Intelligence Gap: Advanced Military Technology and Law of War Compliance

Many states justify their use of technology and tactics as consistent with international law. These appeals to legitimacy suggest that legal norms serve some role in limiting the use of force, particularly in promoting discrimination between combatants and civilians. The United States justifies drone attacks as more efficient means than the use of troops to attack suspected terrorists. Many civilian and military leaders argue that these attacks are more moral than alternative tactics because they target the individuals directly responsible for attacks on the United States and its allies. However, these justifications assume that the military has accurate intelligence. However, in Afghanistan, the military has killed many civilians in misdirected attacks. Why do civilian and military leaders contend that they have accurate intelligence when the empirical record shows that often information is erroneous and leads to unnecessary destruction and civilian casualties? To answer this question, I will focus on the U.S. use of drone attacks in Afghanistan. I will first evaluate civilian and military leaders’ justification of the use of targeted killings. What are their public justifications? I hypothesize that arguments based on efficiency and morality presume that civilian and government authorities have good intelligence about their targets and their participation in terrorist acts. Then, I examine this assumption and test the reliability of this evidence. I suspect, as Richard Betts has long argued, that intelligence failures are inevitable, and that intelligence is always going to have a margin of error. Finally, I ask how states have calculated the benefits of a policy of drone attacks in light of the costs of seemingly indiscriminate damage and non-combatant deaths. Is the policy of drone attacks really as moral and efficient as its proponents argue? I suspect that this tactic does lead to a short-term decrease in violence, but in the long run increases antagonism and anti-American violence

The Other Forgotten War: Understanding Atrocities during the Malayan Emergency

In this chapter, I briefly outline the dependent variable in this case, the various units actively engaged in combat in Malaya between 1948 and 1952. I then explore the most common explanations for the Scots Guards’ actions and reveal why they are not helpful in explaining why other units did not similarly kill civilians. To better understand this variation, I explore three alternative explanations: Did the military socialize units in the laws of war and appropriate behavior toward civilians? Did government leaders encourage units to kill civilians? Finally, did different units’ subcultures make them more likely to kill civilians? I find that while the British military and senior leaders did not adequately socialize units to accept the laws of war, some junior leaders were able to discipline their units and prevent participation in war crimes. Some junior leaders, however, refused to enforce organizational norms and supported a countercultural subculture that resisted tactical innovation and may have contributed to the unit’s participation in war crimes

The Dark Side of the Band of Brothers: Explaining Unit Participation in War Crimes

On July 25, 1950, an American infantry unit killed a large number of refugees near the South Korean village of No Gun Ri. On December 12, 1948, a British patrol killed twenty-five civilians near the Malayan village of Batang Kali. On March 16, 1993, members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment beat a Somali teenager to death. While each of these events is horrific, they also represent only one side of the story; many units in these conflicts, facing similar threats, did not kill civilians. This variation raises a critical question: why do some units participate in war crimes while others do not? To answer this question, I tested three explanations: socialization in the laws of war, civilian influence, and unit subcultures. First, I examined the military\u27s training and enforcement of the laws of war to test whether socialization could explain this variation. Second, I analyzed the influence of civilian leaders. If they exaggerate the importance of a conflict or dehumanize the enemy, units may be more likely to participate in war crimes. Third, I examined the role of unit subcultures. Units may develop beliefs that challenge organizational norms and encourage participation in war crimes. I tested these arguments in case studies of the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, and the Canadian peacekeeping mission in Somalia. Each conflict provides variation in outcomes: some military units complied with the laws of war and others did not. Based on extensive archival research, I reached three conclusions. First, while the American, British and Canadian militaries as institutions inadequately trained soldiers in the laws of war, junior leaders could compensate and insure compliance with international law. Second, I found that civilian signaling had little effect. In these cases, soldiers did not trust the statements of civilian leaders. Third, my research revealed that countercultural subcultures may increase the likelihood that units will participate in war crimes. These countercultural subcultures seem to have the greatest effect when junior leaders support them or when junior leaders cannot control the unit. In this case, junior leaders efforts to impose control fuel the in-group-out-group dynamic that strengthens the subculture

Are We Teaching them Anything?: A Model for Measuring Methodology Skills in the Political Science Major

While the literature emphasizes the importance of teaching political science students methods skills, there currently exists little guidance for how to assess student learning over the course of their time in the major. To address this gap, we develop a model set of assessment tools that may be adopted and adapted by political science departments to evaluate the effect of their own methods instruction. The model includes a syllabi analysis, evaluation of capstone (senior) papers, and a transcript analysis. We apply these assessment tools to our own department to examine whether students demonstrate a range of basic-to-advanced methodological skills. Our results support the conclusion that students at our institution are learning methodological skills, but that there is room for improvement. Additionally, the results support others’ conclusions regarding the importance of an integrative approach to methods instruction. For those in the discipline seeking to understand the effect of methods instruction on student performance, this model can be easily replicated to assess student learning

The Drunkard\u27s Search: Student Evaluation in Assessing Teaching Effectiveness

As social scientists, we understand the problem of the Drunkard\u27s Search -- the lure and perils of using easy-to-obtain but irrelevant data -- yet we are employed by institutions that are clearly searching under the lamppost for data to use in employment decisions. Researchers from various disciplines have studied and lamented the biases inherent in student course evaluations. Studies have found that these evaluations show systematic bias against women and people of color. They also may mask poor teaching practices as they are better measures of popularity than teaching effectiveness. Each year another study is released, leading to momentary hand wringing about the weakness of course evaluations as a means of assessing faculty and warning against their use in tenure and promotion decisions. Rather than adopting alternative means of evaluating faculty teaching and thinking creatively about student feedback, administrators and faculty leaders default to these surveys, claiming there is no other way to collect data on teaching. These course surveys continue to be used despite the mounting evidence that they provide not only no evidence of teaching effectiveness, but bad evidence that does damage to faculty both directly and indirectly. In an effort to raise the profile of these discussions and push for tangible change, we offer a comprehensive literature review of the existing research on student course evaluations and their biases

Report of Faculty and Academic Affairs Staff Responses to IEJ FFPP Survey on Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In November 2021, the Joint Faculty Senate (JFS) Committees on Inclusion, Equity, and Justice (IEJ) and Family Friendly Policies and Practices (FFPP) administered a survey to assess faculty and Academic Affairs staff members’ experiences during the pandemic and to inform future recommendations for policy responses to crisis that are both family friendly and advance inclusion, equity, and justice for faculty and staff. IEJ and FFPP worked to collect a large sample of respondents. The Joint Faculty Assembly (JFA) Chair and Vice Chair sent the survey to the Official Announcements - CSB/SJU Faculty list three times. The survey was also sent to the AcademicAffairs@CSB/SJU.edu list. The survey was posted on the Teams for all librarians and shared twice in the Buzz. Members of the IEJ and FFPP shared it with Academics Affairs staff and asked them to share it with their colleagues. 143 people responded to the survey–41 staff and 102 faculty. This sample includes 41% of tenure/tenure track faculty, 10.5% of term/adjunct faculty, 41% of Academic Affairs administrative staff and 27% of Academic Affairs support staff. The survey results reflect the perspectives of respondents who chose to complete the survey

Military Interventions, War Crimes, and Protecting Civilians

War crimes have devastating effects on victims and perpetrators and endanger broader political and military goals. The protection of civilians, one of the most fundamental norms in the laws of war, appears to have weakened despite almost universal international agreement. Using insights from organizational theory, this book seeks to understand the process between military socialization and unit participation in war crimes. How do militaries train their soldiers in the laws of war? How do they enforce compliance with these laws? Drawing on evidence from the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, and the Canadian peacekeeping mission in Somalia, the author discovers that military efforts to train soldiers about the laws of war are poor and leadership often sent mixed signals about the importance of compliance. However, units that developed subcultures that embraced these laws and had strong leadership were more likely to comply than those with weak discipline or countercultural norms.https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/polsci_books/1026/thumbnail.jp

Martin Luther King and the Post-Colonial Movement

This presentation will raise attention to MLK\u27s role in supporting post-colonial and self-determination movements around the world