Targeted Killing: A Legal and Political History

Looking beyond the current debate’s preoccupation with the situations of insecurity of the second intifada and 9/11, this book reveals how targeted killing is intimately embedded in both Israeli and US statecraft and in the problematic relation of sovereign authority and lawful violence underpinning the modern state system. The book details the legal and political issues raised in targeted killing as it has emerged in practice including questions of domestic constitutional authority, the norms on the use of force in international law, the law of targeting and human rights. The distinctiveness of Israeli and US targeted killing is accounted for by way of the compulsion of legality characteristic of liberal democracy, a compulsion that makes imperative the ability to distinguish between legal ‘targeted killing’ and extra-legal ‘political assassination’. Not only does this prepare for a highly legalized framework for the extraterritorial killing of designated terrorists, it carries the potential to alter the course of the international law of force