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1. Killing Norms Softly: US Targeted Killing, Quasi-secrecy and the Assassination Ban

Author:
Andris Banka and Adam Quinn
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Security Studies
Institution:
Security Studies
Abstract:
This article argues that when actors engage in controversial new security practices, it is misconceived to view secrecy as an opposed, counterproductive alternative to the pursuit of legitimation. Rather, we propose, deployment of “quasi-secrecy”—a combination of official secrecy with leaks, selective disclosure, and de facto public awareness—can be an effective strategy for achieving normalization and legitimation while containing the risks entailed by disclosure. We support this claim via a detailed case study of US targeted killing. First, we establish the existence of an American norm against targeted killing during the period 1976–2001. We then detail the process by which an innovation in practice was secretly approved, implemented, became known, and was gradually, partially officially acknowledged. We argue that even if quasi-secrecy was not in this instance a coherently-conceived and deliberately pursued strategy from start to finish, the case provides proof of concept for its potential to be deployed as such.
Topic:
Security, Legitimacy, Normalization, and Secrecy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Kenneth Waltz, Adam Smith and the Limits of Science: Hard choices for neoclassical realism

Author:
Adam Quinn
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article argues that neoclassical realism (NCR), though it presents one of the most intuitively attractive frameworks for understanding states' actions, continues to struggle with a central conceptual tension. Some have argued that NCR is compatible with a structural realist approach, even that it is a 'logical extension' of it. Yet in seeking to identify law-like patterns of state behaviour arising from the varied features of states themselves, NCR appears to breach the outer limits of what Kenneth Waltz, the founding father of structural International Relations theory, thought tolerable in a theory of international politics. Thus, NCR arguably faces a fork in the road as to its future agenda and theoretical identity: should it limit itself essentially to chronicling anomalous occurrences within a fundamentally Waltzian paradigm, or try to map new rules of state behaviour on a scale that ultimately calls the primacy of Waltz's 'systemic imperatives' into question?
Topic:
International Relations

3. The art of declining politely: Obama's prudent presidency and the waning of American power

Author:
Adam Quinn
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Predictions of 'American decline' have come and gone before, apparently in cycles, leading some to regard it as a cultural trope stemming from domestic insecurities rather than a serious prospect. There is reason to believe, however, that this time is different. Fundamental erosion of the United States' decades-long primacy may finally be at hand, and wise analysis should resist the temptations of contrarianism or denial. Critics of 'declinism' have offered important caveats with which we should qualify any overly simplistic or deterministic portrait of America's trajectory from hegemon to lesser status. This article gives such qualifications due weight while nevertheless seeking to steer our gaze back towards the core truth at the heart of the declinist thesis. That is: unless something very significant changes to jolt the course of events onto a different track, the relative power of the United States—measured in terms of its advantage over others in economic and military capacity—will be shrinking significantly over the decades to come. Happily, the nation's current president seems to have a disposition well fitted to leading the nation into the opening stages of an era of relative decline. President Obama has made headlines in recent months for his boldness in orchestrating the killing of Osama bin Laden. A fuller survey of his foreign policy, however, reveals that its most signal feature has been prudence and circumspection regarding American power and its exercise. Major divergence between the ends pursued and the capacities available for their pursuit is one of the cardinal sins giving rise to strategic failure. It is thus fortunate for the United States that it should have a president who, even if he may not be inclined to cast it in such words himself, seems disposed not to 'rage against the dying of the light' of American primacy, but to practice the admirable art of declining politely.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
United States and America