Debating Targeted Killing: Counter-Terrorism or Extrajudicial Execution?

Known terrorists are often targeted for death by the governments of Israel and the United States. Several thousand have been killed by drones or by operatives on the ground in the last twenty years. Is this form of killing justified, when hundreds or thousands of lives are possibly at risk at the hands of a known terrorist? Is there anything about it that should disturb us? Ethically-sound and practical answers to these questions are more difficult to come by than it might seem. Renowned political theorists Jeremy Waldron and Tamar Meisels here defend two competing positions on the legitimacy of targeted killing as used in counterterrorism strategy in this riveting and essential for-and-against book.

The volume begins with a joint introduction, briefly setting out the terms of discussion, and presenting a short historical overview of the practice: what targeted killing is, and how it has been used in which conflicts and by whom. It then hones in on killings themselves and the element of targeting. The authors tackle difficult and infinitely complex subjects, for example the similarities and differences between targeted killing of terrorists and ordinary killings in combat, and they ask whether targeted killing can be regarded as a law enforcement strategy, or as a hybrid between combat and law enforcement. They compare the practice of targeted killing with assassination and the use of death squads. And they consider the likelihood that targeted killing has been or will be abused against insurgents, criminals, or political opponents. Meisels analyzes the assassination by Israeli operatives of nuclear scientists working for regimes hostile to Israel.

Meisels and Waldron carefully consider whether this sort of killing can ever be justified in terms of the danger it, in theory, averts. The conclusions drawn are at once as surprising as they are insightful, cautioning us against a world in which targeted killing is the norm as it proliferates rapidly. This is essential reading not only for students of political and war theory and military personnel, but for anyone interested in or concerned by the future of targeted killing.


Author: Tamar Meisels, Jeremy Waldron
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 05/28/2020
Pages: 328
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.30w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780190906924


Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2021

About the Author

Tamar Meisels is a political theorist, associate professor at The School of Political Science, Government and IR, Tel-Aviv University. She is the author of Territorial Rights (Springer, 2005 and 2009), The Trouble with Terror: Liberty, Security and the Response to Terrorism (Cambridge University Press, 2008), Contemporary Just War: Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2017), and co-editor (with Michael L. Gross) of Soft War: The Ethics of Unarmed Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Jeremy Waldron is University Professor and Professor of Law at New York University. His recent books include Torture, Terror and Trade-offs: Philosophy for the White House (Oxford, 2010), The Harm in Hate Speech (Harvard University Press, 2012), Political Theory (Harvard University Press, 2016), and One Another's Equals: The Basis of Human Equality (Harvard University Press, 2017). Professor Waldron was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998 and, in 2015, to the American Philosophical Society (which also awarded him its Phillips Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Jurisprudence). He has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 2011.