Extrajudicial Killing as Risk Management

This article analyses legal aspects of the ‘war on terror’. It argues that, by making recourse to a semantic of risk, danger and, in particular, precaution, the ‘war on terror ’ blurs crucial political and legal categories of public and private, of peace and war, of combatants and civilians, thus redefining the relationship between political responsi-bility, time and security. As a consequence, the extrajudicial killing of individuals becomes a form of risk management that takes place beyond established mechanisms of accountability. Keywords risk • uncertainty • targeted killing • international law • terro