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This study examines contemporary counter-insurgency (COIN) warfare in terms of military ethics. The intention is to reflect upon the changing face of COIN conduct in the light of serious ethical challenges resulting from modern trends affecting combatant status, and the deployment of military force in a multipurpose framework. It shall engage with what many commentators have termed the 'grey area' of the Just War tradition: the ambiguous and challenging interim zone that lies in between the more clearly defined forms of COIN conduct. The resultant analysis shall suggest the need for a more nuanced form of ethical conduct, orientated around restraint, more flexible discriminatory principles and a proportionality framework closer to domestic policing than formal warfare. In particular, this analysis suggests that by hybridizing the military imperative with the policing model of the continuum of force a more effective, less vague and more ethically coherent construct can be produced. By embracing these concepts, military practitioners may overcome ambiguous and unhelpful moral guidance and tailor their conduct more closely to the challenges of the contemporary COIN environment. Such actions will assure they act as justly as possible in the face of 'grey area' ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Operation Motorman – the ending of the ‘no-go’ areas in Belfast and Londonderry – was one the biggest deployments of British forces since 1945, yet few analysts have grasped its enduring significance. This article argues that Motorman helped break the vicious circle of violence and atrocity that characterised the most violent years of the early troubles. In hindsight we can see that the aftermath of the operation irrevocably altered the strategic setting in Northern Ireland that, in time, enabled constitutional unionism and nationalism to slowly become more tractable towards each other. While Motorman can in no sense be regarded as the proximate cause of the current Northern Ireland peace process, it can be argued that in removing the most important factor that made the IRA a potent threat, Motorman shattered the IRA's military bargaining strategy, the long-term effect of which was eventually to propel the republican movement down a path that would ultimately lead it to question the value of its armed struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The provision of Military Assistance to the Civil Powers (MACP) encapsulates the traditional approach towards countering terrorism on the British mainland, which emphasises minimum force, proportionality, police primacy and the rule of law, with the military retained as a supporting instrument, being employed only as a measure of last resort. Recent terrorist incidents in major urban centres do, however, question the effectiveness of these established methods. This analysis initially codifies the conceptual issues that underscore the tensions between civil policing and military anti-terrorist approaches in the UK, and proceeds to evaluate and compare a number of operations that indicate the nature of the challenges facing the MACP apparatus. In particular, potential shortcomings in the MACP provisions are identified in the form of threat perception and deployment and enforcement gaps. The assessment finds that there are facets of MACP that are of enduring relevance in the current era, yet a continuing need persists to reconcile police and military imperatives toward serious civil disorder contingencies and conditions of emergency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to lay out a comprehensive framework by which those who utilize a campaign of strategic terrorism seek to attain their ends. It identifies a distinctive modus operandi: 1) disorientation: to alienate the authorities from their citizens, reducing the government to impotence in the eyes of the population; 2) target response: to induce a target to respond in a manner that is favorable to the insurgent cause; 3) gaining legitimacy: to exploit the emotional impact of the violence to insert an alternative political message. By elucidating the strategy of terrorism, the analysis also reveals its inherent limitations. Resting on the premise that a militarily more powerful adversary will in some way feel restrained from bringing the full force of its military superiority to bear, the strategy relies exclusively on the exploitation of the psychological effects of armed action, thereby rendering it vulnerable to those who are willing to view the resolution of clashes of interest principally in terms of the tangibles of military power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a conceptual critique of "remote warfare." It argues that "remote warfare" is more of a trendy term than a robust concept. In support of this assessment, this paper makes two arguments. First, that there is a lack of clarity in the debate over what "remote warfare" is: namely, the literature is yet to explain what it entails. Second, that because of this lack of definitional specificity, we also lack an account of its analytical value: what intellectual leverage does it hold over existing terms making similar claims? The article discusses these points by expanding on the notion of "semantic field," which it uses to assess how "remote warfare" contributes and is shaped by the broader conceptual confusion in the study of contemporary war and warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teotihuacan in the northeastern Basin of Mexico was an unusually large and influential early city and state. This article reviews recent research trends in Teotihuacan from its founding and explosive growth ca. 100 BC into the largest city in Mesoamerica. Biogenetics provide details of how immigration fueled the city's growth and shaped its multiethnic composition and link Teotihuacan to other parts of the central highlands and more distant regions. Urban theory highlights the importance of neighborhoods and how their composition changed. Collective aspects of irrigation, markets, warfare and the military, and ideology encouraged the development of Teotihuacan's corporate governance. Although Teotihuacan politically dominated central Mexico, its control over the regional economy was not as centralized. Beyond its hinterland, Teotihuacan's foreign relations were a mosaic of trade diasporas, diplomatic exchanges, pilgrimages, emulation, and strategic direct interventions of limited duration. As its foreign influence retracted, Teotihuacan faced challenges from its hinterlands and intermediate elites and factions that culminated in the burning and desecration of the urban center. The Epiclassic saw the change from Teotihuacan's regional state to city-states and confederations. Although much reduced in size, Postclassic Teotihuacan retained an enormous legacy that subsequent states sought for their historical validation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period from 1983 to 1992 witnessed an intensification of the state use of the Special Air Services (SAS) in the deployment of the "set piece" killing tactic in Northern Ireland against the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a separatist insurgent group embroiled in political conflict in the region. The vast majority of these "set piece" killings occurred within the geographical confines of the East Tyrone region and were directed at the IRA's East Tyrone Brigade. This article will argue that the use of the "set piece" tactic in East Tyrone was a deliberate security policy choice. In doing so, this article interrogates the political and military value that the tactic had for the state and security forces. This article will identify how and why the tactic came to be implemented in East Tyrone when it did, and why the area appears to have borne the brunt of the tactic while other hotbeds of IRA activity were not targeted in a similar manner. Locating this research in the broader realms of British counter-insurgency it will evaluate what contribution the tactic made to the containment of IRA activity in the East Tyrone area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution is concerned with the manner in which current dominant security narratives intersect with discourses of imperialism and post-imperialism with regard to the post-Cold War dominance of the United States, and more specifically with the way in which such discourses create both moral justification and enabling conditions for Western interventionism. By addressing the relationship between the narrative of the ‘new war’ and the return of the ‘Good War’, this essay argues that the new war theory has not only been used to describe, explain and excuse western intervention but that, through de-politicizing, de-contextualizing and criminalizing non-western warfare, the new war theory has helped to create the conditions that support the ‘war on terror’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]