High Value Target HVT / Political Assassination

[Jedburgh]

Keep this stuff coming, guys! As I may have mentioned, I think I'm going to do a paper on "high value targeting" for the RAND Insurgency Board.

Steve's presentation at the USAWC National Security Seminar:

Strategic Decapitation and Counterinsurgency

High Value Targeting

High value targeting (HVT) holds appeal to the American public and political leaders.

• Experts often contend that it doesn’t work

• Truth is somewhere in between

• Need a framework focused on strategic effects

• Not operational and tactical requirements, legality, or morality

[Ken White]

"HVT more effective against early stage insurgents or those with limited regenerative capability.

- - Governments unlikely to use HVT when it would be most effective."

Simply because it highlights a problem that has essentially put us where we are today -- governmental dithering and failure to robustly respond to threats emboldens the attackers or others to increasingly dangerous action until massive effort is required. This invariably with more human, fiscal and political costs than would have been incurred had early, prompt and adequate action been taken.

Steve is correct -- and five prior Presidents should have known better.

[Jedburgh]

JSOU, Sep 09: Manhunting: Counter-Network Organization for Irregular Warfare

....Manhunting—the deliberate concentration of national power to find, influence, capture, or when necessary kill an individual to disrupt a human network—has emerged as a key component of operations to counter irregular warfare adversaries in lieu of traditional state-on-state conflict measures. It has arguably become a primary area of emphasis in countering terrorist and insurgent opponents.

Despite our increasing employment of manhunting, our national security establishment has not developed appropriate doctrine, dealt with challenging legal issues, nor have we organized forces and assigned clear responsibility to deploy and employ these capabilities. Were we to do so, manhunting could become an important element of our future national security policy, as highly trained teams disrupt or disintegrate human networks. Formally adopting manhunting capabilities would allow the United States to interdict threats without resorting to the expense and turbulence associated with deployment of major military formations. Manhunting capabilities could play a central role in the implementation of U.S. national security strategy in the 21st century....

[Tom Odom]

Building a Manhunting Force for the Future
The United States has not yet established doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel, or facilities needed to field a manhunting capability as a means to achieve its national security ends. Eight years after the 9/11 attacks, significant elements of our national security establishment remain polarized toward conventional, force-on-force warfare in order to combat massed mechanized military formations in a linear battle. But our adversaries have adapted, employing asymmetric capabilities to circumvent conventional capability.

Once again an author takes an element of the fight, builds on it, hypes it and voila! a "new concept". I don't see much here beyond that. He has no grasp of what he refers to dismissively as conventional in the interest of hyping what he considers special.

Tom

[Odysseus]

Brothers, I just registered/joined this forum, as this topic's of great interest to me, and I stumbled onto it this evening. I see some are contemplating a paper on the topic. Check out the following Wikipedia site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhunt_(military) -- lots of source material on targeted killing/HVT ops/manhunting/F3EA gathered in one place, with links where available. Think you'll find the sources and references most useful in this discussion. Also recommend Bill Roggio's "The Long War Journal." Bill posts some pretty up-to-date info, and analysis of "overseas contingency operations" (to use the current vernacular) at http://www.longwarjournal.org/

Martyrdom... is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability. -- George Bernard Shaw

[jmm99]

From time to time, targeted killings (HVTs) have been discussed here and elsewhere. So far as current operations are concerned, the topic is an OpSec mantrap. I've looked at it generally from a legal standpoint. Basically, legality comes down to whether the Laws of War apply and the HVT can be considered a combatant of a power in an armed conflict (kill anytime, anyplace); or whether some form of Law Enforcement rules apply.

I somehow missed downloading the 2009 Crawford JSOU article which Ted posted a month ago - so thanks for the Wiki link reminder. Another decent JSOU article is 2007 Turbiville, JSOU Report 07-6 Hunting Leadership Targets, linked above a couple of years ago.

[OccamsRazor]

IISS wrote a considerably interesting article concerning targeted killing in Pakistan. They focused on how the Obama administration is maintaining the practice (there were 36 unmanned aerial vehicle attacks in 2008, and 20 in the first 8 months of 2009), and that the administration is using it as a significant element of their way forward - "Bureaucratically, the Obama administration has already set the table for adopting this strategy: for FY 2010, it has requested $79.7 million for Hellfire missiles and $489,4m for 34 Reapers, nearly doubling the 2009 number."

The most interesting part of the article, although it didn't frame it as such, is its application to just war theory and international humanitarian law.

"On this issue, the laws of armed conflict broadly apply, and they require that the use of military force be necessary, as a matter of self-defense, to eliminate a genuine threat and that it be reasonably proportionate to that threat."

As such, it is possible that targeted killing, coupled with the amount of civilian collateral damage that typically follows a strike, might be politically counter-productive, especially since Obama has heavily emphasized has he prefers law enforcement and due process as tools to combat radical Islam, vice military force. Reaching into Pakistani outlands for a strike is one thing, but if strikes reach deeper into the more developed areas of the country (where there is greater culture of safety and governmental protection, and also a higher risk of civilian casualties) there will be a Pakistani outrage of a directly greater proportion. Protests of the United States violating the sovereignty of another nuclear power would seem inevitable.

The flip side, I think, is that Article 4 of the Geneva Convention essentially says that using civilians as a shield (the prevalent reason for collateral damage resulting from targeted killing) cannot immunize legitimate military targets from attacks, which gives the administration some breathing room.

The conclusion of the article is the the Obama administration should take steps to legitimize (by providing transparent procedural oversight) the targeted killing process, as a pre-emptive move to preclude vast international disapproval (perhaps a Gitmo like situation).

Great discussion and information in this thread - I'm looking to write a paper in this area as well.