Six Theses on Targeted Killing
| Published date | 01 June 2012 |
| Date | 01 June 2012 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.2012.01434.x |
| Author | Kyle Grayson |
| Subject Matter | Special Section – Politics and War: Ethics, Opinion and Logics |
Special Section – Politics and War: Ethics,
Opinion and Logics
Six Theses on Targeted Killingponl_1434120..128
Kyle Grayson
Newcastle University
This article presents six theses on targeted killing as a form of political violence. These explore the
power relations, lawfare, scopic regimes, forms of spatial management and symbolic communica-
tions which suggest that the practice of targeted killing arises from the failures of the Western global
counter-insurgency campaign to achieve its aims. Therefore, rather than demonstrating omni-
science and omnipotence, targeted killing is indicative of the Western position of weakness in the
wars of ‘the colonial present’.
Introduction
Targeted killing can be defined as the intentional selection, targeting and execution
of an individual – not held in physical custody – by a state for military, political or
security purposes (Melzer, 2008, pp. 3–4). It is a specific type of ‘assassination event’
that has been enabled by the logics of contemporary counter-insurgency and
technological developments which now provide the capability to survey, target
and exterminate specific individuals from afar (Ben-Yehuda, 1990; Carpenter and
Shaikhouni, 2011). Thus, within the current context of global counter-insurgency,
it is the prominence of technologically sophisticated weapons systems like the
MQ-1 Predator, the MQ-9 Reaper, as well as other aerial-based platforms and
long-range weapons used by the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel that
are most closely associated with this type of assassination event. Thus, the targeted
killings facilitated by these specific technologies – the focus of this article – may
function differently symbolically as well as within official political discourses and
popular understandings in comparison to other types of assassination (which have
a specific legal meaning in humanitarian law with regards to the commissioning of
treachery and perfidy), political executions, extrajudicial killings and state-initiated
disappearances (Grayson, 2012).
To date, much of the literature that examines assassination events has been empiri-
cally rich with regards to the who, where, what, why and how regarding these acts
of killing at the expense of examining how the concept has been socially embedded
across time and space (Bowyer-Bell, 1972 and 2005; Laucella, 1999). Others have
offered historically detailed accounts of how assassination events have related to
specific political contexts but have done so by aligning the political with whatever
counts as the formal sphere of institutional politics at a given time (see Ford, 1985;
bs_bs_banner
POLITICS: 2012 VOL 32(2), 120–128
© 2012 The Author.Politics © 2012 Political Studies Association
To continue reading
Request your trial