32503
Advanced Seminar
SoSe 15: Targeted Killing in US Foreign Policy
Mathias Großklaus
Comments
Beyond the Drone: Targeted Killing in US Foreign Policy
Against the backdrop of the Obama administration’s propensity to use armed drones in the “War on Terror”, debates about the morality and legality of targeted killings are more topical than ever. Despite their omnipresence in those debates, this seminar aims to move beyond the drone in a number of ways: We will untie policy from technology and analyze the subject matter “targeted killing” as a specific form of violence and illuminate how it is used, legitimized and regulated. We will situate it within the broader history of assassination as an instrument of foreign policy and trace its changing ethical status: from a widely accepted practice in pre-modern times, to the eventual emergence and codification of an “assassination taboo” in the early 20th century, to its recent weakening in the wake of the “War on Terror”. Building on those insights, we will explore how this case helps us theorize about the use and regulation of violence on the international level. We will raise questions about concepts like power, norms, security and sovereignty and carve out how they enable us to draw comparisons to related cases like the use of torture and the proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons.
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14 Class schedule
Regular appointments
Wed, 2015-04-15 14:00 - 16:00
Wed, 2015-04-22 14:00 - 16:00
Wed, 2015-04-29 14:00 - 16:00
Wed, 2015-05-06 14:00 - 16:00
Wed, 2015-05-13 14:00 - 16:00
Wed, 2015-05-20 14:00 - 16:00
Wed, 2015-05-27 14:00 - 16:00
Wed, 2015-06-03 14:00 - 16:00
Wed, 2015-06-10 14:00 - 16:00
Wed, 2015-06-17 14:00 - 16:00
Wed, 2015-06-24 14:00 - 16:00
Wed, 2015-07-01 14:00 - 16:00
Wed, 2015-07-08 14:00 - 16:00
Wed, 2015-07-15 14:00 - 16:00