From ‘Butcher and Bolt’ to ‘Blugsplat’: Race, Counterinsurgency, and International Politics

Abstract

Beginning in the early 2000s, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan revived interest among security studies scholars in counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare. Yet most studies of COIN in mainstream security studies have not explored the role of race, despite the fact that the principles of COIN warfare were developed during the colonial period when racialized visions dominated world politics. We argue that mainstream security scholars tend to overlook race for two interconnected reasons: first, they treat race as an emotional and interpersonal phenomenon, and second, they assume that racial hostility will manifest in intense and indiscriminate violence. We argue instead that race should be understood as a particular kind of social ontology, one that places human communities into socially reductionist hierarchies based on assumed bio-cultural traits. We then examine how different kinds of racial ontologies were used in the colonial period to develop different kinds of COIN doctrines, whether punitive or paternalistic in character. We demonstrate how these different racialized COIN frameworks informed state practices on the battlefield through a comparative illustration of two COIN campaigns: Britain on the “North-West frontier” of India in the late nineteenth century and the United States along the “Af-Pak border” in the early twenty-first century.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Duncan Bell, Zoltán Búzás, Neta Crawford, Bianca Freeman, Naima Green-Riley, Ronald Krebs, Richard Maass, Nivi Manchanda, Joseph Parent, Brian Rathbun, Jack Snyder, Ari Weil, and the editor and anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on previous drafts.

Notes

1 See Ivan Arreguín-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Jason Lyall and Isiah Wilson, “Rage Against the Machines: Explaining Outcomes in Counter-insurgency Wars,” International Organization 63, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 67–106; and Paul K. MacDonald, “‘Retribution Must Succeed Rebellion’: The Colonial Origins of Counterinsurgency Failure,” International Organization 67, no. 2 (April 2013): 253–86.

2 See Daniel Byman, “‘Death Solves All Problems’: The Authoritarian Model of Counterinsurgency,” Journal of Strategic Studies 39, no. 1 (2016): 62–93; and David H. Ucko, “‘The People are Revolting’: An Anatomy of Authoritarian Counterinsurgency,” Journal of Strategic Studies 39, no. 1 (2016): 29–61.

3 See John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of a New War of War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); and Jacqueline L. Hazelton, Bullets not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021).

4 See Benjamin Valentino, “Final Solutions: The Causes of Mass Killing and Genocide,” Security Studies 9, no. 3 (2000): 1–59.

5 See Aqil Shah, “Do U.S. Drone Strikes Cause Blowback? Evidence from Pakistan and Beyond,” International Security 42, no. 4 (2018): 47–84; and Daniel Byman, “White Supremacy, Terrorism, and the Failure of Reconstruction in the United States,” International Security 46, no. 1 (2021): 53–103.

6 See Laleh Khalili, “Gendered Practices of Counterinsurgency,” Review of International Studies 37, no. 4 (2011): 1471–91.

7 See Douglas Porch, “Bugeaud, Galliéni, Lyautey: The Development of French Colonial Warfare,” in Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Modern Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 376–407; and Thomas Rid, “The Nineteenth Century Origins of Counterinsurgency Doctrine,” Journal of Strategic Studies 33, no. 5 (2010): 727–58.

8 Richard J. Reid, “Revisiting Primitive War: Perceptions of Violence and Race in History,” War & Society 26, no. 2 (2007): 1–25; Daniel Whittingham, “‘Savage warfare’: C.E. Callwell, the roots of counter-insurgency, and the nineteenth century context,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 23, no. 4/5 (2012): 591–607; and Kim A. Wagner, “Savage Warfare: Violence and the Rule of Colonial Difference in Early British Counterinsurgency,” History Workshop Journal 85 (2018): 217–237.

9 Laleh Khalili, Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2013); Patricia Owens, Economy of Force: Counterinsurgency and the Historical Rise of the Social (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Joseph Darda, Empire of Defense: Race and the Cultural Politics of Permanent War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019); Somdeep Sen, “The Colonial Roots of Counter-Insurgencies in International Politics,” International Affairs 98, no. 1 (2022): 209–23; and deRaismes Combes, “Counterinsurgency in (un)changing times? Colonialism, Hearts and Minds, and the War on Terror,” International Relations 36, no. 4 (2022): 547–67.

10 David Betz, “Counter-insurgency, Victorian Style,” Survival 54, no. 4 (2012): 162.

11 Christian Tripodi, “Enlightened Pacification: Imperial Precedents for Current Stabilisation Operations,” Defence Studies 10, no. 1/2 (2010): 42.

12 See Errol A. Henderson, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism in International Relations Theory,” in Race and Racism in International Relations, ed. Alexander Anievas, Nivi Manchanda, and Robbie Shilliam (New York: Routledge, 2014), 19–43; Robert Vitalis, White World Order, Black Power Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2017); Robbie Shilliam, “Race and Racism in International Relations: Retrieving a Scholarly Inheritance,” International Politics Reviews, + 8, no. 2 (2020): 152–95; and Bianca Freeman, D.G. Kim, David A. Lake, “Race in International Relations: Beyond the ‘Norm Against Noticing,” Annual Review of Political Science 25, no. 1 (2022): 175–96.

13 See John M. Hobson, The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory, 1760–2010 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

14 For examples of studies that use SIT to explain racial dynamics, see Zoltan Búzás, “The Color of Threat: Race, Threat Perception, and the Demise of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance,” Security Studies 22, no. 4 (2013): 573–606; Stuart Kaufman, Nationalist Passions (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015), 40–47; and Steven Ward, “Race, Status, and Japanese Revisionism in the Early 1930s,” Security Studies 22, no. 4 (2013): 607–39.

15 Búzás, “The Color of Threat,” 579.

16 Kaufman, Nationalist Passions, 13, 16.

17 John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon 1987), 11.

18 Tanisha M. Fazal and Brooke C. Greene, “A Particular Difference: European Identity and Civilian Targeting,” British Journal of Political Science 45, no. 4 (2014): 829–51.

19 Benjamin Valentino, Final Solutions: Genocide and Mass Killing in the Twentieth Century (Cornell University Press, 2013).

20 See Beatrice Heuser, “The Cultural Revolution in Counter-Insurgency,” Journal of Strategic Studies 30, no. 1 (2007): 153–71; and Laleh Khalili, “The New (and Old) Classics of Counterinsurgency,” Middle East Report 225 (Summer 2010).

21 See Rod Thornton, “The British Army and the Origins of its Minimum Force Philosophy,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 15, no.1 (2004): 83–106.

22 We draw here from Duncan Bell, Dreamworlds of Race: Empire and the Utopian Destiny of Anglo-America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), 25–34.

23 Mark C. Jerng, Racial Worldmaking: The Power of Popular Fiction (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), 2.

24 Bell, Dreamworlds of Race, 25.

25 See Antony Appiah, “The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race,” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 21–37.

26 Alexander Anievas, Nivi Manchanda, and Robbie Shilliam, “Confronting the Global Colour Line: An Introduction,” in Race and Racism in International Relations, 9.

27 Bell, Dreamworlds of Race, 28.

28 Branwen Gruffydd Jones, “‘Good Governance’ and ‘State Failure’: the Pseudo-Science of Statesmen in Our Times,” in Race and Racism in International Relations, 65.

29 Charles W. Mills, “Global White Ignorance,” in Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, ed., Matthias Gross and Linsey McGoey (New York: Routledge, 2015), 219.

30 Jerng, Racial Worldmaking, 31.

31 Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 19.

32 See Kim Yi Dionne and Fulya Felicity Tuckmen, “The Politics of Pandemic Othering: Putting COVID-19 in Global and Historical Context,” International Organization 74, no. S (2020): E213–E230.

33 C.E. Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, third edition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996 [originally 1906]). On Callwell’s influence, see Ian F.W. Beckett, “The Study of Counter-Insurgency: A British Perspective,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 1, no. 1 (1990): 47–48.

34 Joseph Gallieni, Trois Colonnes au Tonkin, 1894–1895 (Paris: Librairie Militaire, 1899), 153–61. Hubert Lyautey, Du Rôle Colonial de L’Armée (Paris: Armand Colin, 1900). On the French school, see Porch, “French Colonial Warfare,” 377–90; and Michael P.M. Finch, A Progressive Occupation? The Gallieni-Lyautey Method and Colonial Pacification in Tonkin and Madagascar, 1885–1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); and Alex Marshall, “Imperial Nostalgia, the liberal Lie, and the Perils of Postmodern Counterinsurgency,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 21, no. 2 (2010): 233–58.

35 Callwell, Small War, 21–22, 24, 49, 53, 79, 91, and passim.

36 Callwell, Small Wars, 87, 54.

37 Callwell, Small Wars, 37, 72.

38 Callwell, Small Wars, 40, 41, 148.

39 Gallieni, Trois Colonnes, 158, 159, and passim; and Lyautey Rôle Colonial, 5, 37, 40, and passim.

40 Gallieni, Trois Colonnes, 155.

41 Joseph Gallieni, Rapport D’Ensemble sur la Pacification, l’Organisation, et la Colonisation de Madagascar (Paris: Henri Charles-Lavauzelle 1900), 20.

42 Gallieni, Trois Colonnes, 154, 155, emphasis added.

43 Gallieni, Trois Colonnes, 156, 160.

44 Gallieni, Trois Colonnes, 154, 155.

45 For examples of these kinds of hierarchies in colonial South Asia, see Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

46 See Cemil Aydin, The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017), chap.3.

47 See Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

48 See Byman, “Authoritarian Model of Counterinsurgency,” 77–78; and Ucko, “Anatomy of Authoritarian Counterinsurgency,” 41–45.

49 See Andrew W. Neal, Exceptionalism and the Politics of Counter-Terrorism: Liberty, Security, and the War on Terror (New York: Routledge, 2009); Michael Dillon and Julian Reid, The Liberal Way of War: Killing to Make Life Live (New York: Routledge, 2009); and Kyle Grayson, Cultural Politics of Targeted Killing: On Drones, Counter-Insurgency and Violence (New York: Routledge, 2016).

50 See Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005); and Devorah S. Manekin, Regular Soldiers, Irregular War: Violence and Restraint in the Second Intifada (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020).

51 See David French, The British Way in Counter-Insurgency, 1945–1967 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), chap.4.

52 See Mujib Masad, “C.I.A.’s Afghan Forces Leave a Trail of Abuse and Anger,” New York Times, December 31, 2018; and Lynzy Billing, “The Night Raids,” Propublica, December 15, 2022.

53 Isabel V. Hull, “Military Culture and the Production of ‘Final Solutions’ in the Colonies,” in The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective, ed. Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

54 See Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare (New York: Basic Books, 1999), chap.6.

55 See Martin J. Bayly, Taming the Imperial Imagination: Colonial Knowledge, International Relations, and the Anglo-Afghan Encounter, 1808–1878 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); and Nivi Manchanda, Imagining Afghanistan: The History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

56 The term “tribe” is problematic, in part because the meaning of tribal membership was refashioned by the colonial encounter, but also because British sources often referred inaccurately to any Pashtun group they encountered as a “tribe,” even when they were dealing with clans, sections, and sub-sections of a particular lineage group. See Richard Tapper, ed., Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan (New York: Routledge, 1983), 42–74.

57 Ian F.W. Beckett, “Soldiers, the Frontier, and the Politics of Command in British India,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 16, no. 3 (December 2005), 280.

58 W.H. Paget and A.H. Mason, Record of the Expeditions against the North-West Frontier Tribes, since the Annexation of the Punjab (London: Whiting and Co., 1884), 7.

59 H.D. Hutchinson, The Campaign in Tirah, 1897–1898 (London: Macmillan, 1898), 3.

60 Nevill, Campaigns on the North West Frontier, xv.

61 C. Collin Davies, The Problem of the North-West Frontier, 1890-1908 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1932), 46, 48.

62 Elizabeth Kolsky, “The Colonial Rule of Law and the Legal Regime of Exception: Frontier ‘Fanaticism’ and State Violence in British India,” American Historical Review, (October 2015), 1225–26.

63 William Barton, India’s North-West Frontier (London: Butler and Tanner, 1939), 4.

64 H. Woosnam Mills, The Tirah Campaign (Lahore: C. and M. Gazette, 1898), 13–14.

65 Davies, Problem of the North-West Frontier, 18.

66 Lionel James, The Indian Frontier War: Being an Account of the Mohmund and Tirah Expeditions 1897 (London: Williams Heinemann, 1898), ix-x.

67 C.M. Enriquez, The Pathan Borderland: A Consecutive Account of the Country and People on and Beyond the Indian Frontier from Chitral to Dera Ismail Khan (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1910), 88.

68 P.D. Bonarjee, A Handbook of the Fighting Races of India (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, and Co., 1899), 8.

69 Nevill, Campaigns on the North-West Frontier, 274.

70 Davies, Problem of the North-West Frontier, 65.

71 Benjamin D. Hopkins, “The Frontier Crimes Regulation and Frontier Governmentality,” Journal of Asian Studies 74, no. 2 (May 2015): 373.

72 Mark Condos, “‘Fanaticism’ and the Politics of Resistance along the North-West Frontier of British India,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58, no. 3 (2016): 726.

73 Paget and Mason, Expeditions against the North-West Frontier Tribes, 9–10.

74 Enriquez, Pathan Borderland, 189–190.

75 Nevill, Campaigns on the North-West Frontier, 230.

76 Mark Condos, “License to Kill: The Murderous Outrages Act and the Rule of Law in Colonial India, 1867–1925,” Modern Asian Studies 50, no. 2 (2016): 492.

77 Gavin Rand, “From the Black Mountain to Waziristan: Culture and Combat on the North-West Frontier,” in Culture, Conflict, and the Military in Colonial South Asia, ed. in Kaushik Roy and Gavin Rand (New York: Routledge, 2018), 147.

78 C.E. Callwell, Tirah, 1897 (London: Constable and Co. 1911), 11–12.

79 See Elizbeth Kolsky, “No ‘Signs of Weakness’: Gendered Violence and Masculine Authority on the North-West Frontier of British India,” Modern Asian Studies 55, no. 3 (May 2021): 918–19.

80 Nevill, Campaigns on the North-West Frontier, 67, 89, 92, italics added.

81 James, Indian Frontier War, 283–84.

82 Nevill, Campaigns on the North-West Frontier, 347.

83 Mark Condos and Gavin Rand, “Coercion and Conciliation at the Edge of Empire: State-Building and its Limits in Waziristan, 1849–1914,” Historical Journal 61, no. 3 (2018): 703–04.

84 Rand, “Culture and Combat on the North-West Frontier,” 131, emphasis added.

85 See John Ferris, “Counterinsurgency and Empire: The British Experience with Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier, 1838–1947,” in War and State-Building in Afghanistan: Historical and Modern Perspectives, ed., Scott Gates and Kaushik Roy (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 95–96.

86 Wylly, From the Black Mountain to Waziristan, 10, 22.

87 Davies, Problem of the North-West Frontier, 70.

88 Chritsian Tripodi, “‘Good for one but not the other’: The ‘Sandeman System’ of Pacification as Applied to Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier, 1877–1947,” Journal of Military History 73 (July 2009): 792.

89 See Helen Kinsella, The Image Before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction between Combatant and Civilian (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), chap.5.

90 Kolsky, “The Legal Regime of Exception,” 1221.

91 Condos, “‘Fanaticism’ and the Politics of Resistance,” 729.

92 Hopkins, “Frontier Governmentality,” 375–76.

93 Mark Condos, The Insecurity State: Punjab and the Making of Colonial Power in British India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 54.

94 See James Hevia, The Imperial Security State: British Colonial Knowledge and Empire-Building in Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), chap.6.

95 See Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politic of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 6; and Sindre Gade Viksand, “Contentious Colonies: The Positional Power of Imperial Peripheries,” Review of International Studies 46, no. 5 (December 2020): 637–43.

96 Tripodi, “The ‘Sandeman System’ of Pacification,” 796.

97 G.J. Younghusband, Indian Frontier Warfare (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Company, 1898), 123.

98 Rand, “Culture and Combat on the North-West Frontier,” 132–33.

99 Pamela Constable, “Gates Visits Kabul, Cites Rise in Cross-Border Attacks, Defense Secretary May Recommend More U.S. Troops,” Washington Post (17 January 2007).

100 “CIA: Pakistan Border’s Clear and Present Danger,’” Associated Press (March 30, 2008).

101 Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, “No Sign until the Burst of Fire: Understanding the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier,” International Security, 32, no.4 (2008): 42.

102 U.S. Army / Marine Corps, Counterinsurgency Field Manual [hereafter FM 3-24] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 45.

103 FM 3-24, 18.

104 See Beatrice Heuser, “The Cultural Revolution in Counter-Insurgency,” Journal of Strategic Studies 30, no. 1 (February 2007): 167.

105 FM 3-24, 27.

106 Shahzad Bashir and Robert D. Crews, Under the Drones: Modern Lives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Borderlands (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), 4.

107 See Porch, Counterinsurgency, 26–27, 300–13.

108 Abubakar Siddique, The Pashtun Question, The Unresolved Key to the Future of Pakistan and Afghanistan (London: Hurst, 2014), 105.

109 Johnson and Mason, “No Sign Until the Burst of Fire,” 59.

110 T.X. Hammes, “Why Are People Who Live in Mountainous Regions Almost Impossible to Conquer?” National Interest (September 5, 2018).

111 Jim Gant and Steven Pressfield, One Tribe at a Time: The Paper that Changed the War in Afghanistan (New York: Black Irish, 2014), 22, 43.

112 Joseph + A. Tainter and Don G. MacGregor, “Pashtun Social Structure: Cultural Perceptions and Segmentary Lineage Organization,” published by the Office of Naval Research (HSCB Program) (November 30, 2011).

113 John J. Malevich and Daryl C. Youngman, “The Afghan Balance of Power and the Culture of Jihad,” Military Review (May/June 2011): 35.

114 Manchanda, Imagining Afghanistan, 9.

115 Scott Atran, Talking to the Enemy: Religion, Brotherhood and the (Un)Making of Terrorists (New York: Ecco, 2011), 262.

116 FM 3-24, 17, 25.

117 Johnson and Mason, “No Sign until the Burst of Fire,” 53.

118 Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, “Understanding the Taliban and Insurgency in Afghanistan,” Orbis 51, no. 1 (2007): 79–80.

119 Richard M. Medina, “From Anthropology to Human Geography: Human Terrain and the Evolution of Operational Sociocultural Understanding,” Intelligence and National Security 31, no. 2 (2016): 137–53.

120 See Vanessa M. Gezari, The Tender Soldier: A True Story of War and Sacrifice (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013).

121 Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction [hereafter SIGAR], “Interview with US Army Civil Affairs Officer” (July 12, 2016), https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/?document=background_ll_07_xx_dc_b_07122016. Officials were not blind to the fact that racial ontologies might be driving this conflation between cultures: “just because they’re wearing robes and speaking derka derka doesn’t mean it’s the same country,” one officer quipped. SIGAR “Interview with Special Operations Forces Officer” (September 7, 2016), https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/?document=background_ll_07_xx_dc_09072016.

122 Stathis N. Kalyvas, “The New U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual as Political Science and Political Praxis,” Perspectives on Politics 6, no. 2 (2008): 353.

123 SIGAR, “Interview with US Embassy Official” (November 4, 2016), https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/?document=background_ll_07_xx_dc_11042016

124 Alexandria J. Nylen, “Frontier Justice: International Law and ‘Lawless’ Spaces in the ‘War on Terror’,” European Journal of International Relations 26, no. 3 (2020): 635.

125 C. Christine Fair, “Obama’s New ‘Af-Pak’ Strategy,” Afghanistan Papers, no. 6 (2010), 6.

126 Staniland, “Counter-Insurgency and Violence Management,” 144–55.

127 Masad, “C.I.A.’s Afghan Forces.”

128 Compare Bryan C. Price, Targeting Top Terrorists: Understanding Leadership Removal in Counterterrorism Strategy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019); and Jenna Jordan, Leadership Decapitation: Strategic Targeting of Terrorist Organizations (Stanford University Press, 2019).

129 See Alexander B. Downes, “Desperate Times, Desperate Measures: The Causes of Civilian Victimization in War,” International Security 30, no. 4 (2006): 152–95.

130 David Kilcullen, “Counter-Insurgency Redux,” Survival 48, no. 4 (December 2006), 116.

131 David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small War in the Midst of a Big One (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 77.

132 Christian Tripodi, “Peacemaking through Bribes or Cultural Empathy? The Political Officer and Britain’s Strategy towards the North-West Frontier, 1901–1945,” Journal of Strategic Studies 31, no. 1 (2008): 135.

133 John Keegan, “If America Decides to Take on the Afghans, This is How to Do It,” Daily Telegraph (20 September 2001).

134 Milton Bearden, “Obama’s War,” Foreign Affairs, (5 November 2012).

135 William S. McCallister, “Strategic Design Considerations for Operations in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas: Dust Up Along the North-West Frontier,” Small Wars Journal (30 January 2008).

136 Ibid.

137 John Keegan, “In this War of Civilizations, the West Will Prevail,” Daily Telegraph (8 October 2001).

138 See Simon Frankel Pratt, “Norm Transformation and the Institutionalization of Targeted Killing in the U.S.,” European Journal of International Relations 25, no. 3 (2019): 723–47.

139 Julie Vitkovskaya, “Nine Revealing Statements Obama has made about Transparency and Drone Strikes,” Washington Post (1 July 2016).

140 Hugh Gusterson, “Drone Warfare in Waziristan and the New Military Humanism,” Current Anthropology 60, s. 19 (2019): S79–S80.

141 Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will,” New York Times (29 May 2012).

142 Nylen, “Frontier Justice,” 645.

143 “Full Transcript and Video: Trump’s Speech on Afghanistan,” New York Times (21 August 2017).

144 Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Eric Schmitt, and Adam Goldman, “A Newly Assertive C.I.A. Expands Its Taliban Hunt in Afghanistan,” New York Times (October 22, 2017).

145 Human Rights Watch, “‘They’ve Shot Many Like This’: Abusive Night Raids by CIA-Backed Afghan Strike Forces” (31 October 2019).

146 Sarah Kreps, Paul Lushenko, and Shyam Raman, “Biden can reduce civilian casualties during US drone strikes. Here’s how.” Brookings Institution, (19 January 2022).

147 Mujib Mashal, “CIA’s Afghan Forces Leave a Trail of Abuse and Anger,” New York Times (31 December 2018).

148 SIGAR, “Interview with Senior Military Official” (October 28, 2016), https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/?document=background_ll_07_xx_dc_10282016

149 Joseph Pugliese, “Bugsplats and Jackpots: US Military Drone Operators Enjoy Gamers’ Delight,” Newsweek (18 September 2017).

150 Akbar Ahmed, The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam (Washington: Brookings, 2013), 3.

151 See Kerem Nisancioglu, “Racial Sovereignty,” European Journal of International Relations 26, no. 1 (2020): 39–63; Alexander D. Barder, Global Race War: International Politics and Racial Hierarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021); and Zoltán Búzás, “Racism and Antiracism in the Liberal International Order,” International Organization 75, S2 (2021): 440–63.

152 See John M. Hobson, “The Clash of Civilizations 2.0: Race and Eurocentrism, Imperialism, and anti-Imperialism,” in Re-Imagining the Other: Culture, Media, and Western-Muslim Interactions, ed. Mahmoud Eid and Karim H. Karim (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 75–97.

153 See Jon Tetsuro Sumida, Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command: The Classic Works of Alfred Thayer Mahan Reconsidered (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); and Colin Gray, “In Defence of the Heartland: Sir Halford Mackinder and His Critics a Hundred Years On,” Comparative Strategy 23, no. 1 (2004): 9–25.

154 See Barder, Global Race War, chap.2; and Lucian M. Ashworth, “Warriors, Pacifists and Empires: Race and Racism in International thought before 1914,” International Affairs 98, no. 1 (2022): 281–301.

155 Robert D. Kaplan, “The Geography of Chinese Power: How Far can Beijing Reach on Land and at Sea?” Foreign Affairs, 89, no.3 (2010).

156 Data drawn from H.C. Wylly, From the Black Mountain to Waziristan (London: Macmillan, 1912), 485–88; and H.L. Nevill, Campaigns on the North-West Frontier (London: John Murray, 1912), 404–05.

157 Figure based on United States Air Forces Central Command, “Airpower Summaries,” (various dates), https://www.afcent.af.mil/About/Airpower-Summaries/; and “The Drone War in Pakistan,” New American Foundation, https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/reports/americas-counterterrorism-wars/the-drone-war-in-pakistan/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stacie E. Goddard

Stacie E. Goddard is the Betty Freyhof Johnson ‘44 Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College.

Paul K. MacDonald

Paul K. MacDonald is Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College. Or it could just list Wellesley College.