tolerating sacrifice, especially when needed to remove a threat to vital US interests, as Obama presented the threat in Afghanistan. Public relations around operations is instrumental as well to create an impression of success. Thus, second, the administration sophisticatedly harmonized the demand for sacrifice with the aversion to sacrifice by fashioning the escalate-then-exit strategy. Obama, when presenting his strategy to the public,13 acknowledged the economic burden of the war along with the human costs. But by linking the new burden with the promise to succeed and then withdraw, he could limit the sacrifice as much as making it meaningful. Furthermore, the president created a new equation in which the larger the sacrifice, the higher the likelihood of enhancing Afghan governance and then, by implication, the smoother the withdrawal that would eventually reduce sacrifice. In the case of Iraq, the surge was not associated with an exit timetable; however, in 2009, with public opinion opposing the war more strongly than in 2007, a more concrete promise was needed to energize legitimization. Relatedly and third, the way in which the intramilitary discourse framed the new threat and the means to remove it played an important role. McChrystal delegitimized active force protection that entailed aggressiveness toward noncombatants as endangering the mission. He even reset the values involved in the trade-off between force and casualties. When he was asked if his policies were to sacrifice the lives of NATO soldiers to save Afghan civilians, the general replied:

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In this spirit, correlating civilian protection with force protection, a British commander explained: “If you treat the locals with respect, then they will tell you where the IEDs are, they will tell you what the insurgents are doing: it is force protection” (cited in Catignani 2012, 532–533). US Brigadier General John Nicholson even suggested that an increasing connection between the Afghan government and the people may reduce the use of IEDs, the major threat to ISAF (US Senate 2010, 38). To further socialize the troops (and unlike the case of the surge in Iraq), McChrystal glorified restraint by coining courageous restraint as the virtue of good soldiering in counterinsurgencies, a type of courage that is apparently not very different from that seen in pure combat actions (Felter and Shapiro 2017, 47). Courageous restraint also challenged the commanders by requiring them to display maneuvering instead of firepower to deescalate clashes with insurgents (Farrell 2010, 9). Finally, as presented earlier in the case of the surge in Iraq, weakening anticasualty collective action was instrumental, and especially the demise of subversive bereavement discourse along with the resurrection of the citizen-soldier discourse. The latter was even elevated with President Obama’s expansion of former policies of recognizing military service as a basis for expediting naturalization. Now immigrants holding only temporary work visas could enlist in exchange for citizenship in as little as six months (Krebs 2009, 164). However, unlike the surge in Iraq, soldiers’ pay played a more minor role. In practical terms, the House and Senate passed a budget resolution in April 2009 that supported pay parity for civilian federal employees and members of the armed forces,15 thus affecting the troops. This could be explained by the impact of economic depression on the lack of alternative job opportunities that could make the service more attractive (Leys 2009). Against this background we can understand the criticism leveled at the administration for poor handling of the needs (including health care) of service personnel, their families, and veterans, despite offering enlistment bonuses in 2007 (Korb and Duggan 2007). In the United Kingdom, the legitimacy of sacrificing was moderate, as reflected in the case of Basra. Paired with the low legitimacy of using force in the Iraqi arena, Britain withdrew from Iraq in April 2009 and ended this costly war, but meanwhile, 154 soldiers fell in Afghanistan in 2008–2009 by hostile action.16

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Since 2006, mounting casualties in Operation Mountain Fury in eastern Afghanistan pushed the media to cover casualties extensively, and this turning point was associated with decreasing support for the war among the population, below the 50 percent mark (Kriner and Wilson 2016). However, as the public’s acceptance of military casualties was associated with both the perception of the mission as successful and the rightness of the deployment (Gribble et al. 2015, 134–135), tolerance for casualties was a bit higher than in the case of Iraq. Casualties were only one of the factors that shaped public attitudes toward the conflict (Scotto et al. 2011, 1). Indeed, polls in July 2009 showed that even when British military deaths in Afghanistan surpassed those in Iraq, there was no immediate shift in public opinion, and support for the war was greater than it had been three years earlier, although the majority wanted troops out of the country by the end of 2009 (Glover 2009). Therefore, it can be surmised that some of the factors that increased legitimacy in the United States were relevant to Britain as well, such as reinforcing the belief in success, tying sacrifice to withdrawal, and the intramilitary discourse, along with the impact of the local variables listed in the presentation of the case of Basra (see section 4.2), such as the impact of both the “covenant” on balancing out the declining legitimacy of sacrificing and of “support the troops.” Indicatively, significant bereavement-motivated protests did not emerge in the case of Afghanistan despite general sensitivity to the losses (Martinsen 2016, 119), again typical of a voluntary army. Even among the troops, while soldiers did not necessarily understand the mission and the risks it entailed (see, for example, Woodward and Jenkings 2012), this was not translated into protest among the ranks. A movement from cell D closer to cell B in Table 2.2 captures the situation in which both legitimacies are at a moderate level, allowing the risking of volunteer lower-class soldiers to protect enemy noncombatants, as the management of the campaign reflected. The Campaign As the planning of Moshtarak largely reflected the new COIN-informed approach, the number of troops was critical. One of the past lessons was that overwhelming superiority is needed to minimize costs, while troop shortages may be compensated for by increasing firepower (see Keiler 2005). In other words, whereas soldiers were required to take a greater risk, it was partly balanced out by increasing troop numbers. Thousands of troops thus assaulted 400 to 1,000 insurgents.

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Tactically, while airstrikes and heavy artillery fires followed by a sweep by armored vehicles could have protected the troops entering the town, this option was ruled out because of the devastation it might have created. Instead, the favored option was to rapidly maneuver forces by helicopters into key positions to project overwhelming power with less fire but also more risk to the ISAF soldiers (McChrystal 2013, 367). McChrystal simply asserted: In the short term, it would have been vastly simpler if there had been such fires. But the rubble that the soldiers would have walked through would have been the remnants of the bodies, homes, and livelihoods of the very people we sought to protect. Instead, young soldiers and Marines . . . moved carefully through packed-dirt streets and rutted fields sowed with crippling IEDs and scoured by Taliban snipers. (368–369)

Mobilizing the Afghan population also entailed the conduct of early information operations to communicate to the population what was coming and signal that this time ISAF was coming to stay. Early notification came at the expense of risking the troops (McChrystal 2013, 367). Furthermore, unlike the comparable siege of Fallujah, the option of civilian evacuation was not on the table. It was clear that evacuation of most civilians from the town would give commanders greater leeway to use standoff weapons.17 However, a relatively slow operation was favored, with the risks involved, while commanders tried to encourage residents to stay inside their homes when the operation began (Cordesman et al. 2010, 199). Eventually, about 27,000 residents were reported to have been displaced from Marjah and Nad-e-Ali following this operation, for multiple reasons (UN High Commissioner for Refugees 2011, 12). After weeks of preparations, phase I started on February 13, 2010. Days before, forces established control northeast of the town to prevent the insurgents’ exit and to protect lines of communication. Then the forces assaulted the town, entering by land and helicopters. They secured key transit routes, assaulted the insurgents’ strongholds, and seized intersections and buildings. Fighting at this stage was intense and involved close engagements with the insurgents by searching buildings, demining roads, and destroying bunkers. Troops assumed risk by facing mines, explosive devices, threats from booby traps,18 sniper fire from ambushes, and attacks by mortar and small-arms teams (Cordesman et al. 2010, 206; Dressler 2010, 4–5; Van Ess 2010, 13). Indeed, explosive devices and small arms fire were the cause of most deaths.19 To recall, the rules of engagement further increased the troops’ risk. By late February to the beginning of March, the clearing operation was mainly over: ISAF consolidated pockets of control over the town, secured most of the

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area, and major firefights were over, so a newly appointed district governor entered the area (Cordesman et al. 2010, 204; Van Ess 2010, 8–10). However, since the impression among the ISAF command was that the trust of the Marjah population had not been gained yet (while more progress was achieved in Nad-e-Ali; Farrell 2010), the second stage opened in early March 2010, mainly the “hold” phase. Furthermore, in mid-March there were signs that the Taliban had reorganized and reappeared in the town (Cordesman et al. 2010, 207). Showing ISAF’s presence in the town was the main activity to improve security and maintain order to increase the locals’ trust, in addition to targeted searches and raids to combat insurgents. The operating force in this phase comprised 2,000 US Marines, 1,000 Afghan National Army soldiers, and 900 Afghan police. Insurgents reacted with direct attacks on ISAF and Afghan forces patrolling the town, along with targeted intimidation of the local populace that lowered the trust of the locals in ISAF’s capacity to build a new administration there. Even with limited resources, the insurgents could thwart efforts to consolidate new, trustworthy local governance (Van Ess 2010, 10–14). It was a “bleeding ulcer” as McChrystal called the situation in May 2010 (Nissenbaum 2010), about two months after the second phase had begun. As reported to the Senate in May, a vast majority of the villagers felt that “more young Afghans had joined the Taliban over the last year” (US Senate 2010, 2–3). During this phase, ISAF and Afghan forces were exposed to threats by showing presence in the streets, especially since they increasingly patrolled on foot instead of in vehicles (Van Ess 2010, 17). Gradually, in the transition from the clearing operation to the holding one, Afghan forces played a more important and independent role; in the first phase, they were mainly acting under the Marines’ leadership. Searching Afghan homes and identifying potential insurgents were now their tasks, which were difficult for ISAF to perform as outsiders (Chivers 2010; Cordesman et al. 2010, 210–211), along with increasing participation in night raids (Open Society Foundations 2011, 3). Despite the efforts, collateral killing occurred. Most devastating was an incident indirectly connected to Marjah. On February 21, helicopters hunting for insurgents who had escaped Marjah fired on people believed to be the insurgents, in fact killing more than twenty civilians about 150 miles away from the town (Crawford 2013, 306–307). More directly, on February 14, a high-mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS rocket) launcher targeted a compound and killed twelve noncombatants. According to ISAF, the troops were pinned down under heavy fire from a house but were unaware civilians were inside (UN Assistance

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Mission in Afghanistan [UNAMA] 2011, 47). To secure the credibility of ISAF’s commitment to the Afghans to conduct operations with their protection foremost, McChrystal temporarily suspended use of this rocket (McChrystal 2013, 369), and permission to use rockets was elevated from local to regional command (West 2011, 205). In both incidents, the command apologized to the Afghans. Apology signified the change in military attitudes to the death of noncombatants, from the practice of denying any civilian death or injury or minimizing the negative impact on public opinion, to investigating promptly and taking responsibility. This was a shift from viewing collateral damage as a side issue and a media problem to treating it as a military problem (Crawford 2013, 309). McChrystal even admitted that apology was a source of frustration within the military, but “improving Afghan perceptions was critical to victory” (McChrystal 2013, 369). By December 2010, the top US Marine commander in southern Afghanistan called the operation “essentially over,” with Taliban fighters having been pushed into the desert areas surrounding the town (Martinez 2010). Nevertheless, this operation was not a big success. As the UN assessed a few months later, Marjah continued to experience frequent armed clashes (UNAMA 2011, 48). This gap between goals and results could be explained in terms of insufficient resources and especially the disappointing performance of the local governance, both necessary to prevent the Taliban from returning to the town (Johnson 2011, 387). Moshtarak represented the larger picture of the surge. Overall, McChrystal’s policies showed a reduction in civilian casualties caused by ISAF and ANSF, collectively termed Pro-Government Forces (PGF), across the whole of Afghanistan, with an increase in the number of ISAF casualties (see more below). Nevertheless, from 2009 to 2010, the number of civilians killed by the insurgents increased by 33 percent (UNAMA 2018, 5). “The initial strategic decision by Pro-Government Forces to choose as a main battle ground the densely populated rural environment of Marjah, without the necessary Afghan policing and public protection capacities to follow, contributed to increased civilian harm,” concluded UNAMA (2011, vi). Frustrations caused by restricted fire policies and a sense of ineffectiveness sprang up within the ranks. It was informed, inter alia, by the prohibitions to aggressively pursue Taliban fighters hidden among civilians and the unnecessary increasing risk to soldiers’ lives (Dressler 2010, 5; Jenks 2013, 115–116). A senior British noncommissioned officer lamented, “Our hands are tied the way we are asked to do courageous restraint. I agree with it to the extent that previously too many civilians were killed but we have got people shooting us and we are not

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allowed to shoot back” (cited in Felter and Shapiro 2017, 53). A US Army colonel even claimed that the troops “hated” the tactical directive (Jenks 2013, 116), while McChrystal pushed back accusations like “it was said you don’t care about the troops” (Hastings 2010). An on-site study of the policies even revealed that McChrystal’s directives “were instilling fear up and down the ranks,” with gaps in understanding within the chain of command (Kaplan 2013, 328). Reactions became even more extreme following the death of two Marines by remote-controlled bombs: “My men want revenge—that is only natural,” said a platoon commander, “But I keep telling them that the rules are the rules for a reason. If we simply go crazy and start shooting at everything, in the long run we will lose this war because we will lose the support of the population.”20 Restraint was not a natural approach and stood at odds with the conventional military culture. As Bing West (2011, 111) argued, “The new counterinsurgency dogma confused the soldiers because it confused roles.” Against this background, Major General David Petraeus, the architect of the counterinsurgency doctrine in Iraq, replaced McChrystal in July 2010 as ISAF commander and gradually modified the directives. On the one hand, he stated that “the decisive terrain is the human terrain. The people are the center of gravity. Only by providing them security and earning their trust and confidence can the Afghan government and ISAF prevail.”21 On the other hand, he advocated less restraint toward the insurgents and more decisiveness to hit them as part of the requirement to protect the Afghan civilians, arguing that “protecting the population inevitably requires killing, capturing, or turning the insurgents.” 22 He emphasized that troops would not be denied the right to defend themselves. Significantly, he forbade his subordinate commanders to further restrict the guidance without his approval, acknowledging that McChrystal’s imposed limitations were the basis to which commanders had added several layers, even to the point of distorting the original guidance (as a reporter accompanying the troops revealed; Hastings 2010). Protecting Afghan civilians and active force protection were placed on the same level (Jenks 2013, 117). Instead of “courageous restraint,” Petraeus emphasized “tactical patience” in engaging with insurgents (Felter and Shapiro 2017, 54). In practice, General Petraeus doubled airstrikes and increased raids targeting midlevel Taliban commanders, including night raids that risked and certainly harassed civilians. His policies were indeed criticized for retreating from the counterinsurgency doctrine and from the agenda to win the hearts and minds of the Afghans (Felter and Shapiro 2017, 53–54; Fitzgerald 2013, 196–198; Open

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Society Foundations 2011, 2). Fatalities reflected the revised policies, as will be demonstrated. Here we see once again how policies informed by aversion to sacrifice are dynamically changed during deployment. Although the new directives reinforced active force protection, the rising casualties could be considered as only one factor among the driving forces. On one hand, as Svet (2012, 1) wrote: Late August [2010] marked a significant milestone in U.S. foreign policy and military strategy . . . [:] The death toll of U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan has now reached two thousand. Half of that number came in the first nine years of the campaign. The second half came in just the past twenty-seven months, after the implementation of the counterinsurgency strategy (COIN) in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, in the confirmation hearing of General Petraeus in the Senate in June 2010, the committee chairman, Senator Carl Levin, remarked that casualties were high. Petraeus was also concerned about the voices coming from the troops and amplifying up the chain of command, even to their representatives in Congress (Felter and Shapiro 2017, 53). Petraeus echoed these concerns in his opening statement at the confirmation hearing: I want to assure the mothers and fathers of those fighting in Afghanistan that I see it as a moral imperative to bring all assets to bear to protect our men and women in uniform and the Afghan security forces with whom ISAF troopers are fighting shoulder-toshoulder. . . . I mention this because I am keenly aware of concerns by some of our troopers on the ground about the application of our rules of engagement and the tactical directive. They should know that I will look very hard at this issue. [emphasis added]

On the other hand, the issue of casualties was not a prominent issue in this hearing.23 Likewise, in both the Senate hearing of May 2010 in the Committee on Foreign Relations, in which the Battle of Marjah was discussed (US Senate 2010), and in the report submitted to Congress in September 2010 (US Department of Defense 2010), ISAF casualties were not the main issue; greater space was given to protection of Afghans. In addition, a major issue was the funding of this war and the Afghan government. Serious questions were also raised about the prospect for fast withdrawal according to Obama’s timetable, with July 2011 marking the start of withdrawal. Toward the 2010 US midterm elections, the economy and jobs, not the war, dominated voters’ concerns, much owing to the silence of antiwar Democrats (Bajoria 2010). A greater determinant of the policy change was pressure by the commanders to facilitate exit under good terms. At odds with McChrystal’s COIN mathematics,

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killing as many Taliban insurgents as possible was now viewed as the right way of turning the population in favor of the government (Fitzgerald 2013, 198), a precondition for an orderly withdrawal. Washington did not publicly press for operative changes, although during the last weeks of McChrystal’s command, senior officials in Washington cast doubts as to whether his ambitious plan was progressing (Ignatius 2010). To some extent, McChrystal’s June interview with Rolling Stone (Hastings 2010), which caused his resignation, reflected the disquiet surrounding his policies. Public opinion also reflected mistrust; in August 2010, the proportion of Americans supporting the mission decreased from 54 percent in February (when Moshtarak started) to 47 percent (Angus Reid Public Opinion 2010a), and in the United Kingdom, support over the same period dropped from 38 percent to 33 percent (Angus Reid Public Opinion 2010b). Among other NATO members, criticism increased as well. It was accompanied by the decision to exit Afghanistan, with the Dutch forces departing in 2010 and Canadian and German governments announcing their plans to withdraw in 2011, along with reluctance to contribute more troops to the counterinsurgency (Hoehn and Harting 2010, 53–66). To recall, the legitimacy of the participation of US and UK troops in missions like Afghanistan is largely legitimated as acting on behalf of a broader community such as NATO. Thus, policies were modified bottom up out of concerns about the military’s status, as failing to accomplish the mission, and about the troops’ morale and their potential capacity to stimulate a subversive discourse outside the ranks. Now the interaction between the legitimacies remained in cell B in Table 2.2 but closer to cell D since the legitimacy of sacrificing somewhat declined. Within the confines demarcated by this interaction between the legitimacies, the commanders could reinforce active force protection but at the same time harmonize it with the original logic of the mission by legitimizing the need to aggressively strike insurgents to protect Afghan civilians. This revision was presented as preconditioning the transfer of power from ISAF to the Afghans, the top-priority goal of the NATO members. Implicit in the new discourse was the concept, also implied in the Kosovo War, that Afghan civilians’ short-term sacrifice was a precondition for ending their suffering. While originally the leadership justified the demand for sacrificing soldiers by facilitating the escalate-then-exit strategy, when this strategy seemed far from achieving its goals, the policies changed. For good reason, Petraeus emphasized in his opening statement: “It is important to note the President’s reminder in recent days that July 2011 will mark the beginning of a process, not the date when the

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US heads for the exits and turns out the lights.” He promised a way out in the longer term, and indeed, it was only in December 2014 that NATO ended the mission in Afghanistan. Petraeus needed a new equation: no more own shortterm sacrifice in exchange for long-term relief; it was partly transformed to own short-term, limited sacrifice shared by local Afghans in exchange for long-term relief. Part of the risk was then transferred to the Afghans, for whom the entire effort (supposedly) paid off. The Fatality Ratio Fatalities in Afghanistan are even less documented than in the Iraq War (see Chesser 2012). To demonstrate a few deficits, (1) unlike Iraq, there are no data categorizing civilian fatalities according to perpetrators; (2) there is no credible body count such as IBC (general data are documented by UNAMA); and (3) the number of insurgents killed is unclear (Crawford 2015, 9–10). Therefore, I focused on the first phase of Moshtarak (February 13–24), for which more data were documented. In this stage, moreover, the dilemma ISAF faced between shifting to taking risk was more acute than in the second phase, as the option of a less lethal entrance was favored over other options, and evacuation of civilians was not really considered. According to the data published by UNAMA (2011, 47) in collaboration with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, sixty civilians were killed, mostly by attacks by the Afghan forces and ISAF and in attacks for which the responsible party could not be reliably determined (those killed by the helicopter attack are not included in this figure). I will consider all sixty as killed by ISAF, while ISAF documented fifty-two casualties (Crawford 2013, 310). About 120 insurgents were killed according to information provided by both NATO (de Montesquiou 2010) and the Afghan Defense Ministry.24 Surely some of them may be considered noncombatants. PGF lost sixteen ISAF soldiers25 and at least one Afghan soldier (ibid.). It follows that the ratio of PGF to Afghan combatants was about 1:7, which indicates PGF’s advantage but also exposure to risk. More important, the ratio between PGF and Afghan noncombatants was about 1:3, and the proportion of noncombatants among the total Afghani war dead was about 33 percent, below the average of 50 percent. Both ratios indicate that a low to moderate amount of risk was transferred from PGF, mainly ISAF, to local civilians. With such clear trends, the numbers’ ultimate accuracy is less critical. As Moshtarak mirrored the larger picture, Table 8.2 presents the years 2009 to 2011 in the entire Afghan theater: 2009 represents the gradual transition to

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surge, 2010 was mostly McChrystal’s year (cut short by his resignation), and 2011 marked the revision that Petraeus initiated. Figures for fatalities are retrieved from the following sources: 1. Information about ISAF fatalities (caused by hostile activity alone) is retrieved from icasualties.26 2. Information about Afghan noncombatants killed directly by PGF and the insurgents (Anti-Government Elements) came from the reports of UNAMA. These data show far more casualties than those reported by ISAF’s database (CIVCAS). For example, while UNAMA reported about 1,500 civilian casualties from 2009 to 2011, CIVCAS reported about 600.27 Here we see the familiar bias in categorizing civilians as insurgents and gaps in covering the entire country (Bohannon 2011), along with the fact that UNAMA included fatalities caused by all PGF troops, while CIVCAS limited its information to fatalities caused by ISAF alone. Therefore, I relied on UNAMA. (Unlike the previous cases, this is not a dispute between biased governmental agencies and NGOs, but between a biased agency and the UN, under which the whole deployment was formalized.) UNAMA’s figures are the most reliable we have, although they may be too low (Henken 2015, 76–77). 3. Information about fatalities among the anti-government forces, mainly but not only the Taliban, is taken from Crawford (2015, 9–10). There is no good assessment of numbers for the year 2009. Crawford argued that if 2010 was a very intense period of ISAF’s engagement in Afghanistan, she presumed that Taliban deaths were lower in 2009 than the 5,225 fatalities reported in 2010; she also estimated that the total number of Taliban killed from 2002 to 2009 may be as high as 10,000 to 15,000. I therefore assumed the number of 3,000 insurgents killed in 2009, as the number of night raids—one of the main causes of death among insurgents—significantly increased as early as from the beginning of 2009 (Open Society Foundations 2011, 2), and, by implication, increased the killing of insurgents above the average of previous years (about 2,000). However, a lower or higher number will not affect the overall trend. Project Body Count estimated much higher numbers (Henken 2015, 72–73), but they were calculated by a linear extrapolation, the validity of which I doubt. Nevertheless, even these numbers confirm the overall trend. 4. Information about ANSF came from the estimates of the Afghanistan Index of Brookings Institute (Livingston and O’Hanlon 2017, 12). ANSF took part in counterinsurgency, including the police forces (Afghan National Police), whose visible presence was an essential component of the effort to legitimize

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government penetration into previously uncontrolled areas (Ziems 2014, Chapter 8.4). The police and the military are clustered together because we do not know the circumstances leading to the death of every member of the police, whether insurgency or criminal, and because we do not have data categorizing Afghan fatalities of combatants and noncombatants according to perpetrators. Yet the numbers may be underestimated (Henken 2015, 70). All in all, inaccuracies guide us to focus on undisputed trends, as depicted in Table 8.2. From 2009 to 2010, the risk to PGF troops increased with the growing intense engagement with the insurgents—the transition to surge—as indicated by the increase in troop fatalities by more than 50 percent (from 1,384 to 2,112). Overall, the average number of insurgent attacks per day rose from 1,000 per month in 2008 to 1,100 in 2009 and to 1,500 in 2010 (Katzman 2010, 49; 2011, 46). Risk was especially on the rise since the COIN-informed fire policies restricted the troops’ freedom of action. However, the size superiority of ISAF offset this risk, and possibly even increased the relative risk imposed on the insurgents. Even if the number of insurgents killed in 2009 was lower or higher than 3,000, the risk to the PGF remained fairly stable in terms of its impact on the fatality ratio, which was around 1:2. Furthermore, the number of ISAF’s fatalities could have increased further had improvements in troop protection and advances in battlefield medicine not been in place (Crawford 2016, 6). More important, had it not shared the burden with ANSF, ISAF’s burden would probably have increased significantly: while the burden on ISAF increased by about 40 percent (from 456 to 632 fatalities), the burden on ANSF increased by about 60 percent (from 928 to 1,480); neither is shown in the table. Despite the greater exposure of troops to risk, the troops took rather than shifted risk by treating the civilians with more caution. This was evidenced by the significant decrease in the number of noncombatants killed (by about 25 percent, from 588 to 430), which was remarkable relative to the 50 percent increase in the number of combatants killed among the PGF. The ratio of PGF to civilians then declined by more than 50 percent. A similar trend of reduction in the number of civilians killed directly by ISAF and its local allies had already been reflected in the transition from 2008 to 2009 (about 28 percent; UNAMA 2010, ii). A clear indication of the policy to restrict airstrikes is shown by the approximately 55 percent decline in the number of civilians killed by air attacks (from 388 in 2009 to 171 in 2010; UNAMA 2018, 45). Although the number of airstrikes increased, the discrimination improved (UNAMA 2011, 24). As the decreasing ratio of Afghan civilians among the total number of fatalities by about 50 percent (from about

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Table 8.2: Fatality Ratios in Afghanistan, 2009–2011

PGF Combatants to Afghan Combatants

PGF Combatants to Afghan Noncombatants

Ratio of Noncombatants Among Total Afghan Fatalities Caused Directly by PGF

2009

1:2.2 (1,384:3,000)

1:0.4 (1,384:588)

0.16 (588/[588 + 3,000])

2010

1:2.5 (2,112:5,225)

1:0.2 (2,112:430)

0.08 (430/[430 + 5,225])

2011

1:2 (2,445:5,000)

1:0.22 (2,445:528)

0.10 (528/[528 + 5,000])

Cumulative relative change

−5%

−50%

−40%

Marjah

1:7

1:3

0.33

The Year/Ratio

N ote : Percentages are rounded. The actual number of fatalities is in parentheses. The cumulative, relative value measures cumulative changes from 2009 to 2011.

16 to 8 percent) indicates, the level of discrimination between combatants to noncombatants more than doubled. Note that an increased number of troops does not necessarily cause more combat and noncombat fatalities following more engagements (Crawford 2013, 61); it may reduce noncombat fatalities as, conversely, shortages of troops may be offset by increased firepower (Keiler 2005) and thus size advantage gives commanders more leeway to risk the troops. In 2011, Petraeus’s policies moderately reversed the trend by increasing the number of noncombatants killed directly by PGF by about 23 percent (from 430 to 528). Still, Petraeus adhered to the approach of risk taking to protect the locals, as indicated by the stable ratio between PGF combatants and Afghan civilians (a slight increase of 6 percent), with PGF’s fatalities also rising by about 15 percent (from 2,112 to 2,445). The new directives slightly reduced the level of discrimination as the ratio of civilians killed rose from about 8 to 10 percent. Risk was twice shifted from ISAF soldiers. Their fatalities decreased by more than 20 percent (from 632 to 495),28 while the number of fatalities among ANSF increased by about 30 percent (from 1,480 to 1,950). It was the ANSF soldiers who bore more risk as they assumed the role of “hold” after the “clear” phase. As indicated

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by a report issued in April 2010 by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (2010, 65), high casualties among the Afghan National Police can be attributed to insurgent attacks that focused predominantly on the police, because the police usually patrolled in smaller groups, with more predictable patrol patterns and without the capacity to respond to attacks with the rapid strength of a military force. At the same time, some risk was also transferred from ISAF, who were better protected by the new guidelines, to local Afghans. As the ISAF’s report of the number of fatalities it inflicted directly without ANSF (CIVCAS) indicated, the ratio between ISAF and Afghan civilians slightly increased by 8 percent. Comparing the 2010 numbers to those of 2011, when the new directives were in force, air attacks increased the death of civilians by about 50 percent (UNAMA 2018, 45). A typical tactic of shifting risk in support of ground forces was in evidence. At the same time, civilian deaths during night search operations dropped by 22 percent (UNAMA 2012, 2),29 indicating the efforts made to improve discrimination (see Open Society Foundations 2011, 3). Also important, forty-one civilians were killed by ANSF in the second half of 2011, an increase of almost 200 percent compared to the second half of 2010; most of these deaths occurred at checkpoints and roadblocks (UNAMA 2012, 2). ANSF was more committed than ISAF to reducing civilian casualties but had less technological capacity and training than ISAF to discriminate. As Time journalists reported from the Battle of Marjah, many Afghan soldiers did not take aim but rather pointed their rifles in the rough direction of the incoming small-arms fire and shot (Chivers 2010). In sum, under Petraeus, the conflicting trends of force protection versus tactical patience and cautiousness were rebalanced. As McChrystal’s policies were criticized for not providing enough security to the Afghan population while Petraeus focused on protecting the locals, a look into the number of civilians killed by the insurgents demonstrates the trend. While the number of civilians killed by insurgents increased by about 33 percent from 2009 to 2010 (from 1,533 to 2,041 fatalities), and hence triggered the criticism, the increase from 2010 to 2011 was only 10 percent (to 2,255; UNAMA 2018, 5). Assessment of what accounts for this trend is beyond the scope of this study. There are, however, three possible factors. First, PGF better protected the population, at least in part, by increasing aggressiveness toward the insurgents, thus diminishing their ability to foment unrest, as Western officials argued (Sieff 2012), even though part of the price was paid by civilians killed directly by PGF. Second, better protection was provided by increasing the presence of ANSF among the population, as the increase in losses of these forces indicates. And third, it is possible that the Taliban reduced

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civilian casualties, although the UN identified gaps between the Taliban’s messages and lack of improvements on the ground (UNAMA 2012, 2). Overall, as the cumulative figures in Table 8.2 show, the level of PGF’s risk relative to the insurgents remained quite stable but the risk to civilians decreased significantly, while the combatants, initially both ISAF and ANSF and later mainly ANSF, assumed more risk. Risk taking was manifested. Even if the number of insurgents killed in 2009 was lower or higher as Body Count estimated (Henken 2015, 72–73), the main trend is clear: PGF gradually assumed more risk. When the ratios shown in Table 8.1 are compared to those of Marjah, it follows that since the level of risk imposed on (mainly ISAF) soldiers in the first stage was higher than in the whole of Afghanistan in 2010, then, to increase PGF’s freedom of action, part of this risk was transferred to the local civilians as both ratios of combatants to Afghan noncombatants and the discrimination show. Consequently, PGF could claim a much higher price from the insurgents, as indicated by the ratio of PGF to Afghan combatants that was almost tripled (1:7 in Marjah, relative to about 1:2.5 in the whole of Afghanistan). In sum, increasing both legitimacies for a short-term effort to ensure successful exit from Afghanistan enabled re-risking of volunteer, lower-class soldiers to protect Afghan civilians. Excessive risk led to Petraeus’s revised directives. 8.3 Conclusion A sense of failure encouraged the United States and its allies to re-risk soldiers to better protect the local population in both Iraq and Afghanistan and thus facilitate exit as a general goal in Iraq and more concretely in Afghanistan. As the cases manifest, with dropping legitimacy of using force against local civilians, a special effort was required to increase the legitimacy of sacrificing to better protect Iraqi and Afghan civilians. Risk could not be transferred to local civilians at the level that characterized the first years of the presence of the United States and its allies. Greater sacrifice was tied to the promise of success backed by weakening antiwar opposition. In the case of Iraq, American soldiers assumed more risk in absolute terms during 2007 but shifted part of it to the local Iraqis. In Afghanistan, more risk could be assumed thanks to the higher legitimacy of sacrificing under a Democratic president and by clearly tying success to the long-term relief that the sacrifice might bring by allowing withdrawal of the troops back to their homes. Unlike the surge in Iraq, greater risk was actually imposed on the troops in Afghanistan for a short-term period to protect the locals. When the promise of success was hard to fulfill, the revision of the counterinsurgency guidelines by Petraeus shifted a small part of the

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risk back to the local civilians and a larger part to the local military allies. Unlike the cases of Kosovo and Fallujah, a military failure could not be repaired by risking noncombatants except to a very limited degree; success was tied to military restraint on which the transfer of power to the Afghan government was laid. Unlike the case of Basra in which Britain increased the risk to its troops by going on the offensive, the case of the surge represented not only a tactical response to escalation but a fundamental revision of military doctrine. Inevitably this also entailed a cultural reconstruction of the concept of risk hierarchy. Afghan and Iraqi enemy noncombatants became “noncombatants” rather than “enemies.” It is worth emphasizing that legitimacy of using force declined mainly because the public in both the United States and the United Kingdom demanded withdrawal. Bottom-up pressures to better protect Iraqi and Afghan civilians did not emerge. In both cases, such pressures to take more risks emerged top down from the military command, as a lesson learned from failures in both theaters. It was a reversal of the normative decision-making process (see Schiff 2011). It was the military that partly resocialized the ranks to take more risks and effectively mobilize the politicians to review the policies. It was the military that revised the doctrine and marketed it to the politicians and the public to increase trust in the capacity of the troops to accomplish the mission. A very delicate balance was produced between the conflicting imperatives of the Western states involved. As Crawford rightly noted (2013, 59), Petraeus, in his revision of the Afghan policies, highlighted the tension between the normative beliefs of noncombatant immunity, force protection, and military effectiveness, which represented the imperative of protecting one’s own civilians. In this case, noncombatant immunity was not an external imperative, a kind of external constraint on mission success. It was an intrinsic precondition for success. Therefore, the aversion to sacrifice could be tolerated only in part. Otherwise, shifting a high amount of risk to the Afghans (and earlier to the Iraqis) could have thwarted the mission. Eventually, indeed, the Western allies could not endure a mission imbued with such unresolved tensions. Apparently they compromised their initial security interests by pulling out the forces from both countries even without completing the stabilization effort, but not before they once again tempered the risk they had imposed on their troops. In the end, the legitimacy of sacrificing is the main constraint on military policies, as the concluding chapter elaborates.

9

Conclusion

This final chapter first offers a few concluding remarks about the interaction between the legitimacies. It then gives a detailed analysis of the inferences yielded by the combination of the three categories of fatality ratios and summarizes the methodological aspects of the study. 9.1 Summation and Insights “Thinking in terms of collateral damage,” argued Zygmunt Bauman (2011, 124– 126), “tacitly assumes an already existing inequality of rights and chances, while accepting a priori the unequal distribution of the costs of undertaking (or for that matter desisting from) action.” Bauman referred to a broad range of inequalities, including those pertinent to military policies as discussed in this book. This book began with an acknowledgment of the existence of such inequalities, of hierarchies of risk and death in which the targets of collateral killing occupy “the bottom end of the inequality ladder” in Bauman’s terms (Bauman 2011, 128). With this insight in mind, we asked the less-studied question: How and why are hierarchies modified in general, sometimes even dynamically during the same operation? Existing studies provide a more static picture. Shaw (2005) explained the origins of the trade-off between force and casualties by relating them to the aversion to sacrifice. Other scholars, extensively cited in this book, analyzed various operational, organizational, and legal aspects of this trade-off. Nonetheless, they have all provided a more static picture by refraining from theorizing the determinants of this trade-off that may also extend to broader variations on the death hierarchies. 225

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Addressing this lacuna by using the militaries of three democracies, all of which have been engaged in warfare, this book has proposed that the interaction between legitimacies—of using force and sacrificing—constrains fire policies. Thus, different groups are dynamically placed at different levels of risk and, consequently, death. Four principal variations of placement on the death hierarchy were analyzed. A central insight arising from this book is that the legitimacy of using force is the most flexible tool. In a nutshell, insofar as (1) policymakers are geared toward securing their freedom of action to use force, (2) the aversion to risk is culturally embedded in society with limited degrees of freedom to increase tolerance, and (3) large segments of society are critical about using force in general and harming noncombatants, in particular, the area of most flexibility lies in the realm of the legitimacy of using force. A drop in the legitimacy of sacrificing requires greater efforts to increase the legitimacy of using aggressive fire to decrease the risk imposed on one’s own soldiers (unless it is too low, thus limiting policymakers’ ability to initiate the use of force, and even stimulating critical thinking about lethal options). Increasing this legitimacy helps overcome the aversion to using force, to sacrifice for it, and to harm enemy civilians. Therefore, policymakers have perfected the means by which they can legitimize violence, and they try harder and more cleverly the higher the threshold for doing so becomes. In this spirit, they dynamically deploy legal, policy-based, cultural, and discursive mechanisms (in addition to more structural, long-term ones, such as restructuring the military). In short, legalizing the use of force was mainly enacted by the United States and United Kingdom, which both found ways to secure approval from the United Nations, or to legitimately (in their own eyes) bypass such approval. Also, they derived their legitimacy largely from the Iraqi and Afghan governments’ authorization. Painting the Kosovo War as humanitarian provided a moral justification while also compensating for lack of UN approval and indirectly helping to bypass the demand to respect noncombatant immunity. Leveraging the external threat has been used in all cases, with efforts to raise confidence in the ability to remove that threat by force. Raising the threat to the level of dehumanizing the enemy was largely used in the cases of Kosovo and Gaza. However, ignoring the price paid by enemy civilians represented another form of dehumanization, which all three countries used. Casualty sensitivity was leveraged to legitimize the use of excessive force in the cases of Pakistan, Kosovo, and more blatantly in the IDF code of ethics. All of the countries under study also used mechanisms to reduce the state’s responsibility for killing, which also helped overcome the imperative of noncombatant

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immunity. Thus, dismissal of the roots of enmity between the Western side and its rivals was mainly promoted by the United States after 9/11, and by Israel in the second Intifada. Converting Gaza from a ghetto to a frontier served Israel’s need for legitimacy, while the United States mainly invoked the theme of “accidents” in its campaigns. However, “winning hearts and minds” signified attempts to retake responsibility. All actors reduced the reported number of civilian casualties (by not counting them or by categorizing noncombatants as combatants); Israel, however, enacted a more professional and systematic body count system than the United States and United Kingdom. Invoking the reputation of technology mainly typified US efforts to legitimize using force. Equally important, deliberation was restricted by using the military to market policies, especially in the surge in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by sustaining elite consensus that in both Britain and the United States set a political-cultural barrier to antiwar collective action. In a more structural manner, the states restructured the social composition of the ranks to limit deliberation. Initially, the United States and United Kingdom phased out the draft, and then increased reliance on standoff warfare, while Israel modified the social composition and weaponry within the limits of conscription by reducing the exposure of powerful groups to the risks of war and also relying on technology. Thus, all succeeded in weakening the infrastructure for the rise of significant antiwar movements. Restructuring also promoted more conservative and loyal attitudes among the troops in all three cases, which also weakened the likelihood of antiwar collective action inspired by dissidence in the ranks. Common to all cases therefore are the efforts to limit deliberation both structurally and discursively by inflating threats, dehumanizing enemies, reducing responsibility, and more. Legitimacy of using force arose mostly due to the crippling of deliberation. So when Bauman concludes that “collateral casualty” was elicited from tacit assumption about hierarchies and their a priori acceptance, he testifies to the deep-seated legitimacy of using force that allowed the risking of enemy civilians. This book demonstrated how fighting democracies overcame challenges to this legitimacy. As demonstrated in the empirical chapters, the distinction between the ingrained and the dynamic components of the legitimacy of using force proved effective. Within the limits of the ingrained components, which largely define the strategic culture, policymakers used multiple tools (dynamic variables) to increase this legitimacy, often successfully. Still, success was not always guaranteed,

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especially when the impact of the ingrained components prevailed, and the cases thus also showed failures, such as those leading to withdrawals or difficulties overcoming aversion to the use of force (for example, the period leading to Operation Allied Force in Kosovo). More insights emerged. First, in each of the underlying three phases of legitimation, different dynamic variables are critical. For example, while legal variables are crucial in the initiation of the use of force, elite consensus may help legitimize the extension of deployment following initiation, as the case of the UK deployment in Afghanistan attested, and leveraging casualty sensitivity is instrumental in legitimizing the level of force used—risk transfer, as shown in the case of Kosovo. Second, the variables may move or have an impact in opposite directions. For example, the CIA-led drone warfare in Pakistan was successfully legitimized as a tool for removing an external threat, if judged by the supportive public opinion. At the same time, political and public concerns emerged about the legality of this warfare and the high number of Pakistani noncombatants killed. To balance these countervailing trends, the administration continued the warfare but modified its conduct, thereby maneuvering between conflicting legitimacy concerns. Third, the variables are interrelated. It is most noteworthy that it was the social makeup of the ranks that determined the level of deliberation by affecting the cycles of citizens with an interest in the military deployment and the power they possess; hence, this also determined the threshold for legitimizing the use of force in the face of internal opposition by using other tools, such as inflating threats. For example, it can be surmised that because of the alteration of this makeup in Israel, which increased the presence of lower-class groups, Israeli leaders could overcome resistance to military deployments. Fourth, the variables do not function simultaneously or at the same level of intensity, and they do not have equal weight. As the cases demonstrate, different variables were relevant in different campaigns. For example, since 2010, the importance of legalization increased in Israel in its warfare against the Hamascontrolled Gaza Strip following international criticism of its fire policies that harmed enemy civilians. Similarly, the congressional testimony of General Petraeus on the progress of the surge in Iraq in September 2007—a mechanism for merchandising policies—significantly helped legitimize this disputed deployment by muting criticism and was more instrumental than the mechanisms that had previously legitimized the surge.

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Fifth, the ingrained component may be affected by countervailing factors. For example, it is the same liberal tradition that may legitimize aggressiveness against nonliberal adversaries in the United States and also impose noncombatant immunity as a liberal imperative. Thus, the more ambivalence that governs the ingrained component, the more the dynamic component can play a decisive role in tipping the scales toward specific policies. These insights reinforce the argument that the legitimacy is a multilayered concept manifested in various forms of public support, but also in collective action and the troops’ conduct. Similar to the legitimacy of using force, the legitimacy of sacrificing is also a multilayered concept, reflected not only in public opinion but also in the bereavement discourse, collective action, and the troops’ motivation. Collective action is the most critical arena for determining the fate of deployments, while negative public opinion without intensive collective action (for example, Britain in the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan) may not significantly affect the leaders’ freedom of action. Unlike the legitimacy of using force, this legitimacy is more culturally embedded, and raising it necessitates countering deep-seated cultural attitudes, such as the ascendancy of the individualism and ethos informed by the market society. Raising this legitimacy is partly achievable, but mainly by restructuring the armed forces and increasing reliance on more lower-class soldiers, contractors, and technology. Long-term efforts may be at odds with short-term needs. However, the allocation of symbolic rewards (such as the British Covenant) or improving soldiers’ payments can be used dynamically to legitimize sacrificing in the short term, mainly among the ranks. More important, the dynamic mechanisms of the legitimacy of sacrificing partly overlap with those legitimizing the use of force: 1. Leveraging the external threat is an important tool for increasing both legitimacies. Perception of threat, moreover, can hardly be decoupled from the perception about the rightness of using force, which is an important variable for mitigating casualty sensitivity within the existing confines of high or low legitimacy of sacrificing (as Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler 2009, famously asserted). Perception of threat contextualizes this rightness and even helps bypass its legal aspects, as the launch of both the Kosovo and Iraq wars demonstrated. Therefore, there is a spiraling effect between the two legitimacies, as the legitimacy of using force advances the legitimacy of sacrificing when the threat is perceived as high.

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2. Sacrificing for goals that are publicly perceived as achievable—another determinant of the legitimacy of sacrificing—is correlated with trust in the ability to militarily remove a significant threat and matters to the extent that this threat is significant. 3. Achieving consensus among the elite serves both legitimacies. 4. Burden sharing legitimizes sacrificing and is also often derived from the requirement to legitimize the use of force by relying on multi-national forces. Notwithstanding the spiraling effect between the legitimacies, this is not without limits. Note Huntington’s assertion (1993, 42) that it “is morally unjustifiable and politically indefensible that members of the Armed Forces should be killed to prevent Somalis from killing one another,” and in Israeli rabbis’ equation of “mercy to a cruel enemy” with being “cruel to pure and honest soldiers” (Levy 2016a, 315). Thus, the dehumanization of the enemy that increases both legitimacies may also reduce the legitimacy of sacrificing when it is required for protecting dehumanized noncombatants. A major determinant in shaping the hierarchies is the gap between legitimacies, with the legitimacy of using force often higher than the legitimacy of sacrificing. Insofar as policymakers fail to settle this gap by reducing the demand for security and with their hands tied for extensively sacrificing their own soldiers to accomplish the goals of ongoing or envisaged deployment, the main option is to shift the risk to enemy civilians by further increasing the legitimacy of using force. This gap lays the foundation for increasing aggressiveness. Here we see how democracies, boxed in by conflicting imperatives, maneuver to promote favorable policies when dealing with domestic constraints. In most cases, with limited maneuvering space to contain the perceived threat to security or to settle it with less lethal means, and also limited in ways of coping with the aversion to sacrifice, the most accessible solution is to soften the third imperative, that of immunizing noncombatants. Ostensibly, the surge in both Iraq and Afghanistan appeared to testify to the effectiveness of the effort to harmonize the aversion to sacrifice with the demand for security without compromising the imperative of noncombatant immunity. In reality it was not so. In Iraq, practices on the ground reduced the level of threat to coalition troops; in Afghanistan, a reawakening of the aversion to sacrifice partly shifted the policies, and more risk was transferred from the coalition troops to local Afghans—both civilians and the security forces. Historically, the legitimacy of sacrificing was the key to freedom of action. With its decline, states generated structural changes such as phasing out the draft, integrating more lower-class groups within the ranks, and increasing the

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reliance on technology, along with more selectivity in using force. But when this level of legitimacy further restrained the use of force to a degree that significantly undermined policymakers’ freedom of operation, the main option for maneuverability remained in modifying the legitimacy of using force. It follows that a high level of legitimacy of sacrificing creates a greater decoupling between the legitimacies, thereby increasing the government’s freedom of action. Conversely, a declining legitimacy of sacrificing encourages more interplay between the two sets of legitimacies, potentially leading to greater aggressiveness. Viewed from a comparative perspective, the interaction between legitimacies explains differences between the states. Israel is ahead with the inclination to transfer risk. It peaked in Cast Lead to the ratio between own soldiers and enemy noncombatants of 1:86, according to B’Tselem, whereas for the United States in Fallujah II, the ratio peaked to 1:56, according to the alternative sources. But while Israel in Gaza mainly cleared specific areas, the US troops in Fallujah cleared the entire city, so by comparison, Israel shifted an even higher level of risk. Why? Israel’s legitimacy of using force is more restrained by international monitoring, but it views the Gazan population as an enemy and has no agenda for gaining its trust. In contrast, American troops were inspired by the hybrid doctrine of overwhelming force combined with winning hearts and minds. In terms of the legitimacy of sacrificing, conscript militaries are more restricted than volunteer forces in their leeway for risking soldiers to protect enemy civilians (see also Levy 2014). It follows that the gap between the legitimacies was greater in the case of Israel than in the United States (and, of course, the United Kingdom) and, by implication, aggressiveness was greater. Here lies the explanatory power of this study. Military variables, such as changing operational priorities, the specifics of the terrain, and the nature of the adversary, account for variations in military policies, producing variations in the structure of the death hierarchy. However, the interaction between the legitimacies mediates the relationship between the military variables and military policies by serving as normative and institutional constraints on policymaking. Indeed, in each of the cases studied, policies were changed following changes in military variables, often in the adversary’s capabilities. For example, NATO escalated the bombing in Kosovo following the failure to defeat Yugoslavia when the attacks were limited to purely military targets, while the Serbian troops successfully reduced their own exposure to injuries owing to their mode of deployment. Similarly, failure to defeat Basrawi militias led the British troops to withdraw from Basra. Equally, Israel changed its mode of warfare as Hamas increased its embeddedness within the civilian population in Gaza.

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However, in each case, the attacking side had alternative options. A higher legitimacy of sacrificing and lower or higher legitimacy of using force could tip the scales toward a different path from that ultimately taken. Thus, NATO could have sent ground troops into Kosovo or ended the mission without accomplishing its goals. Britain could have added troops to gain advantage over the militias or increased the use of standoff warfare. Israel could have used more cautious, albeit riskier, methods as it had done in Jenin and then ended the operations with more IDF casualties but fewer among Gazan civilians (thus gaining a political advantage). It could also have increased the use of standoff weapons and then reduced the risk to its troops at the expense of the Gazan population. In the end, the interaction between the legitimacies constrained decision making to the option ultimately chosen. Notwithstanding these conclusions, as explained in Chapter 2, this is not an argument for a strictly causal explanation by isolating the variables involved in determining military policies. My aim is to offer an alternative explanation to the modifications in such policies by proposing a typological theory. Such a theory is open to the possibility of equifinality; the same outcome can result from different pathways (George and Bennett 2005, 235). The hypotheses offered here can set the stage for future empirical inquiry. (For the methodological logic, see Van Evera 1994.) As the cases show, each modification changed the level of risk imposed on one’s own soldiers in relation to one’s own civilians, enemy combatants, and enemy civilians. Positions depicted on the hierarchy (as presented in Table 2.2) are mutually exclusive to the extent that a military policy within the same time and space cannot expose all groups to the same level of risk. Variations occur over time or space (Israel in Gaza or NATO in Kosovo), between forces (the United States and the United Kingdom in Iraq), and between different operational situations (US forces employing both passive force protection in routine missions and collaterally targeting noncombatants in large operations, both in Iraq). Furthermore, variations in the risk level of one group affect that of the others. With the restructuring of the militaries (mainly since the 1970s), risk was shifted from more privileged classes to lower social classes due to the drop in the motivation of the former to sacrifice. In other situations, barriers to the legitimacy for risking one’s own soldiers shifted the risk to one’s own or enemy civilians. By nature, enemy combatants are constantly put at the highest level of risk and are therefore analytically excluded from the death hierarchy. This assertion holds true even if consequentially more enemy civilians are killed.

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As expected, enemy noncombatants are always at greater risk than one’s own soldiers and civilians, but the intensity of that risk varies to the extent that other groups are also endangered or protected. We can distinguish between several situations, on a scale from the lowest to the highest level of risk: 1. Soldiers are risked to actively protect noncombatants. This situation is divided into two levels of risk. At the higher level, such as during the surge in Afghanistan, troops were deployed among the civilian population to protect them and were also risked by being restricted in their ability to re-risk civilians when attacked by insurgents. At the lower level, as seen in the Iraq surge, mainly the first component, deployment among civilians, was evident, and part of the risk was transferred to the local civilians. 2. Soldiers are risked in offenses against military targets by being restricted in their ability to harm civilians, as was the case in Basra and Jenin. Nonetheless, part of the risk is shifted and results in collateral killing. 3. Noncombatants are endangered to protect soldiers, as, for example, was the case in Kosovo, Gaza, and other cases of risk transfer. 4. Noncombatants are intentionally targeted for motivations other than transfer of risk such as deterrence, punishment, revenge, and ethnic cleansing. My analysis did not reveal the initiation of such conduct by any of the democracies studied in the post–Cold War era. Similarly, one’s own civilians are always at least risk, but we need to distinguish between two poles. The risk is lowest when soldiers are uncompromisingly endangered to protect their own civilians, which often typifies defensive campaigns or those that are defensive with offensive tactics, such as in the case of Jenin. This risk is at the highest level when one’s own civilians are endangered to reduce the soldiers’ level of risk, as when political and military leaders compromise security interests. Israel demonstrated this pattern by refraining from deploying ground forces in the Second Lebanon War to halt the rocket attacks on Israel’s northern communities, and by doing the same in Gaza when it accepted an unstable cease-fire. Passive force protection in the form of forward operating bases represents a middling level of risk to the extent that the security of the Americans and their allies was only partly damaged by this mode of overseas deployment. The focus of the book is on advanced, liberal, technologically savvy states. Does the theory hold in instances of lower-tech warfare? Yes and no. There is no reason to believe that the interaction between the legitimacies doesn’t work more broadly.

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Consider, for example, the US bombing of Japan in World War II. As can be inferred from Downes (2008, 121–140), legitimacy of using force was on the rise: public opinion strongly believed in a punitive approach toward Japan, and racist sentiments infused this attitude. Liberal norms, prohibiting targeting of civilians, played a minor role in restraining bombing, and the rhetoric advocating those norms waned as precision bombing failed and was replaced by incendiary bombing. As for the legitimacy of sacrificing, although the casualty sensitivity syndrome as we know it today was not yet apparent, President Roosevelt admitted the limits of public tolerance for casualties as the Pacific War was prolonged and the death toll mounted. Policymakers acknowledged the trade-off of shortening the war (and thus also sparing the need for a costly invasion of Japan) that might save American lives and targeting the Japanese population. Thus, policymakers faced no significant barriers after 1944, as precision bombing failed, and they gradually expanded the bombings targeting civilians and eventually deployed the decisive atom bomb. In sum, concerns to stretch the boundaries of casualty tolerance too much constrained the Americans to leverage a high legitimacy of using force to extensively target civilians, thereby expediting the end of the war. A different example, but with some similarities, was the 1944 Battle of Normandy. Allied commanders implicitly acknowledged the broader trade-off between saving troop casualties and harming French civilians whose territory they had invaded. Nevertheless, they increased the use of indiscriminate fire (artillery and airstrikes) that endangered the local population but better shielded the troops. Ultimately, as Antony Beevor (2012, 2) cynically concluded: A terrible paradox became apparent. The armies of democracies were liable to kill more civilians because, in response to pressure at home from the press and public opinion, their commanders relied on high explosive to reduce their own casualties.

Again, a drop in the legitimacy of sacrificing encourages a stronger effort to shift risk by increasing the legitimacy of using force, or, in this case, to benefit from a previously high legitimacy. In this case, risk was transferred from the Allies to the population for whose liberation the troops were dispatched. Collaterally harming the French could be seen as a small price to pay on the road to liberation. Paradoxically, moreover, if the reader hears in this an echo of the surge in Afghanistan, harming the French was relatively cheaper than in the case of the Afghans. Unlike in Afghanistan, in France the Allies did not face the challenge of gaining the French trust, thereby having to separate local people from insurgents; here, more modest challenges increased the freedom to risk civilians.

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These examples notwithstanding—both showing that the theory works—I still preferred to focus on the post–Cold War conflicts waged by democracies. Only then does the interaction between the legitimacies become relevant because the legitimacies matter. Only then did democracies encounter the dilemma of risking one’s own soldiers versus enemy noncombatants because only then did the political culture respect noncombatant immunity, and the aversion to sacrifice appeared as a political barrier. Therefore, both legitimacies were developed and became complicated. The politics of body count, civil rights inquiries, the role of the global media, and bereavement-motivated protest are all manifestations of the reality of the post–Cold War era. Above all stands the RMA with the complexity of its promise of casualty-free wars: the freedom it created to fight, the expectations that evolved, the tensions that appeared when gaps were revealed between promises and performance, and the politics surrounding them. It was only in the post–Cold War deployments that the legitimacies came to the surface and, by implication, death hierarchies were dynamically modified. Surely this theory can hold in other cases, so long as we can isolate the identity of the protagonists to relate the theory to the conduct of a specific military. Even if the theory holds in “old wars,” however, its real merit lies in “high-tech” wars in which democracies are engaged. 9.2 Modeling Wartime Death As the hierarchies represent fluid structures, this book has tackled not only the question of what determines this fluidity, but also how we can know that the death hierarchies really have been modified and how we can distinguish between situations in which risk was taken and those in which it was transferred. Methodological tools have therefore been offered, based on the consideration of a combination of three to four categories of fatality ratios with comparisons between campaigns or deployments. These tools aimed at identifying variations in risk transfer by assessing their impact. To reach valid conclusions, it was recommended that comparable cases be used by controlling arena-related variables such as geopolitics, the identity of the protagonists, the weapons they used, and the goals of the campaigns. Proximity in time between the operations or deployments was important. Table 9.1 presents the combinations and the main inferences they yield. These are mostly supported by the cases studied here but were also partly examined in simulations that tested combinations not offered by these cases (the simulations are not detailed in this text). What is analyzed are changes between different, but mostly comparable, operations or deployments (conducted on the same terrains and by the same protagonists).

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Table 9.1: Combinations of Fatality Ratios and Their Meanings Soldiers/enemy combatants

Soldiers/enemy noncombatants

Level of discrimination

Decrease

Increase

Decrease

Risk transfer, as when a decline in the ability of one’s own soldiers to kill or to protect themselves against the adversary—a situation of greater risk—is partly balanced out by killing a larger number of noncombatants, as happened from Summer Rains to Cast Lead in Gaza (according to B’Tselem). Decrease

Increase

Increase

An unlikely situation. When relatively fewer enemy combatants and more enemy noncombatants are killed from one operation to the next, mathematically discrimination always decreases. Decrease

Decrease

Decrease

Partial risk transfer, as happened from Cast Lead to Protective Edge in Gaza when the troops assumed more risk that was nevertheless partly shifted to enemy civilians. Decrease

Decrease

Increase

Risk taking. Despite the greater exposure of one’s own soldiers to risk, risk is taken towards civilians, either intentionally, as in the surge in Afghanistan (the overall trend) and in Basra, or unintentionally, as in the withdrawal to FOBs in Iraq. Increase

Increase

Decrease

Risk transfer. Examples: (1) A less typical example was the surge in Iraq. (2) A more typical case occurred in Fallujah II, according to the alternative sources (highest estimates), that unlike the transition to surge, initially reduced the soldiers’ risk by sterilizing the city of civilians and then easing rules of engagement. Alternatively, this combination may typify the targeting of civilians motivated by factors unrelated to risk transfer, for example, when soldiers have already reduced their risk relative to their opponents and can therefore exercise greater caution to avoid civilian casualties but prefer to do the opposite.

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(Table 9.1 cont.) Increase

Increase

Increase

A moderate risk transfer. This situation can be consequential, as when both ratios between own combatants to enemy combatants and noncombatants increase, but the number of enemy combatants killed is higher relative to the increase in the number of noncombatant deaths, and hence discrimination is improved. This results from soldiers’ improved capabilities, such as more precise weapons, protection, or relative numbers. This consequentiality notwithstanding, the better the troops are protected or armed, the more it is expected that they will intentionally conduct themselves more cautiously towards enemy civilians. This can also occur when the troops increase their advantage over their adversaries, mainly by using weapons more liberally which, by implication, shifts risk to civilians, and still more combatants than noncombatants are killed from one operation to the next, as seen in Fallujah II according to the alternative sources’ lowest estimates. Increase

Decrease

Decrease

An unlikely situation. When relatively more enemy combatants and fewer enemy noncombatants are killed from one operation to the next, mathematically discrimination always increases. Increase

Decrease

Increase

A moderate risk transfer resulting from sterilization of noncombatants from the battlefield, thereby reducing risk to the latter, such as in Fallujah II (according to the lowest estimates of IBC and the Red Cross). It can also be a case of risk taking if the troops leverage their superiority to treat civilians more cautiously despite the troops’ growing exposure to risk, as demonstrated in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010 under McChrystal.

To recall and clarify, an increased ratio between one’s own soldiers and enemy combatants signifies a lower risk to the soldiers; an increased ratio between one’s own soldiers and enemy noncombatants may signify transfer of risk, though this is not necessarily always the case. And the higher the percentage of civilians among total enemy fatalities (caused directly by one’s own troops), the lower the level of discrimination between combatants and noncombatants. Altogether, these combinations yield six substantive inferred positions. But even the combination of ratios alone cannot adequately identify changes and therefore must be backed up by analyzing the practices on the ground, for several reasons.

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First, fatality ratios may overlook less visible processes unless they are supported by revealing the practices that generated the numbers. One example is factors unrelated to risk transfer that may affect battle outcomes, such as military effectiveness or more or less presence of noncombatants in the theater. Analyzing the practices is thus necessary to isolate these factors and then determine whether the troops took or shifted risk. As demonstrated in all cases, more enemy noncombatants as well as own troops were exposed to higher risk when the troops conducted search-and-clear operations. However, the level of adjustment of the attacking troops varied according to the readiness to take risk (the United Kingdom in Basra and ISAF in Afghanistan) versus the inclination to shift it onto the local civilians (Israel in Gaza and the United States in Fallujah). Two other examples are motivations that should be investigated to differentiate between risk transfer and other factors, such as punishment, and incidental events, such as catastrophic accidents, that should also be considered as they can affect the overall picture. Second, as Table 9.1 shows, combinations of ratios can be interpreted in more than one way and only the practices tell a more accurate story. Third, by analyzing practices, we can evaluate different numbers provided by various, often rival, agencies and draw (even incomplete) conclusions about their validity. Most notable are numbers informed by debates about the application of the principle of discrimination. An in-depth analysis of practices can help us determine the extent to which the troops do indeed discriminate between combatants and noncombatants and whether they follow the formal rules or disregard them. In this book, deciding between sources was less relevant when it came to the case of Gaza, because both sources disagree about the numbers, but, incredibly, they agree on the overall trend. In the case of Fallujah, my analysis supported the information provided by alternative sources, at least in part. In sum, fatality ratios should be considered as an initial indication inviting a more thorough analysis. At the same time, practices cannot stand alone because without quantified confirmation, we cannot assess their real impact. Practices should be studied mainly because it is possible that policies were modified but not translated into practices on the ground and therefore produced unexpected numbers, as the cases partly show. First, gaps were identified between political, formal policies and practices on the ground, such as between Israel’s formal denial of risk transfer in Gaza, and the outcomes. Second, gaps were identified between the original intentions of the rules and actual practice inasmuch as fire policies are often modified dynamically when the death toll among soldiers mounts, as the cases of Fallujah II, Jenin, and Operation Protective Edge in Gaza demonstrate. Third, commanders may

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monitor the implementation of the rules poorly. Poor monitoring may have a relevant impact, particularly when the goal of those rules is to reduce collateral killing, but they nevertheless lead to unintended harm to noncombatants (Crawford 2013, 296). Fallujah II revealed this situation. Fourth, gaps may be created between formal policies and interpretations on the ground, as the case of the surge in Iraq implied. Finally factors unrelated to risk transfer, even incidental ones, may affect the ratios. Therefore, the ratios could be used to validate or challenge initial understandings of the practices and, so far as it is necessary, to isolate factors affecting fire policies. In the end, we do not have a good measure that is unconnected to practices. 9.3 In Closing Although this study was motivated by scholarly needs, it has policy implications that extend beyond the assessment of different methods of body count or legal issues to the broader assessment of how democracies balance conflicting imperatives. What is at stake is not an analysis of the level of harm to enemy noncombatants compared to earlier wars in which noncombatants were intentionally targeted, or the question of whether harm is legally and ethically permissible according to IHL principles. Rather, the analysis is about the level of this harm with respect to the capacity to hurt a smaller number of enemy noncombatants when the military takes, rather than transfers, a greater amount of risk. Since force protection and noncombatant immunity are interchangeable, the issue is the extent to which collateral death is affected by force protection. Possibly, then, the West could indeed do a better job of protecting noncombatants.

Notes

Chapter 2 1. Portions of this section were republished with permission: Copyright © 2015 From “Defense and Military Policy: Casualty Aversion” (by Yagil Levy), Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy (third edition), by Domonic A. Bearfield and Melvin J. Dubnic (editors), 839-844. Reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group, LLC, a division of Informa plc. Permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. Chapter 4 1. General Security Services, [in Hebrew], accessed August 27, 2017, https:// www.shabak.gov.il/SiteCollectionImages/Hebrew/TerrorInfo/decade/Decade Summary_he.pdf. 2. The Peace Index, accessed August 26, 2017, http://www.peaceindex.org/indexMain Eng.aspx. 3. See Chapter 2, note 1. 4. United Nations Security Council, accessed April 19, 2018, http://www.un.org/Depts /unmovic/documents/1441.pdf. 5. BBC News, accessed April 19, 2018, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/2765041.stm. 6. Lieutenant General Richard Shirreff ’s testimony to the Iraq Inquiry, January 11, 2010, 14, accessed September 10, 2018, http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/95138 /2010-01-11-Transcript-Shirreff-S2.pdf#search=shirreff,%2014. 7. Ibid., 3, 33–34.

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8. Ibid., 33–35. 9. Daily Mail, accessed May 16, 2017, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article -410163/Government-stunned-Army-chiefs-Iraq-blast.html. 10. General Shirreff ’s testimony, 13–14. 11. Parliament, UK, accessed, May 16, 2017, https://www.publications.parliament .uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmdfence/1603/160304.htm. 12. See note 9. 13. Telegraph, accessed April 19, 2018, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics /onthefrontline/2079892/Soldiers-could-get-pay-rise-after-General-Sir-Richard -Dannatt-intervenes.html. 14. “Our Loved Ones Deserve an Iraq Inquiry,” Guardian, June 23, 2005, accessed April 15, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jun/23/military .iraq. 15. “Staff and Agencies, Red Cap Families Vow to Fight On,” Guardian, March 31, 2006, accessed April 15, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/mar/31 /iraq.military. 16. General Shirreff ’s testimony, 47. 17. Ibid., 30. 18. Ibid., 38–39. 19. Ibid., 39. 20. Major General Jonathan Shaw’s testimony to Iraq Inquiry, on June 21, 2010, 14–15, accessed May 24, 2017, http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/237206/2010 -06-21-transcript-shaw-s2-declassified.pdf#search=shaw. 21. Ibid, 36–37. 22. General Shirreff ’s testimony, 42. Chapter 5 1. The American Presidency Project, accessed July 22, 2017, http://www.presidency .ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=19. 2. United Nations Security Council, accessed August 4, 2017, https://undocs .org/S/RES/1546(2004). 3. This and the next citations are taken from CNN, accessed April 20, 2018, http://edition.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/03/08/bush.transcript/. 4. Gold Star Families for Peace, accessed April 16, 2014, http://www.sourcewatch .org/index.php/Gold_Star_Families_for_Peace. 5. The empirical background description in this and section 7.2 is based on B’Tselem (2015b), Levy (2012, 153-155), and Siboni (2014). 6. Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, accessed August 12, 2017, http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/article/18457.

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7. CNN, accessed April 20, 2018, http://edition.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS /03/08/bush.transcript/. Chapter 6 1. The American Presidency Project, accessed May 19, 2019, https://www.presidency .ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-nation-airstrikes-against-serbian-targets-the-federal -republic-yugoslavia. 2. Guardian, accessed March 18, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999 /mar/25/balkans14. 3. Ibid. 4. Interview in Frontline, accessed March 21, 2017, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages /frontline/shows/kosovo/interviews/cohen.html. 5. Parliament. UK, accessed March 18, 2017, https://www.publications.parliament.uk /pa/cm199899/cmselect/cmdfence/39/9032402.htm. 6. See note 4. 7. NATO, April 23, 1999, http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/1999/s990423k.htm. 8. Tony Blair website, accessed March 28, 2017, https://keeptonyblairforpm .wordpress.com/blair-speech-transcripts-from-1997-2007/#chicago. 9. Los Angeles Times, accessed March 28, 2017, http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may /14/news/mn-37134. 10. Guardian, accessed April 20, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct /22/uk-double-drones-afghanistan. 11. As revealed by analysis of the cases detailed in icasualties, accessed July 6, 2017, http://icasualties.org/OEF/ByTheatre.aspx. 12. Economist, accessed April 20, 2018, https://www.economist.com/united-states /2016/07/09/the-queen-and-her-drones. 13. White House, accessed July 6, 2017, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the -press-office/2013/05/23/remarks-president-national-defense-university. Chapter 7 1. Iraq Body Count, accessed December 18, 2017, https://www.iraqbodycount.org /database/. 2. Democracy Now, accessed September 10, 2018, https://www.democracynow .org/2004/11/17/red_cross_estimates_800_iraqi_civilians. 3. Pew Research Center, accessed July 28, 2018, http://www.people-press.org/2004 /04/26/bush-ratings-rise-even-as-iraq-concerns-continue/. 4. Ibid., accessed July 29, 2017, http://www.people-press.org/2004/09/17/iraq -support-steady-in-face-of-higher-casualties/2/. 5. Washington Post, accessed December 18, 2017, http://www.washingtonpost.com /wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/20/AR2007042002308.html.

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6. Portions of this section were republished with permission of John Wiley and Sons, Inc., from Yagil Levy, “The Gaza Fighting: Did Israel Shift Risk from Its Soldiers to Civilians?” Middle East Policy 24, no. 3 (2017): 117–132. 7. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accessed September 24, 2018, http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Terrorism/Pages/Vast_majority_Palestinians _killed_Operation_Cast_Lead_terror_operatives_26-Mar-2009.aspx. 8. For example, and with minor differences, MAKO [in Hebrew], accessed April 20, 2018, http://www.mako.co.il/pzm-israel-wars/operation-protective-edge/Article -9a4a5e78fb02741006.htm; WALLA [in Hebrew], accessed April 20, 2018, https://news .walla.co.il/item/1082685. 9. B’Tselem, accessed September 24, 2018, http://www.btselem.org/statistics/fatalities/before-cast-lead/by-date-of-event; https://www.btselem.org/statistics/fatalities/during-cast-lead/by-date-of-event; https:// www.btselem.org/2014_gaza_conflict/en/. 10. Ibid., accessed September 24, 2018, https://www.btselem.org/2014_gaza _conflict/en/. 11. Israel Defense Forces, accessed August 11, 2017, http://web.archive. org/web/20141230070356/http://www.idfblog.com/facts-figures/rocket-attacks -toward-israel/. 12. Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, p.5, accessed August 11, 2017, http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/data/pdf/PDF_09_078_2.pdf. 13. Jewish Virtual Library, accessed September 23, 2018, https://www.jewishvirtual library.org/president-bush-remarks-on-israel-s-operation-cast-lead-january-2009. 14. Israel Defense Forces, accessed February 6, 2019, https://www.idf.il/en/articles /hamas/private-6-million-lives-in-danger-the-deadly-rocket-arsenal-of-hamas/. 15. Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles, accessed May 9, 2017, http://embassies .gov.il/la/NewsAndEvents/Pages/OPERATION-PROTECTIVE-EDGE-STATEMENT -BY-PRIME-MINISTER-BENJAMIN-NETANYAHU.aspx. Chapter 8 1. Washington Post, accessed July 9, 2017, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn /content/article/2007/01/10/AR2007011002208.html. 2. Council for Foreign Relations, accessed May 5, 2018, https://www.cfr.org /backgrounder/impact-110th-congress-us-foreign-policy. 3. Pew Research Center, accessed May 5, 2018, http://www.people-press.org /2008/03/12/awareness-of-iraq-war-fatalities-plummets/. 4. Washington Post, accessed July 9, 2017, http://apps.washingtonpost.com /national/fallen/.

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5. icasualties, accessed September 24, 2018, http://icasualties.org/Iraq/ByYear.aspx. 6. Washington Post, accessed July 9, 2017, http://www.washingtonpost.com /wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/07/AR2009020701189.html. 7. icasualties, accessed September 24, 2018, http://icasualties.org/Iraq/ByMonth.aspx. 8. New York Times, accessed July 13, 2017, https://static01.nyt.com/images/2007 /12/22/opinion/22opchart.large.jpg, and ibid., accessed July 26, 2017, https://static01.nyt .com/images/2008/03/09/opinion/09opchart.large.jpg. 9. United Nations Security Council, accessed May 16, 2019, https://documents -dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N01/708/55/pdf/N0170855.pdf?OpenElement. 10. CNN, accessed June 7, 2017, http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/12/01 /obama.afghanistan.speech.transcript/index.html. 11. Ibid. 12. YouTube, accessed April 4, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cjH _2N0bN4. 13. See note 10. 14. Telegraph, accessed September 23, 2018, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news /uknews/defence/5782198/Troop-deaths-are-a-risk-worth-paying-says-Nato-leader-in -Afghanistan.html. 15. Government Executive, accessed September 19, 2017, http://www.govexec.com /oversight/2009/04/final-2010-budget-blueprint-supports-military-civilian-pay-parity /29055/. 16. icasualties, accessed September 24, 2018, http://icasualties.org/OEF/ByMonth .aspx. 17. Guardian, accessed June 13, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb /05/afghanistan-nato-strike-helmand. 18. BBC News, “Afghanistan NATO Operation ‘Meets First Objectives,’ ” February 14, 2010, accessed May 5, 2018, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8514397.stm. 19. icasualties, accessed September 24, 2018, http://www.icasualties.org/OEF /Fatalities.aspx. 20. Telegraph, accessed May 5, 2018, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews /7127365/US-casualties-in-Afghanistan-provoke-rage-and-frustration.html. 21. CNN, accessed June 14, 2017, http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/01 /petraeus-rules-fight-taliban-get-to-know-the-locals/. 22. New York Times, accessed June 14, 2017, http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages /pdf/world/2010/petraeus-opening-statement.pdf. 23. Stars and Stripes, accessed June 14, 2017, https://www.stripes.com/blogs-archive /stripes-central/stripes-central-1.8040/petraeus-confirmation-hearing-live-1.109226# .WUFcWWiGPIV.

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24. Trend News Agency, accessed June 5, 2017, http://en.trend.az/world/other /1648978.html. 25. icasualties, accessed September 12, 2018, http://www.icasualties.org/OEF /Fatalities.aspx. 26. Ibid., accessed September 24, 2018, http://icasualties.org/OEF/ByMonth.aspx. 27. Science, accessed September 10, 2018, http://science.sciencemag.org/content /suppl/2011/03/09/331.6022.1256.DC1. 28. At the same time, more soldiers (thirty-five relative to twenty in 2009) were killed by attacks by ANSF (Livingston and O’Hanlon 2017, 8). 29. This report underestimated the number of civilian fatalities that were generally revised in later reports.

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Index

Note: page numbers followed by f and t refer to figures and tables respectively. Accountability for Killing (Crawford), 4 Afghanistan War: casualties in, 216; death hierarchy in, 211, 217, 224; Democrats’ criticism of, 204; discrimination in, 220–221; drone warfare in, 147; fatality ratios in, 219–223, 221t; gap of legitimacies and, 230; glorification of troops in, 206–207; and hope of withdrawal, 223; legitimacy of sacrificing in,209-211, 223; legitimacy of using force in,203-209, 224, 226; NATO withdrawal, 218; noncombatant casualties in, 222; noncombatants killed by insurgents, trends in, 222–223; Petraeus’s assumption of ISAF command, 215; public opinion on, 204, 217, 224; Senate hearings on, 216; shifting of risk in, 221–222; suppression of deliberation on, 207, 227; surge

in, and increased risk, 220; US counterinsurgency strategy in, and legitimacy of sacrificing, 39, 223; withdrawal of coalition forces from, 217. See also British forces in Afghanistan War; Operation Moshtarak (2010) Afghanistan War, rules of engagement in: Petraeus’s changes in, 215–216, 221–222, 223–224; troop frustration with, 216 Afghanistan War, turn to counterinsurgency strategy in: decision-making process in, 224; and increased risk, 220, 221–222, 223 Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF): casualties, 219–220, 221–222, 221t; and discrimination, 222; and Operation Moshtarak, 202, 207; and planned NATO withdrawal, 207 287

288

Index

African American World War II veterans, civil rights demands of, 92 American exceptionalism, 93–94 Amnesty International, 138–139, 143, 169 ANSF. See Afghan National Security Forces antiwar activism: effect on military policies, 34–35; greater likelihood in conscription military, 34–35, 70; types of groups forming, 34 antiwar activism in Britain: and Iraq War, 75, 80, 81, 82–83; limited effectiveness of, 75 antiwar activism in Israel: and First Lebanon War, 57; Gaza conflict and, 113, 114; middle class and, 59, 60, 62; Operation Defensive Shield and, 65; Operation Protective Edge and, 187; in reserve units, 57, 60, 65; and Second Lebanon War, 116–117; shifting of military burden to lower classes and, 64; South Lebanon conflict and, 62–63 antiwar activism in US: and ending of draft, 96–97; Iraq War and, 192–194, 195–196; Operation Moshtarak and, 210; Republican counteractivism, 195; volunteer military and, 101, 196. See also specific conflicts atomic bombing of Japan, 95, 123, 234 Australia, and decline in legitimacy of using force, 53 Bacevich, Andrew, 93, 101, 102 balancing of three imperatives of conflict, 2–3; in Afghanistan War, 224;

gap of legitimacies and, 230; in Iraq War, 224; and noncombatant fatalities, minimization of, 2–3, 7, 123; nonstate adversaries and, 2 Barak, Ehud, 58, 171, 181 Basra, British occupation of, 73–74; decline of public support for, 78; increased attacks on, after 2004, 74; legitimacy of sacrificing, decline of, 120; and security decline, 78. See also Operation Sinbad (2006); Operation Zenith Bauman, Zygmunt, 25, 225, 227 Beirut, US mission in (1983), and US casualty sensitivity, 32, 95–96 bereavement discourse: in Afghanistan War, 210; in Iraq War, 82, 102, 106, 195, 197–198; in Israel, 64, 115, 116; and legitimacy of sacrificing, 29, 36, 229; social class and, 72, 102; subversive vs. submissive responses to, 35 Blair, Tony, 75, 78, 82, 86, 145, 164 Breaking the Silence, 173, 178, 186 Britain: and deliberation, suppression of, 227; drone use by, 146; ending of conscription, 74; and Gulf War, 74; and legitimacy of sacrificing, 37, 76, 77; and legitimacy of using force, 18–19, 74-76, 227; reasons for focus on, 40–41. See also Basra, British occupation of; Operation Sinbad (2006–07) British antiwar activism: and Iraq War, 75, 80, 81, 82–83; limited effectiveness of, 75 British forces in Afghanistan War: and bypassing of public opinion, 17;

Index

casualties, 210; counterinsurgency strategy of, 206; and legitimacy of sacrificing, 82; public opinion on, 79, 211, 217. See also British forces in Operation Moshtarak (Afghanistan) British forces in Iraq War: British Muslims and, 79; civilian casualty levels, downplaying of, 81; decline in commitment to, 79–80; and legitimacy of sacrificing, 82; public opinion on, 75, 78, 82; withdrawal, 210 British forces in Operation Moshtarak (Afghanistan): legitimacy of sacrificing in, 210–211; and legitimacy of using force, 206–207; number of troops in, 202, 206; public opinion on, 206 British Labour Party: and Gulf War, 75; and Iraq War, 80–81 British military: autonomy to deploy troops, 75–76; capital-intensive warfare, 76; counterinsurgency strategy, 74–77, 84–85; and liberal militarism, 74; and Military Covenant, 84; post-Cold War budget cuts, 77; as professional army, 74; public respect for, and legitimacy of using force in Iraq, 81; social marginality of, 82, 84; weakening of upper-class commitment to troops, 76, 84; willingness to risk troops, 76–77 B’Tselem, 68, 168–169, 172, 173, 175, 231 Bugsplat (Cronin), 4 burden sharing, and legitimacy of sacrificing, 34, 230

289

Bush, George W.: and Iraq War, 10, 86, 97–98, 101, 102, 104, 120, 163, 165, 192, 193, 195, 196, 204; and normalization of war, 101; and second Intifada, 59, 65, 69 Butler, Judith, 39, 146 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), 75 casualties, individuation of, and legitimacy of sacrificing, 83–84, 194 casualty sensitivity: causes of increase in, 91–92; in conscription military, 54; and decline in legitimacy of sacrificing, 31–32; democracies and, 32; effect on military policies, 34; extension to lower classes, 92; factors contributing to, 32; leveraging of, to reduce immunity of enemy civilians, 38; move to volunteer force and, 97; need to reshape death hierarchy in response to, 91; persistence in modern militaries, 91; RMA and, 71; and shift of risk from soldiers to one’s own civilians, 3, 9; and use of drones, 148; of US public, 32. See also legitimacy of sacrificing casualty sensitivity syndrome, 2, 9, 31, 41, 70 Chomsky, Noam, 127, 146 citizen-soldier concept: and Afghanistan War, 210; and Iraq War, 194; and legitimacy of sacrificing, 30 civilians of one’s own, protecting: balancing with other imperatives, 2–3; and force protection as risk shifting, 43t, 92; as one imperative in conflict, 2. See also fatality ratio

290

Index

between state’s own noncombatants and enemy noncombatants Clark, Wesley, 132, 133, 134, 135, 140 class, and hierarchy of risk, 3, 8, 53. See also lower classes; upper-middle class Clinton, William J. “Bill,” and Kosovo War, 126, 128, 129, 130, 133, 145 CND. See Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament cognitive legitimacy, 18 Cohen, William, 128, 133, 135, 142 COIN doctrine, 191, 197, 205, 209–211 COIN mathematics, 208, 216–217 Cold War, end of: and decline of legitimacy of sacrificing, 32, 33, 42, 43t, 70; and decline of legitimacy of using force, 53; and US citizens’ resistance to high defense spending, 96 collateral damage, introduction of concept, 25 collateral killing of noncombatants: as common, 2; justifications for, 22. See also noncombatant fatalities; risk transfer collective action, and legitimacy of using force, 16, 17, 18 conscription military: decline in legitimacy of sacrificing and, 31, 70; ending of, 70; greater likelihood of antiwar activism in, 34–35, 70; high casualty sensitivity in, 54; higher impact on upper-middle class in, 3; higher levels of resistance to use of force in, 27; and increased citizen input into policy, 27

conscription military, US: African Americans in, 100; decline in legitimacy of sacrificing and, 96–97; unfairness of, as issue in Vietnam War, 103 contractors, military: and increased likelihood of using force, 27–28; and legitimacy of sacrificing, 72 Counterinsurgency Field Manual (2006), 191, 201 Courage to Refuse, 65 Crawford, Neta, 4, 162, 219, 224 cultural-discursive variables in legitimacy of using force, 22–26 death hierarchy: in Afghanistan War, 211, 217, 224; analytic gaps in research on, 3–5; balance of legitimacy of force vs. legitimacy of sacrificing in, 7, 11, 232; balance of three imperatives of conflict within, 2; and casualty sensitivity, 91; conflictspecific factors in, 7; decline of legitimacy of sacrificing and, 73; definition of, 2; and drone warfare, 149–150; in first Fallujah campaign, 164; four types of, in interaction of legitimacy of sacrificing and legitimacy of using force, 42–43, 43t; gap of legitimacies and, 231; group risk as relative in, 8; interaction of legitimacies and, 225; in Iraq War, 84, 87, 109, 120, 224; in Iraq War surge, 197–198, 224; of Israel in Gaza campaigns, 64, 113, 118–119, 120, 179, 182–183, 185–186, 187; of Israel in second Intifada, 64; of Israel in Second Lebanon War (2006),

Index

116; methodological gaps in research on, 5–7; methods of determining, 5; military factors affecting, 11; in NATO’s Kosovo War, 131, 142, 151; positions on, as mutually exclusive, 3, 7, 11, 232; race, class and gender and, 3, 8; reasons for modifications of, 225; scholarship on, 225; in second Fallujah campaign, 165, 167; state’s creation of, 3, 7; typological theory of, 40, 232; in US drone warfare in Pakistan, 151; variations over time and space in, 232 dehumanization of enemies: and delegitimation of sacrificing soldiers to reduce enemy noncombatant casualties, 141, 146; and legitimacy of sacrificing, 230; and legitimacy of using force, 23–24, 125–126, 145– 146, 230; and reduction of noncombatant immunity, 39, 145–146 deliberation: social class of recruits and, 28; volunteer force and, 27, 34 deliberation, suppression of, 25–26; in Afghanistan War, 207, 227; in Iraq War, 227, 293; in Iraq War surge, 193; and legitimacy of sacrificing, 30; and legitimacy of using force, 29; militarized societies and, 29; in NATO Kosovo airstrikes, 126–127, 143, 144, 151; strategies for, 227; in use of drones, 147, 148, 150 democracies: avoidance of elective missions, 122; burden sharing to increase legitimacy of sacrificing, 34; casualty sensitivity in, 32, 122; and imbalance of legitimacy of using force and legitimacy of sacrificing,

291

122–123; and risk transfer pressure, 154; use of force as challenge to, 20; willingness to transfer risk to enemy noncombatants, 22, 45, 122–123, 234 democracy, dissemination of, as justification for use of force, 22, and peace democracy, 22, 29. Democratic Party, and Iraq War, 99, 104, 192–193 discrimination: in Afghanistan War, 220–221, 222; in combatant vs. noncombatant deaths, 48–49; in Fallujah campaigns, 158; fatality ratios and, 236t–237t; in Iraq War, 110; in Iraq War surge, 201; in Israeli actions in Gaza, 177; justifications for relaxing, 177; in measuring risk transfer, 49, 50; and NATO airstrikes in Kosovo, 140; risks required of soldiers in, 177; and US drone warfare in Pakistan, 147 discursive strategies for legitimizing use of force, 22–26 distinction between combatants and noncombatants: calls for evacuation of civilians and, 124, 162; and counting of casualties, 169; and Israeli Gaza operations, 169–170, 172, 173, 175, 177; NATO airstrikes in Kosovo and, 137; subjectivity of, 48; US policy on, 109 domestic legitimacy: conditions for, 17–18; importance of, 12, 14; increasingly high bar for, 12; limited exogenous influence on, 14 drone warfare: death hierarchy in, 149–150; justification as a more

292

Index

precise weapon, 146, 147–148; lack of risk to own soldiers, 148; and policymakers’ freedom of action, 149–150; pressures to increase transparency of, 150; and reduced public accountability, 149; and reduced threshold for war, 152; and risk transfer, 125, 149; suppression of public deliberation on, 147, 148, 150; uses of, 146; and US method for counting noncombatant casualties, 24–25, 148. See also Pakistan, US drone warfare in duration of conflict, factors affecting legitimacy of using force in, 14, 17 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979, 61 elite consensus: and legitimacy of sacrificing, 34; and legitimacy of using force, 26, 204, 227 enemy combatants: definition of, 45. See also fatality ratio between state’s own soldiers and enemy combatants ethnic state security map, 53 Fallujah: as center of resistance, 155; killing of four Blackwater contractors in, 155, 163 Fallujah campaign(s) (2004), 155–167; airstrikes and artillery fire, increase from first to second campaign, 161; change in rules of engagement with changing legitimacies, 188; criticisms of noncombatant casualties in, 164; discrimination and, 158; disputed figures on noncombatant casualties, 157–158; fatalities,

sources on, 156; fatality ratios in, 156–157, 157t, 162, 231; noncombatant casualties in first vs. second campaign, 1, 156–157, 158, 161; as offensive force protection, 106; public opinion on noncombatant casualties, 166, 188; reduction of noncombatant risk between first and second campaigns, 156–157; reduction of soldiers’ risk between first and second campaigns, 156–157, 158; risk transfer from US soldiers to Iraqi noncombatants, 158–159, 162, 188–189; US denials of risk transfer in, 189 Fallujah campaign, first (April) [Operation Vigilant Resolve], 105; death hierarchy in, 164; debate on strategy for, 163; events leading to, 155–156, 163; fatality ratios in, 159; goals of, 156; legitimacy of sacrificing in, 163–164; legitimacy of using force in, 162–163, 164; public opinion on, 163; risk transfer from soldiers to noncombatants in, 164; rules of engagement in, 158–159; rules of engagement relaxation, after casualty increases, 159, 164; termination of, due to noncombatant casualties, 1, 156, 164; troop shortages and, 159 Fallujah campaign, second (NovemberDecember) [Operation Al-Fajr and Operation Phantom Fury]: aggressive US tactics and, 161; calls for civilian evacuation prior to attack, 156, 159, 161–162, 165, 166; death hierarchy in, 165, 167; goals of,

Index

156; legitimacy of sacrificing in, 165; legitimacy of using force in, 164–165, 166–167; media and, 165; noncombatant deaths in, 1, 159; noncombatants remaining in city, 159–160; public opinion on, 165, 166; and risking of lower-class soldiers, 165; risk transfer from US soldiers to Iraqi noncombatants, 166, 188; success of, 156 Fallujah campaign, second, rules of engagement in, 159–160, 165; local variations in, 160–161; relaxation of, with increased danger to troops, 1, 159–160, 161, 162, 165–166; as stricter than in first campaign, 1, 188 family size, decline of, and decline of legitimacy of sacrificing, 69–70 Fatah Party, and Gaza hostilities, 114 fatality ratio(s): as indication of hierarchy of risk, 5–6; potential combinations, and meanings, 235–239, 236t–237t fatality ratio between enemy noncombatants and total enemy fatalities, 171–172, 171t, 199t, 200–201; in Afghanistan War, 220–221; and discrimination principle, 48–49; in ethnic and religious wars, 49; in Fallujah campaigns, 157t, 158, 159, 162; in Iraq War, 110, 111t; as measure of risk transfer, 48–50; motives underlying increases in, 50; in NATO airstrikes in Kosovo War, 137; need to test against other ratios, 50; in Operation Defensive Shield, 67, 68t; in Operation

293

Sinbad, 88, 89t; in wars since World War I, 49 fatality ratio between state’s own noncombatants and enemy noncombatants: in Israeli actions in Gaza, 170, 171t, 177–178; as measure of risk transfer, 50 fatality ratio between state’s own soldiers and enemy combatants: in Afghanistan War, 220, 221t; in Fallujah campaigns, 156, 157t; harming of noncombatants and, 45–46; in Iraq War, 110, 111t, 199t, 200– 201; in Israeli actions in Gaza, 170, 171t; as measure of risk transfer, 45–46; methods of improving, 45; in NATO’s Kosovo airstrikes, 136; in Operation Defensive Shield, 67– 68, 68t; in Operation Moshtarak, 218, 221t; in Operation Sinbad, 88, 89t fatality ratio between state’s own soldiers and enemy noncombatants: in Afghanistan War, 220, 221–223; in Fallujah campaigns, 157t, 159, 162; Geneva Conventions Additional Protocol I on, 46–47; in Iraq War, 110, 111t, 199t, 200–201; in Israeli actions in Gaza, 171–172, 171t, 173; as measure of risk transfer, 46– 48; in NATO airstrikes in Kosovo, 136; number of noncombatants in area as factor in, 47; in Operation Defensive Shield (2002) and battle of Jenin, 67, 68t; in Operation Moshtarak, 218, 221t; in Operation Sinbad, 88, 89t Feaver, Peter D., 32–33, 95, 194, 229

294

Index

firepower, increase in, and risk reduction, 45 first Intifada (1987–1993): Gaza unrest in, 112; Israeli military restraint in, 57–58; as Israeli policing mission, 59 First Lebanon War (1982): antiwar activism in, 62; antiwar movements’ effect on military policies, 34; casualties in, 57, 62; high middle-class casualty rate in, 62; inaccuracy of fatality data on, 54; and Israeli legitimacy of sacrificing, 61; and Israeli legitimacy of using force, 57; noncombatant immunity as issue in, 54; social composition of Israeli casualties vs. second Intifada, 64; as war of choice, 57. See also South Lebanon, war of attrition in (1982–85) FOBs. See forward operating bases force, demands for use of: balancing of force and noncombatant casualties, 2–3, 7, 123; balancing of international norms and domestic expectations in, 122; balancing of protecting one’s own soldiers vs. enemy noncombatants, 122–123; vs. legitimacy of sacrificing, 121–122 force protection: active forms of, 92; in case of low legitimacy of sacrificing and low legitimacy of using force, 90, 92; as shift of risk from soldiers to own civilians, 43t, 92 force protection: passive forms of, 92; Israeli mission aversion in Gaza as, 113–119; US forward operating bases in Iraq as, 106–112, 119 force ratio, and risk reduction, 45

forward operating bases (FOBs), 106– 112; and fatality ratios, 110; and isolation from civilian population, 107; negative effects on US mission, 107–108; as passive force protection, 106–107, 119; and reduced tensions with locals, 107; US switch to counterinsurgency strategy and, 191, 200 Four Mothers Movement (Israel), 62–63 France, postcolonial conflicts, 41 gap of legitimacies syndrome: effects on policy, 230–232; and legitimacy of sacrificing, 37–38, 121–122; in NATO Kosovo intervention, 151; and shifting of risk, 230 Gaza: international criticism of Israeli policies in, 113–114, 115; Israeli force protection in, 92; and Israeli legitimacy of sacrificing, 115; and Israeli legitimacy of using force, 112–113; Israel wars of 1987–2009, variation in fatality ratios, 6 Gaza, Israeli efforts to stop Palestinian rocket attacks from, 167–168; casualty figures, disputes over, 168–170, 177; and change in rules of engagement with changing legitimacies, 188; death hierarchy in, 64, 118– 119, 120, 179; and dehumanization of Palestinians, 225; and discrimination, 171, 172, 177; and distinction between Palestinian combatants and noncombatants, 169–170, 172, 173, 175, 177; fatality ratios in, 170–172, 171t, 177–178; and

Index

Hamas’s use of human shields, 173, 175, 176, 186; international opinion as constraint on, 118, 172, 188, 228, 231; and Israeli mission aversion, 113–119; Israeli risk transfer from soldiers to noncombatants, 169–170, 172–173, 177, 178, 179; Lebanon conflict as distraction from, 180; legitimacies in, 179– 187; legitimacy of sacrificing in, 115–118, 119, 179; legitimacy of using force in, 114–115, 179; noncombatant casualties, reasons other than risk transfer for, 177–179; and political value of punishing Palestinians, 178; and protection of Israeli soldiers over lower-class border residents, 118–119. See also Operation Cast Lead (2008–2009); Operation Protective Edge (2014); Operation Summer Rains (2006) Gaza, Palestinian rocket attacks from, 113–119, 167, 185; effectiveness of, 178, 180, 181; number of, 179–180, 181 Gaza, Israeli withdrawal from (2005), 167; decline of legitimacies and, 112–113; and diminished responsibility for Gaza citizens, 24, 59, 114, 227; eviction of Israeli settlers from, 112; and Israeli death hierarchy, 113 Gelpi, Christopher, 32–33, 95, 194, 229 gender, and hierarchy of risk, 3 Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol I (1977), 20, 46–47, 48 global norms: as constraint on use of force, 20–21, 95, 122; and legitimacy of using force, 19

295

goals, chance of achieving, and legitimacy of sacrificing, 33 Gold Star Families for Peace, 105–106, 107, 192, 195, 196–197 Gulf War (1991): and British perception of global role, 74; fatality ratio between coalition soldiers and noncombatants in, 124; and IHL, 95; Iraqi Scud missile attacks, Israel’s restrained response to, 57–58; neoconservative views on, 98; and precision weapons, 25; and RMA, demonstration of, 129 Haditha, Iraq, noncombatant deaths in, 166–167 Hamas: and Gaza hostilities, 113– 114, 167–168; international boycott of, 114, 179; kidnapping of Israelis, 180, 184; use of human shields, 173, 175, 176, 186. See also Gaza Hezbollah, kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, 116, 180 hierarchy of risk. See death hierarchy high-mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS), Operation Moshtarak and, 213–214 HIMARS. See high-mobility artillery rocket systems humanitarian interventions: legitimacy of using force as issue in, 12; NATO intervention in Kosovo War as, 125, 126–127, 144–145, 151; and peril of assumed moral superiority, 127 Human Rights Watch, 68–69, 135, 138, 173 Huntington, Samuel, 145, 230

296

Index

imperatives of conflict, 2. See also balancing of three imperatives of conflict individualism, and decline of legitimacy of sacrificing, 32, 69–70 infrastructure damage, exclusion from risk transfer calculations, 46 ingrained components of legitimacy of using force, 18–21 initiation stage, factors affecting legitimacy of using force in, 14, 17 instrumental rationality, and Israel’s legitimacy of using force, 56 international humanitarian law (IHL): as constraint on use of force, 20; and dehumanization of enemy, 145; discrimination principle in, 48–49; leeway in interpretation of, 22; and NATO airstrikes in Kosovo, 140; noncombatant immunity in, 2; and permissibility of harming noncombatants, 239; proportionality principle in, 48–49; and US Gulf War policy, 95; US ignoring of, in Vietnam War, 95; and US Iraq War policy, 95 international law, post-World War II changes in, 12 Iraqi insurgency: eruption of, 92; groups supporting, 103; opposition to both US and Iraqi government, 103; reduction of legitimacies by, 103–106 Iraqi Security Forces (ISF): fatality ratios for, 110–112, 111t, 199t; increased attacks on, after return of Iraqi sovereignty, 74; insurgency opposition to, 103; and Operation

Sinbad, 74, 79, 80, 85, 87, 88; surge and, 192, 197, 199t, 200–201 Iraq Study Group, 192 Iraq War: and Abu Ghraib prison scandal, 104; casualties in, 71, 104, 105, 107, 109–110, 194, 197, 198–199, 200; and casualty sensitivity, 102– 103; and citizen-soldier concept, 194; congressional funding of, 193, 196; death hierarchy in, 84, 87, 109, 120, 224; death rates by social class, 102; democratization of Iraq as goal, 104; discrimination in, 110; downplaying of US casualties in, 165; fatality ratios in, 110–112, 111t, 124; gap of legitimacies and, 230; and IHL, 95; justifications for, 97, 98– 99, 104, 108, 120; noncombatant deaths in Haditha, 166–167; Operation Together Forward, 191; public opinion on, 190, 224; regional transformation as goal of, 98–99; Republican casting of soldiers as heroes, 194; and Republican discourse of patriotic motherhood, 195–196; risk transfer in, 106, 110, 112, 155, 223; soldier pay increases and enlistment bonuses, 194–195; suppression of deliberation on, 193, 227; threat inflation in, 29; UN resolutions on, 75, 77–78, 99, 103–104; and US belief in force as solution to problems, 97; use of contractors in, 100, 103; use of lower-class soldiers and, 102– 103; US force protection, and loss of Iraqi hearts and minds, 105; US public opinion on, 79; and Victory in Iraq campaign, 104; and volunteer

Index

military, lowered threshold for war with, 101; winning Iraqi hearts and minds as goal of, 104–105, 108, 164, 167, 227. See also Basra, British occupation of; Fallujah campaign(s); Operation Charge of the Knights Iraq War, and antiwar activism: efforts to undermine, 106; factors limiting impact of, 100, 101, 102–103; growth of, with insurgency rise, 104–106, 107; limited traction early in conflict, 99; as transnational, 99 Iraq War, and force protection: armorizing of equipment and personnel, 107–108; offensive forms of, 106; passive forms of, 92, 106–112; and risk aversion, 92; as risk transfer, 106, 110 Iraq War, and US shift to Petraeus counterinsurgency doctrine, 39, 190–192, 197–198, 223; decisionmaking process in, 224; and increased risk, 191, 194, 197, 198– 201, 223; success of, 201–202; and US patronage, 198 Iraq War, legitimacy of sacrificing in, 97, 102, 223; decline with insurgency rise, 105–106, 107; deficit funding of war and, 101; low levels of, as constraint, 108–109; modern weapons and, 101–102; volunteer military and, 100–101 Iraq War, legitimacy of using force in, 224; arguments supporting, 97–99; decline of, 79, 103–105, 107; initial high level of, 97; low levels of, as constraint, 108–109 Iraq War surge, 86, 190–202; vs.

297

Afghanistan War surge, 203–204; antiwar movement and, 192–194, 195–196; casualties in, 197, 198– 199, 200–201; death hierarchy in, 197–198, 224; and discrimination, 201; events leading to, 190–192; fatality ratios in, 199t; goals of, 197; and increased risk, 194, 198–201; lack of civilian oversight of, 193; legitimacy of sacrificing in, 193– 197; legitimacy of using force in, 192–194; opposition to, 192; public confidence in military and, 193; public opinion on, 192, 193; risk transfer in, 199t, 200–201; success of, 193, 201–202; use of air power in, 201. See also Iraq War, and US shift to Petraeus counterinsurgency doctrine ISF. See Iraqi Security Forces Israel: casualty aversion, dehumanization of enemy and, 226; and deliberation, suppression of, 227; drone use by, 146; establishment of, 54– 55; and ethnonationalism, 56, 58; and gap between legitimacies, 231; inflation of 1980s, 63; liberal rise in 1970s–80s, 61; as militarized society, 55, 56; and military superiority, commitment to, 55, 56; and 1973 War, 57–58, 61; and 1967 War, 56; and noncombatant immunity, 54; offensive strategy before First Lebanon War, 53; peace treaty with Egypt (1979), 61; reasons for focus on, 40–41; right to self-defense, international recognition of, 114, 179; and risk transfer, 231; and RMA,

298

Index

11; and upper-middle-class soldiers under republicanism, 54; US support for, 57. See also first Intifada (1987); First Lebanon War (1982); Gaza; Jenin, Battle of; Operation Cast Lead; Operation Protective Edge (2014); Operation Summer Rains (2006); second Intifada Israel, and legitimacy of sacrificing, 61–64; decline after 1970s-80s, 61–63, 179; high levels before 1970s-80s, 61–64; and Lebanon phobia, 63; in Operation Defensive Shield, 65, 67 Israel, and legitimacy of using force: decline after 1973 War, 57–58; history of, 54–55, 57–61; and human rights discourse, 60–61; and instrumental rationality, 56; international constraints on, 179; international legitimacy as constraint on, 56–57; Israeli historical memory and, 19, 28–29, 55; in Operation Defensive Shield, 65; pillars underlying, 55–57; rise, during second Intifada, 58–61 Israel Defense Forces (IDF): budget cuts of 1980s, 63; centrality to Israeli culture, 55; integration of lower classes into, 59–60, 63; military lawyers’ role in, 115; and RMA, 59; shifting of risk to lower classes, 63, 64; social realignment of 1980s-90s, 59–60, 63, 64; spending, critics of, 61; and struggle to win 1973 War, 57 Israeli antiwar activism: and First Lebanon War, 57; Gaza conflict and,

113, 114; middle class and, 59, 60, 62; Operation Defensive Shield and, 65; Operation Protective Edge and, 187; in reserve units, 57, 60, 65; and Second Lebanon War, 116–117; shifting of military burden to lower classes and, 64; South Lebanon conflict and, 62–63 Israeli religious persons, integration into IDF, 60 Israeli reserve units: antiwar activism in, 57, 60, 65; and Operation Defensive Shield, 65; protection from conflict, 60, 65, 73, 115, 118 Israel’s Death Hierarchy (Levy), 4–5 Iwo Jima, Battle of, 71 Jaysh al Mahdi (JAM), 77, 85, 86, 87, 88 Jenin, Battle of: acceleration of, to reduce casualties, 67, 90; damage to infrastructure in, 68–69; fatality ratios in, 67–68, 68t; Israeli casualties in, 67; Israeli lack of risk transfer in, 65–67, 89; and Israeli risk aversion, 115. See also Operation Defensive Shield Johnson, Lyndon B., 72–73 justification, 17 just war theory, 20–21 Karzai, Hamid, 204, 207 KLA. See Kosovo Liberation Army Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), 125, 134 Kosovo War (1999), 125–132; genocide label attached to, 126; NATO exaggeration of Serb crimes, 143– 144; Yugoslav capitulation in, 135

Index

Kosovo War, and NATO legitimacy of using force, 14, 125–130, 131, 142, 150–151, 225; humanitarian label and, 125, 126–127, 144–145, 151, 152, 225; precision weapons and, 128, 129, 142, 144, 151; volunteer military and, 129, 143, 151 Kosovo War, NATO airstrikes in [Operation Allied Force]: aircraft protection as risk transfer to noncombatants, 138–139; and bombing of Chinese Embassy, 135, 137, 143; broadening of allowed targets, 132, 134, 141; bypassing of public will in, 143; and casualty sensitivity, 32, 151; and cluster bombs, 141; coordination with KLA, 134; critics of, 127–128; death hierarchy in, 131, 142, 151; and dehumanization of Serbs, 125–126, 145–146, 151, 225; and depleted uranium projectiles, 141; events leading to, 125; fatality ratios in, 136, 137; goals of, 125, 128; and humanitarianism vs. human rights, 136; ineffectiveness of early strikes, 132–133, 141; instrumental goals of, 127; intensification of, and increased noncombatant deaths, 135, 136–137; interaction of legitimacies in, 131–132; and international humanitarian law, 140; justification of escalation, 142–146; lack of US congressional approval for, 129; legitimacy of, 125–126, 150; and legitimacy of sacrificing, 130–131, 142, 150–151; limited effectiveness of, 138; limiting of deliberation on, 126–127, 143, 144,

299

151; as most extensive NATO operation, 125; NATO’s self-interest in, 127; NATO unwillingness to tolerate defeat, 133, 134, 142; political need for quick victory in, 134–135, 140–141; public opinion on, 127, 130, 132, 143; and risk balance between NATO personnel and noncombatants, 131–132, 134; risk transfer from NATO soldiers to enemy noncombatants in, 135–142, 150–152; strict target constraints in early missions, 128–129, 132; UN and, 125–126, 150; uncritical media coverage of, 143–144 Kosovo War, NATO-caused noncombatant deaths in: concerns about, 128, 132; dehumanization of enemy and, 145; investigations of, 135–136, 138–140, 142, 143, 146; limited public concern about, 130, 131, 146; number of incidents and deaths, 135–136, 137, 138; portrayal as accidents, 143; relaxing of concerns about, 151 Kosovo War, and NATO ground operations: Clinton’s pledge to avoid, 130; consideration of, after failure of early air campaign, 133; public opinion on, 130; resistance to, 133; uncertain effects of, 141 lawfare, 22 Lebanon. See First Lebanon War; Second Lebanon War; South Lebanon legal justifications for use of force, as necessary but not sufficient, 21–22 legitimacy of sacrificing, 29–37; burden

300

Index

sharing and, 34, 230; casualty sensitivity syndrome and, 31–32; conceptual features of, 30; as culturally embedded, 229; definition of, 29–30; dehumanization of enemy and, 230; elite consensus and, 34; as exchange legitimacy, 30; and gap of legitimacies syndrome, 37–38, 121–122; gaps between real and perceived levels of, 36–37; groups’ means to resist sacrificing, 30; implementation during deployment, 30; ingrained components of, 30, 32; interplay of ingrained and dynamic components of, 36, 37; legitimacy of sacrificing and, 30; mid-range, and risking of lower-class soldiers, 42, 43t, 73, 84; as multilayered concept, 229; and policymakers’ freedom of action, 32, 33, 227–228, 230–231; policymakers’ subjective assessment of, 30; post-Cold War decline of, 9; and republican exchange, 30; in republicanism, 53; and shaping of military policy, 42, 42f, 224; shifting of burden to lower-class soldiers and, 52, 72–73, 92, 100, 101, 102, 230; as socially constructed, 29; and structuring of death hierarchy, 42, 42f; threat level and, 33, 36, 39; and turn to advanced weaponry, 73; variable components of, 30, 32–36, 229; variation across groups, 37; and willingness to pay taxes to fund war, 31 legitimacy of sacrificing, decline of, 69–73; and change in death hierarchy, 73; end of Cold War threat and, 32, 33, 42, 43t, 70; factors

influencing, 69–71; as impetus for critical self-evaluation, 120; military reforms in response to, 72; and shift of burden to lower classes, 72–73; strategies for addressing, 37; and taxes to fund military, resistance to, 69; as an upper-middle-class phenomenon, 69; in US culture, 31; variation across societies, 35–36. See also casualty sensitivity syndrome legitimacy of sacrificing, high: conditions leading to, 36; with high legitimacy of using force, offensive strategies in, 53; and risking of upper-middle-class soldiers, 42, 43t legitimacy of sacrificing, interaction between legitimacy of using force and, 7, 11, 29, 33, 37–39, 40t, 229– 231; as constraint of fire policy, 225; four types of death hierarchy resulting from, 42–43, 43t; general applicability of, 233–235 legitimacy of sacrificing, low: conditions leading to, 36; with high level of risk, types of conflicts in, 42–43, 43t; with low legitimacy of using force, defensive posture adopted in, 42, 43t, 90, 92, 118–119; with low level of risk, types of conflicts in, 42, 43t legitimacy of using force, 12–29; bottom-up pressure for action and, 121; Cold War decline in, 53; conditions for, 17–18; cultural-discursive variables in, 22–26; definition of, 13–18; dehumanization of enemies and, 23–24, 125–126, 145–146, 230; and deliberation, crippling of,

Index

227; domestic legitimacy, 12, 14; elite consensus and, 26, 204, 227; exchange legitimacy, 23; and gap of legitimacies syndrome, 37–38; global norms and, 20–21, 95, 122; ingrained components of, 18–21, 227–228; interaction of ingrained and dynamic components of, 28–29; international legitimacy, 12; vs. justification, 12, 17; legal and policy variables affecting, 21–22; level of threat and, 229; as most flexible, 225; as multilayered concept, 16– 17, 28, 229; in offensive vs. defensive uses, 13–14; policymakers’ efforts to increase, 227–228; political culture as factor in, 15–16, 166; vs. public opinion, 12, 16, 17; relevance to initiation, duration, and level of force, 14; scholarship on, 12–13; and shaping of military policy, 42, 42f; as socially constructed norm, 13; vs. strategic culture, 16; and strategies for diminishing responsibility, 24–25; structural variables in, 26–28; and structuring of death hierarchy, 42, 42f; as subjective political judgment, 13, 14–15, 19–20; subjective vs. objective approaches to, 15; trust as component of, 23; varying degrees of license for endangering noncombatants, 14 legitimacy of using force, dynamic components in, 21–28, 227–229; interaction of, 28, 228; interaction with ingrained components, 28–29 legitimacy of using force, high: and high legitimacy of sacrificing,

301

offensive strategies in, 53; and policymakers’ freedom of action, 90, 225; and shifting of risk, 90 legitimacy of using force, interaction between legitimacy of sacrificing and, 7, 11, 29, 33, 37–39, 40t, 229–231; as constraint of fire policy, 225; four types of death hierarchy resulting from, 42–43, 43t; general applicability of, 233–235 legitimacy of using force, low, with low legitimacy of sacrificing, defensive posture adopted in, 90, 92 level of force, factors affecting legitimacy of, 14 liberalism, and legitimacy of sacrificing, decline in, 31, 32, 71 lower classes: early exclusion from military, 53; predominance in volunteer force, 3; risking of, in mid-level legitimacy of sacrificing, 42, 43t lower classes, shifting of military service burden to, 52, 72–73; and casualty sensitivity, 92, 230; and Iraq War opposition, 100; and isolation of military from general public, 100, 101, 102; in Israel, 59–60. See also social realignment of militaries market society, and decline of legitimacy of sacrificing, 9, 32, 61, 62, 70, 71, 96, 97, 229 McChrystal, Stanley, 163, 203–205, 207–210, 212–217, 222 media: as constraint on use of force, 20; and legitimacy of using force, 16

302

Index

medical advances: and changed perception of mortality, 71; and risk reduction, 45 methodological gaps in hierarchy of risk research, 5–7 methodology of this study, 40–41 military: depoliticization of, and obstruction of debate, 26; dissident activity within, and legitimacy of using force, 16; downsizing of, and casualty sensitivity syndrome, 32, 70–71 military factors affecting hierarchy of risk, 11 Military Families Against the War, 82–83 military policy: balance of legitimacy of force vs. legitimacy of sacrificing in, 7; changes in military variables and, 231; effect of two legitimacies on, 42, 42f, 230–231; gap of legitimacies and, 230–232; gaps between actual practice and, 238–239; mediation by interaction between two legitimacies, 42, 42f Milošević, Slobodan, 125, 127, 141, 145 mission change, and risk reduction, 45 modern weapons: and criticism of violence against enemy noncombatants, 122; and increased likelihood of using force, 27–28; and legitimacy of sacrificing, 73; and policymakers’ freedom of action, 150; and shift of burden to tax-paying elite, 73; and shift of risk from soldiers to enemy civilians, 3, 9–10. See also drone warfare; precision weapons

motherhood, patriotic, Republican Iraq War discourse on, 195–196 NATO: and Operation Deliberate Force (1995), 129. See also Kosovo War; Operation Moshtarak (2010) neoconservatives: support for Iraq War, 97–98; on US global leadership, 93–94; and war on terrorism, 98 Netherlands, and legitimacy of using force, 19 1973 War: Israeli casualties in, 61; and Israeli legitimacy of sacrificing, 61; and Israeli legitimacy of using force, 57–58 1967 War, and Israel ethnonationalism, 56 noncombatant fatalities: balancing of risk to minimize, 2–3, 7, 123; as coercion to end conflict, 45; as consequence of fewer fire restrictions, 46; democracies and, 22, 45, 122–123, 234; disputes over reported levels of, 6–7; inevitability of, 135; and reduction of risk for own soldiers, 45; as result of motivations beyond risk transfer, 177–179; strategies for decreasing inclination for, 46; strategies for diminishing responsibility for, 24–25; underreporting of, as strategy to diminish responsibility, 24–25. See also distinction between combatants and noncombatants; risk transfer noncombatant immunity: balancing with other imperatives of conflict, 2–3, 7, 123; dehumanization of enemies and, 39, 145–146; as

Index

imperative in conflict, 2, 25; and international humanitarian law, 2; leveraging of casualty sensitivity to reduce, 38; post-Vietnam change in views on, 54; US counterinsurgency strategy and, 39; varying motives for failure to respect under republicanism, 53 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and IHL, pressuring of governments to support, 20 nonstate adversaries, and tension between three imperatives of conflict, 2 Obama, Barack: and Afghanistan War, 203, 204, 209, 210; and drone warfare, 147, 148, 149; and Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, 186 Odierno, Raymond, 197 Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and NATO airstrikes in Kosovo, 135, 138, 139 Operation Al-Fajr. See Fallujah campaign, second Operation Allied Force. See Kosovo War, NATO airstrikes in Operation Cast Lead (2008–2009): casualty data on, 168–169, 170; criticism of heavy noncombatant casualties in, 1; death hierarchy in, 182–183; dehumanization of Palestinians in, 181; events leading to, 167, 180–181; fatality ratios in, 170, 171, 171t, 231; goals of, 168, 170; international opinion as constraint on, 172, 182, 184; Israeli religionizing of conflict, 182; and Israeli risk sensitivity, 183; Israeli

303

risk transfer from soldiers to noncombatants in, 173–174, 183–184; legitimacy of sacrificing in, 180, 182–183; legitimacy of using force in, 180–182; noncombatant casualties in, 173; and pressure to achieve rapid victory, 173; public opinion on, 181, 183; rules of engagement in, 173–174; size of, 167–168; sterile zones created by warning citizens, 173; timing of, 181–182; UN investigation of, 183, 185, 188 Operation Charge of the Knights (2008), 88 Operation Defensive Shield (2002), 64–69; events leading to, 64–65; fatality ratios in, 67–68, 68t; and Gaza Strip, 69; Israeli legitimacy of using force in, 65; Israeli risking of upperclass soldiers, 67–68, 90; as largest operation in second Intifada, 54; legitimacy of sacrificing in, 65, 67, 89; minimum risk transfer in, 67–68, 68t; political damage to Israel from, 69; as response to Tel Aviv terror attack, 64–65; US response to, 69. See also Jenin, Battle of Operation Deliberate Force (1995), 129 Operation Moshtarak (2010), 202– 223; ANSF participation in, 202, 207; casualties in, 218; casualty data on, 218, 219–220; and casualty sensitivity, changes of policy due to, 216–218; death hierarchy in, 211; fatality ratios in, 218–223, 221t; focus on restraint in, 210; glorification of troops in, 206–207; goals

304

Index

of, 202–203, 204–205, 207, 208; increased troop strength in, 211; vs. Iraq War surge, 203–204; legitimacy of sacrificing in, 209–211; legitimacy of sacrificing, for British forces, 210–211; legitimacy of using force in, 203–209; legitimacy of using force, for British forces, 206–207; limited success of, 214; location of, 202; noncombatant casualties, 212, 213–214, 216, 218; number of troops in, 202, 213; parallel more aggressive operations, 205; phase I (clearing operation), 212–213; phase II (hold operation), 213; and promise of withdrawal, 209, 217; risk transfer in, 218, 223; and suppression of antiwar activism, 210; tactics in, 212 Operation Moshtarak, as counterinsurgency effort, 203, 204–205, 211–212; change in policy to reduce risk, 216–218; and increased risk, 207–213; and re-risking of soldiers, 223 Operation Moshtarak, rules of engagement in, 208–209; Petraeus’s changes in, 215–218; troop frustration with, 214–215 Operation Phantom Fury. See Fallujah campaign, second Operation Pillar of Defense (2012), 168, 184 Operation Protective Edge (2014), 184–187; casualties in, 184; casualty data on, 168–169, 170–171; ceasefire in, 168, 175, 178, 186; death hierarchy in, 185–186, 187; death

ratios in, 170, 171t; events leading to, 168, 184–185; fatality ratios in, 173; goals of, 168, 170; Hamas use of human shields in, 175, 176; high noncombatant casualties in, 1; international opinion as constraint on, 172, 185, 186; Israeli denials of risk transfer, 189; Israeli risk transfer from soldiers to noncombatants, 173–176, 186–187, 188–189; legitimacy of sacrificing in, 184, 185–186, 187; legitimacy of using force in, 185–186, 187; limited domestic opposition to, 187; public opinion on, 185, 186; Rafah rescue operation in, 175; social composition of Israeli casualties, 187; sterile zones created by warning citizens, 174–175 Operation Protective Edge, rules of engagement in, 174–175; gaps in field application of, 176, 188; gradual relaxing of, 1; lack of discrimination in, 186–187 Operation Sinbad (2006–07): British lack of risk transfer in, 88, 89, 89t; British losses in, 85–86; British losses, and acceleration of withdrawal, 85–87, 90; and British minimum force counterinsurgency strategy, 84–85, 87; British mission aversion in, 42, 43t; British withdrawal, 87–88; as counterinsurgency effort, 74; death hierarchy in, 84, 87; early successes in, 85; failure of, 87–88; fatality ratios in, 88, 89t; goals of, 77, 84; Iraqi government constraints on, 80, 87; minimal

Index

British forces committed to, 79–80, 85, 86 Operation Sinbad, legitimacy of sacrificing, 81–84, 88; antiwar activism and, 82–83; British focus on withdrawal and, 83, 86; constraints on government action from, 89; decline, with increased casualties, 82, 86–87, 88; low levels of, 79–80; mechanisms offsetting decline of, 83–84 Operation Sinbad, legitimacy of using force in, 77–81, 88; British Army views on, 79–80; British focus on withdrawal and, 78, 79, 80; low levels of, 79–80; mechanisms offsetting legitimacy deficit, 80–81; shift in public opinion and, 78–79 Operation Summer Rains (2006): casualty data on, 168–169; events leading to, 113–114, 167; fatality ratios in, 170, 171, 171t; goals of, 168; legitimacy of sacrificing in, 180; legitimacy of using force in, 179–180; size of, 167 Operation Vigilant Resolve. See Fallujah campaign, first Operation Zenith, 86 Oslo Accords (1993–1995), 58, 112 Pakistan, US drone warfare in, 146– 150; and avoidance of using ground troops, 147; as CIA-controlled operation, 147, 148; death hierarchy in, 151; decline in, 149; discrimination as issue in, 147; noncombatant deaths from, 147, 148; Pakistan’s cooperation with, 148; and

305

policymakers’ freedom of action, 149–150; public support for, 148– 149; and strategic risk transfer, 147, 151–152; strategies for legitimizing of, 147–149; suppression of public deliberation on, 147, 148, 150; and US casualty sensitivity, 148, 151; US response to criticisms of, 149 Palestinian Authority, 59 Palestinians: Israeli attacks on, and Israeli sense of victimhood, 55; Israeli characterization as terrorists, 59. See also first Intifada; Gaza; second Intifada Parents Against Silence, 62 Petraeus, David, 191, 193, 198, 215, 216, 221–224, 228 Petraeus doctrine, 191 policymakers’ freedom of action: drone warfare and, 149–150; legitimacy of sacrificing and, 32, 33, 227–228, 230–231; legitimacy of using force and, 90, 225 political culture, as factor in legitimacy of using force, 15–16, 18–19 population protection, as justification for use of force, 22 post-9/11 wars: international legitimacy of use of force and, 21; legitimacy of using force as issue in, 12 Powell doctrine, 23, 198 precision weapons: and extension of war over time, 152; Gulf War and, 129; as incentive for enemy to use civilian human shields, 152; and legitimacy of using force, 230–231; and legitimacy of using force in NATO Kosovo intervention, 128,

306

Index

129, 142, 144, 151; limited precision of, 152–153; and lowering of threshold of war, 149–150, 152; and noncombatant deaths, classification as unintentional, 123; and reduced threshold for attacking civilian areas, 152; as strategy to diminish responsibility for noncombatant casualties, 25. See also modern weapons proportionality: in combatant vs. noncombatant deaths, 48–49; and NATO airstrikes in Kosovo, 140; as subjective political concept, 48–49 public opinion, and legitimacy of using force, 16, 17 race and ethnicity, and hierarchy of risk, 3 recruitment policies: as indication of hierarchy of risk, 5; variations in, as indication of death hierarchy, 41. See also conscription military; volunteer military Reifler, Jason, 32–33, 95, 194, 229 republican exchange: and citizen-soldier institution, 30; disruption of, in Israel, 61–62, 63; and legitimacy of sacrificing, 30 republicanism: decline of, 32, 35; legitimacy of sacrificing in, 35, 53, 71; upper-middle-class burden of military service in, 52–53 reserve units, and upper-middle-class casualty aversion, 60, 65, 72–73, 115, 118 Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA): and casualty aversion, 71, 73; delay in effect of, 91; Gulf War and, 129;

and IDF, 59; and noncombatant immunity, 54; and reduction of collateral casualties, 6; varying implementations of, 11. See also modern weapons; precision weapons Rice, Condoleezza, 194, 196 risk assessment: militaries’ methods for, 44; as ongoing process during conflict, 44 risk aversion: by Israel in Battle of Jenin, 115; US forward operating bases (FOBs) in Iraq as, 106–112, 119–120. See also force protection risk level, low, and low level of legitimacy of sacrificing, types of conflicts in, 42, 43t risk transfer: analytic gaps in research on, 3–5; aversion to sacrificing and, 4; as cost externalization, 123; direct forms of, 124; and discrimination, 49; effect on all groups in system, 7, 11; and fatality ratio between soldiers and noncombatants, 124; indirect forms of, 123–124; as legal and political question, 140; methodological gaps in research on, 5–7, 44; militaries’ responsibility for policies on, 44–45; moral aspects of, 8; and proportionality, violation of, 49; strategic, 124, 154–155; tactical, 124–125, 154. See also fatality ratio(s); specific conflicts risk transfer, from own soldiers to enemy noncombatants, 121, 233; balance of, 2–3, 7, 123; in condition of low legitimacy of sacrificing and high legitimacy of force, 42–43, 43t; low legitimacy of sacrificing and,

Index

122–123. See also fatality ratio between state’s own soldiers and enemy noncombatants; specific conflicts risk transfer, from own soldiers to own civilians: force protection as, 43t, 92; political costs of, 121 risk transfer, identification of, 235; analysis of practices in, 51; and fatality ratio between enemy noncombatants and total enemy fatalities, 48–50; and fatality ratio between own noncombatants and enemy noncombatants, 50; and fatality ratio of own soldiers and enemy combatants, 45–46; and fatality ratio of own soldiers and enemy noncombatants, 46–48; necessity of comparing multiple death ratios for, 50–51; potential fatality ratios, and meanings, 235–239, 236t–237t; use of fatality ratios for, 44 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 234 RMA. See Revolution in Military Affairs second Intifada (2000–2005): Gaza unrest in, 112–114; Israeli death hierarchy in, 64; Israeli legitimacy of using force in, 58–61, 227; and Israeli shifting of risk to lower classes, 64; Palestinian use of firepower in, 58; social composition of Israeli casualties vs. First Lebanon War, 64; and terror attacks on Israel civilians, 58. See also Operation Defensive Shield (2002) Second Lebanon War (2006): and antiwar protests, 116–117; and international pressure, 115; Israeli death

307

hierarchy in, 116; Israeli fatalities in, 116; and Israeli legitimacy of sacrificing, 63, 116, 117; and Israeli legitimacy of using force, 115; Israeli mission aversion in, 116; use of lower-class soldiers in, 116 Sharon, Ariel, 58, 113 Shaw, Martin, 3–4, 6, 25, 76, 124, 146, 225 Sheehan, Cindy, 105–106, 107, 192, 195 Shirreff, Richard, 79–80, 85, 86, 87 shock and awe tactics, legitimacy of sacrificing and, 73 Shuvi: Women for Withdrawal from Gaza, 114 Smith, Thomas, 5, 124, 155, 159 social realignment of militaries: delay in effect of, 91; high casualty sensitivity despite, 91; IDF and, 59–60, 63, 64; in response to declining legitimacy of sacrificing, 35, 72. See also lower classes, shifting of military service burden to Soldiers Against Silence, 34, 62 soldiers of one’s own, protection of: balancing with other imperatives of conflict, 2–3; as imperative in conflict, 2. See also casualty sensitivity syndrome; risk transfer Somalia, US mission in (1993): and US casualty sensitivity, 32, 96, 130, 141; US risk shifting in, 176 South Lebanon, war of attrition in (1982–1985), 61; casualties in, 57, 61; and Israeli legitimacy of sacrificing, 61; and Israeli legitimacy of using force, 57; Israeli withdrawal, 63

308

Index

South Lebanon security zone, Israeli conflict in (1985–2000), 63; and antiwar movement, 62–63; Israeli casualties in, 62–63; and Israeli legitimacy of sacrificing, 62–63; Israeli withdrawal in 2000, 63; and shifting of risk to lower classes, 63. See also First Lebanon War; Second Lebanon War sovereignty principle, and imperative to protect one’s citizens, 2 Soviet Union, and RMA, 11 strategic culture: and hierarchy of risk, 11; and legitimacy of using force, 19–20 Sweden, and legitimacy of using force, 19 technology, use in war, and legitimacy of sacrificing, 34, 35. See also modern weapons; precision weapons threat level: decline of, and reduced size of military, 70; discursive inflation of, 22–23; and legitimacy of sacrificing, 33, 39, 70; post-Cold War decline, and decline of legitimacy of sacrificing, 32, 33, 42, 43t, 70; and selection of missions, 23 Treaty of Westphalia (1648), 19 troop conduct, and legitimacy of using force, 16, 17, 18 United Nations: and Afghanistan War, 203; Human Rights Council, on Fallujah campaigns, 166; investigation of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, 1, 185, 188; and Iraq War, 75, 77–78, 99, 103–104; and Kosovo

War, 125–126; and NATO intervention in Kosovo War, 125–126, 150; Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, 222 United States: and American exceptionalism, 93–94; casualty aversion, dehumanization of enemy and, 226; and citizenship, divorce from soldiering, 97; cultural militarism of, 93; and deliberation, suppression of, 227; drone use by, 147; and gap between legitimacies, 231; legitimacy of sacrificing, 37, 95–97; legitimacy of using force, 19, 20, 22, 28–29, 92–95, 227; and logic of efficiency in conflict, 22; military institutions, dominance of, 94, 97; and myth of US as force for good, 93; offensive strategy before Cold War, 53; political culture of, 19, 20, 22, 28–29; reasons for focus on, 40–41; and risk transfer, 231; and RMA, 11; and technology, belief in, 94; use of force to defend interests, 94 United States military: focus on quick results from overwhelming force, 94–95; and normative levels of collateral damage with precision weapons, 95; willingness to transfer risk to noncombatants, 94. See also volunteer military, US upper-middle class: burden of military service on, in republicanism, 52–53, 54; casualty aversion of, 60, 65, 72–73, 115, 118; historical shifting of military service burden from, 52, 72–73; larger representation in conscription military, 3; risking of,

Index

in high legitimacy of sacrificing, 42, 43t; in US, resistance to Vietnam War, 37 Vietnam War: African American death rate in, 100; antiwar movements’ effect on military policies, 34; and collateral damage as term, 25; and cooperation of in-service and civilian resistance, 16; death rates, by social class, 102; draft as source of opposition to, 103; and drop in US tolerance for targeting of noncombatants, 20, 41; intentional targeting of civilian populations in, 95; and legitimacy of sacrificing, decline of, 31, 41; and noncombatant immunity, changed views on, 54; US ignoring of international humanitarian law in, 95; and US legitimacy of sacrificing, 95 violence, state monopoly on use of, 2, 12 volunteer military: increased legitimacy of sacrificing in, 35; and legitimacy of using force, 227, 230; lower resistance to use of force by, 27; NATO intervention in Kosovo and, 129, 143, 151; predominance of lower classes in, 3; and reduction of citizen input into policy, 26–27; rewards used to motivate, 35; shift of burden from middle class to lower classes,

309

35; turn to, 70; and vocationalization of armed forces, 73 volunteer military, US: and blunting of Iraq War antiwar activism, 192–193, 196; and glamorization of military, 93; increased minority participation in, 100; lower-class death rates in, 100; and lowered threshold for war, 101; and mitigation of casualty sensitivity, 97; predominance of conservatives in, 192–193; and shifting of responsibility for war, 196 Walzer, Michael, 131, 141, 152 war on terrorism: and infringements on civil liberties, 99; as justification for Iraq War, 97, 98, 104, 108, 120; and legitimacy of using force, 227; and US remilitarization, 99 Weber, Max, 2, 13, 15 Weinberger doctrine, 23 Western way of war, and reduction of collateral casualties, 6 Winograd Committee, 117 World War I, legitimacy of sacrificing in, 31 World War II: Battle of Normandy, 234; changed criteria for legitimacy of using force following, 20; and legitimacy of sacrificing, decline of, 31 Yemen, drone warfare in, 147