Bin Laden’s targeted killing and emerging norms

ABSTRACT

This article illustrates how the well-known norm life cycle model has been under-utilised for understanding global political behaviour. The model has generally been applied to norms advancing human rights or prohibiting certain behaviour. This article uses the norm life cycle, modified to account for norm fluidity, to examine a practice which enables the state to pursue its security interests, at times by violating human rights. Specifically, this study explores variation in global responses to targeted killings, with Osama bin Laden’s death serving as a focal point. These reactions generally range from condemnation of targeted killings occurring before his death, to widespread acceptance of his death, to subsequent efforts to regulate the practice. This article concludes that this variation could be understood as consistent with the initial stages of the norm life cycle. Through this analysis, the article demonstrates how the norm life cycle model can helpfully shed light on very diverse political behaviour.

KEYWORDS:

• Targeted killing
• norms
• norm emergence
• international law
• norm entrepreneurs
• counterterrorism

Acknowledgments

I am extremely grateful to Christoph Stefes, Lucy McGuffey, Thorsten Spehn, Malliga Och, Charli Carpenter, Peace Medie, Bindu Jose and the anonymous reviewers for their time and very helpful feedback. Their comments greatly improved this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This variation in response exists even when holding constant the method of targeted killing. For instance, targeted killing by drone strikes (which increased in frequency under the Obama Adminstration) witnessed less opposition immediately after bin Laden’s death than those which occurred before, such as al-Harethi’s.

2. Bin Laden’s death could be legally challenged more easily than the deaths of other leaders such as Muammar Gaddafi as these men may have been legitimate military targets killed during more conventional international armed conflicts (see 1977 Additional Protocol to the 1949 Geneva Conventions Articles 48, 52[2]). bin Laden’s death occurred far from active hostilities in Afghanistan or even the Afghan/Pakistani border and it is arguable that he was a legitimate military target at the time of his death (Ambos and Alkatout 2012). Thus, accepting bin Laden’s death requires changes in understandings of the applicable norms in ways Gaddafi’s death does not.

3. This focus echoes the approach advocated by Aronsson (2014, 298): “a strong focus on drone attacks as the use of drones, rather than as a use of force, may devalue the effect that the strike may have on the law regulating the use of armed force, whether conducted by a drone, by armed forces on the ground or by other means” (emphasis in original).

4. More recent studies have introduced another phase of the norm life cycle: norm death (see McKeown 2009). Additionally, as noted in this article, some scholars have described a pre-emergence stage which occurs before the first stage of Finnemore and Sikkink’s model (see Ben-Josef Hirsch 2013).

5. Contrast this with US responses to accusations that it engaged in torture. Unlike the case with targeted killings in which the United States eventually admitted it conducted the practice and actively justified it, the United States either rejected claims that it engaged in torture or that the torture taboo applied to its Global War on Terrorism (Sikkink 2013).

6. This criterion for initiation of the norm life cycle is similar to the “tipping point” needed to move a norm into the internalisation stage.

7. Since this article focuses on norm pre-emergence and norm emergence, variations in norm internalisation or norm contestation post-emergence are beyond its scope. For a more detailed discussion on these topics.

8. Contrast the incomplete or still developing intersubjective agreement on a norm of targeted killing with more complete intersubjective agreement within the civilian immunity norm that civilians cannot be targeted or within the nuclear taboo (Tannenwald 1999).

9. Custom consists of the more informal practices of states that inform the body of international law. According to the International Court of Justice, custom is “evidence of a general practice accepted as law” (quote taken from Cohan 2003, 294). Custom itself is composed of state practice and opinio juris. Opinio juris is defined as a kind of “state of mind” on the part of states that a certain form of conduct is permissible, required or mandated by international law. Opinio juris refers to statements and declarations by states that articulate the legality of practices in question (Cohan 2003, 294).

10. These examples reveal that the United States chose to legitimate its target selection on the basis of national security, even as the reasons for the targets’ hostility may differ significantly. Neither do they suggest that other reasons may have not played a role in target selection, such as retribution.

11. Not all critical actors, like the United States, have to endorse a norm for it to cascade as is the case with the landmines ban (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 901) and the cluster munitions ban (Grillot 2011, 544).

12. International humanitarian law, the body of law which regulates armed conflict, does allow the targeting of state leaders who are legitimate military targets under limited circumstances (see 1977 Additional Protocol to the 1949 Geneva Conventions Articles 48, 52[2]).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Betcy Jose

Betcy Jose is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado Denver. Her work focuses on global norms, international humanitarian law, humanitarianism and armed conflict, including “Transnational Issue Networks in Real and Virtual Space: the Case of Women, Peace and Security,” “Understanding Why and How Civilians Resort to Self-Protection in Armed Conflict” and “Would the Protected Please Stand Up? Historical Ambiguity in the Distinction Principle.” Her work can also be seen in Foreign Affairs, Duck of Minerva, Al-Jazeera and Justice in Conflict.