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Preventive Warfare: Hegemony, Power, and the Reconceptualization of War
This book provides a critical and comprehensive analysis of the reconceptualization of preventive warfare in the 21st Century. It discusses how the US launched and fought some wars to prevent future vague threats and how that practice has fundamentally undermined the legal system and the main principles of the use of force, in ways that not only further US dominance but shield powerful actors from accountability. The US redefined key legal concepts to set up a new legal framework for preventive warfare and, consequently, introduced new practices for carrying out preventive military operations.
Drawing on a collection of case studies, on the changes in the jus ad bellum and jus in bello, focusing mainly on Afghanistan and Iraq and beyond, the book shows how violations of the law of war were persistently conducted in the 21st century by supposedly democratic countries who claimed to be upholding the law. It explores three types of preventive warfare – that is, preventive national self-defense, preventive on-the-spot reactions, and preventive “security” detention – to show how they blurred the line between civilians and legitimate military targets, and thus increased the risk of causing harm to civilians. The book speaks to students, scholars, and practitioners from the fields of criminology, law, international relations, political science, critical security studies, and critical military studies.
Drawing on a collection of case studies, on the changes in the jus ad bellum and jus in bello, focusing mainly on Afghanistan and Iraq and beyond, the book shows how violations of the law of war were persistently conducted in the 21st century by supposedly democratic countries who claimed to be upholding the law. It explores three types of preventive warfare – that is, preventive national self-defense, preventive on-the-spot reactions, and preventive “security” detention – to show how they blurred the line between civilians and legitimate military targets, and thus increased the risk of causing harm to civilians. The book speaks to students, scholars, and practitioners from the fields of criminology, law, international relations, political science, critical security studies, and critical military studies.
233 pages, Hardcover
Published October 6, 2024
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April 21, 2026
(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)
Книга является описанием того как американские войска, преимущественно во время военных кампаний на ближнем востоке, совершали военные преступления, а так же чем руководствовались эти солдаты совершая эти акты. Действительно, намеренного акта убийства гражданских тут не было, но были ошибки, вернее, чрезмерные меры предосторожности. Впрочем, слово «предосторожность» тоже не отражает суть действий американских военных, поэтому для более точного описания обратимся к самому началу книги, где находим следующее очень точное описание того о чём собственно суть:
Referring to the anticipatory use of force, Gentili contended that one did not have to wait for the enemy to attack because “it is lawful to strike those who are preparing to strike us.” In the early seventeenth century, Grotius argued that when danger was immediate, it was permissible to respond with the use of force. “It has already been proved,” wrote Grotius, “that when our lives are threatened with immediate danger, it is lawful to kill the aggressor, if the danger cannot otherwise be avoided.”
Как видим, речь идёт не просто об ошибочном убийстве гражданских, а о том, что этих гражданских принимали за потенциальных агрессоров. И далее:
In the Cold War era, the US consistently reaffirmed its conviction that preventive wars launched against non-immediate threats were illegitimate. President Truman, for example, rejected preventive wars because he viewed them as wars of aggression, the “weapon of dictators, not of free democratic countries like the United States.” Like Truman, President Eisenhower refused to accept the argument for preventive wars. The National Security Council Report, approved by the Eisenhower administration in 1955, stated that the US and its allies “must reject the concept of preventive war” or any similar acts intended to provoke war. The Reagan administration rejected the idea of preventive war…
Как я понял, продлилась такая ситуация ровно до событий 9/11 в США, после чего была принята совсем другая доктрина, полностью противоречащая предыдущей, суть которой была приведена выше.
It was after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that a major shift occurred from anticipatory self-defense against imminent threats to preventive self-defense against more remote threats. Signaling the transition to a new preventive war doctrine, President Bush stated, in a speech in June 2002, that the US must “confront the worst threats before they emerge.”
После этого события начались военные кампании США, в которых и совершались военные преступления, которые рассматривает автор. Вернее причины, по которым они совершались, а так же последствия (для американских военных совершившие их). Итак, когда американские военные оказываются в ситуации оккупационной армии, они сталкиваются с ситуацией, когда потенциальным врагом может оказаться любой гражданский.
The expanded notion of imminence enabled US troops to categorize as imminent threats a range of movements and actions that did not represent an immediate threat but merely suggested that a threat might emerge at some unspecified moment in the future. Mere speculation about which movements and actions could evolve into a threat in the future thus became the basis for decisions on when to preventively use force in self-defense.
<…>
Instead of trying to obtain evidence about direct participation in hostilities, US soldiers used an array of assumptions, hypotheses, and guesses that did not prove with certainty that the targets were combatants.
В результате подозреваемых либо отправляли в специальные лагеря или тюрьмы, либо убивали не месте т.к. в некоторых случаях считали длительные процессы неэффективными.
The overwhelming majority of those “security internees” have never been charged with a criminal offense and tried by an independent and impartial court of law.
<…>
Security detention—also termed preventive detention, administrative detention, and internment—is traditionally defined as the non-criminal detention of persons based on the serious threat that their activities pose or will pose to the security of the detaining authority in relation to an armed conflict.
<…>
In international armed conflicts, the belligerent parties are permitted to hold prisoners of war in detention (e.g., members of the armed forces and affiliated militias and volunteer corps) and, under certain conditions, civilians.
Если взять кейс Бучи, который произошёл во время войны России и Украины в 2022 году, именно это и должны были делать российские солдаты в отношении тех гражданских, которых подозревали в работе на ВСУ, а не заниматься пытками и внесудебными казнями. Впрочем, как показывает книга, американские солдаты тоже не всегда соблюдали это правило и что более интересно, действовали в той же логике что и российская армия в Буче.
Instead of detaining and transferring suspects to a court of law, the US forces opted to kill them. The US military believed that such orders were necessary to defeat the insurgency and protect US troops, because merely detaining and bringing suspected insurgents to a court of law proved to be ineffective.
<…>
…a serious problem with killing suspected insurgents based on hostile intent determinations was that the lax definition of “imminent threat,” coupled with the overly broad indicia used for determining such threats, often led to killings of innocent civilians.
<…>
During the war in Iraq, for example, most checkpoint incidents, including incidents in which US troops preventively used force against what they believed were imminent threats, went unreported and uninvestigated. If civilians were killed in such incidents, they were not officially recorded.
Как я отметил выше, автор пишет, что подобные «происшествиях» с участием военных и гражданских, в которых дело заканчивается смертью гражданского, редко или возможно даже никогда не заканчивались наказанием американских военных. Я думаю это связано с тем, что действует принцип «свой-чужой», т.е. наказывая своих можно наткнуться на неприятие со стороны собственного общества, особенно это важно для демократий. Впрочем, и не демократические режимы вовсе не спешат наказывать своих граждан, если те совершили преступления в отношении иностранцев.
As one soldier explained: “What constituted a threat was open to such broad interpretation that nearly all shootings […] were never investigated.”
<…>
According to US military investigating officers, the troops were permitted to preventively use force against persons possessing objects that could be weapons, for example, “objects that could be IEDs.”
<…>
When soldiers admitted during military investigations that they had not clearly seen what the suspects were doing—for example, soldiers described those situations with statements such as “it looked as if he [the victim] was working on something that was on the ground or he was placing something on the ground”—military investigators accepted such uncertainty as a legitimate part of “imminent threat” determinations, and, consequently, concluded that the preventive use of force in those situations was in line with the rules of engagement.
<…>
In the aftermath of attacks against civilians, military officers sometimes denied the existence of civilian victims, particularly when they wanted to either stall or prevent investigations into these attacks, including attacks involving the preventive use of force. When denying the existence of civilian victims, US military officers sometimes simply claimed that the victims were combatants, without considering evidence suggesting otherwise.
В общем, суть написанного в том, что гражданским нужно держать подальше от военных т.к. военные рассматривают практически любое странное, непонятное или подозрительное поведение как возможную угрозу, что переводит гражданского в статус потенциальной угрозы. В лучшем случаи такого человека задержат, а в худшем – застрелят на месте. Другой вывод, который можно сделать на основании этой книги, это что любая армия в мире ведёт себя подобным образом в ситуации оккупированного региона.
The book describes how American troops, primarily during military campaigns in the Middle East, committed war crimes, as well as what motivated these soldiers to commit such acts. Indeed, there were no deliberate acts of killing civilians here, but there were mistakes—or rather, excessive precautions. However, the word “precaution” also fails to capture the essence of the American military’s actions, so for a more accurate description, let’s turn to the very beginning of the book, where we find the following very precise description of what the book is actually about:
Referring to the anticipatory use of force, Gentili contended that one did not have to wait for the enemy to attack because “it is lawful to strike those who are preparing to strike us.” In the early seventeenth century, Grotius argued that when danger was immediate, it was permissible to respond with the use of force. “It has already been proved,” wrote Grotius, “that when our lives are threatened with immediate danger, it is lawful to kill the aggressor, if the danger cannot otherwise be avoided.”
As we can see, this is not simply a matter of civilians being killed by mistake, but rather of these civilians being mistaken for potential aggressors. And then:
In the Cold War era, the US consistently reaffirmed its conviction that preventive wars launched against non-immediate threats were illegitimate. President Truman, for example, rejected preventive wars because he viewed them as wars of aggression, the “weapon of dictators, not of free democratic countries like the United States.” Like Truman, President Eisenhower refused to accept the argument for preventive wars. The National Security Council Report, approved by the Eisenhower administration in 1955, stated that the US and its allies “must reject the concept of preventive war” or any similar acts intended to provoke war. The Reagan administration rejected the idea of preventive war…
As I understand it, this situation persisted right up until the events of 9/11 in the United States, after which a completely different doctrine was adopted—one that was entirely at odds with the previous one, the essence of which was outlined above.
It was after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that a major shift occurred from anticipatory self-defense against imminent threats to preventive self-defense against more remote threats. Signaling the transition to a new preventive war doctrine, President Bush stated, in a speech in June 2002, that the US must “confront the worst threats before they emerge.”
Following this event, the United States launched military campaigns during which the war crimes discussed by the author were committed. More precisely, the author examines the reasons behind these crimes, as well as their consequences (for the American soldiers who committed them). Thus, when American soldiers find themselves in the role of an occupying force, they face a situation in which any civilian could be viewed as a potential enemy.
The expanded notion of imminence enabled US troops to categorize as imminent threats a range of movements and actions that did not represent an immediate threat but merely suggested that a threat might emerge at some unspecified moment in the future. Mere speculation about which movements and actions could evolve into a threat in the future thus became the basis for decisions on when to preventively use force in self-defense.
<…>
Instead of trying to obtain evidence about direct participation in hostilities, US soldiers used an array of assumptions, hypotheses, and guesses that did not prove with certainty that the targets were combatants.
As a result, suspects were either sent to special camps or prisons or killed on the spot, since, in some cases, some trials were considered ineffective.
The overwhelming majority of those “security internees” have never been charged with a criminal offense and tried by an independent and impartial court of law.
<…>
Security detention—also termed preventive detention, administrative detention, and internment—is traditionally defined as the non-criminal detention of persons based on the serious threat that their activities pose or will pose to the security of the detaining authority in relation to an armed conflict.
<…>
In international armed conflicts, the belligerent parties are permitted to hold prisoners of war in detention (e.g., members of the armed forces and affiliated militias and volunteer corps) and, under certain conditions, civilians.
If we take the case of Bucha, which occurred during the 2022 war between Russia and Ukraine, this is precisely what Russian soldiers should have done with regard to civilians suspected of working for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, rather than engaging in torture and extrajudicial executions. However, as the book shows, American soldiers did not always follow this rule either, and, more interestingly, acted according to the same logic as the Russian army in Bucha.
Instead of detaining and transferring suspects to a court of law, the US forces opted to kill them. The US military believed that such orders were necessary to defeat the insurgency and protect US troops, because merely detaining and bringing suspected insurgents to a court of law proved to be ineffective.
<…>
…a serious problem with killing suspected insurgents based on hostile intent determinations was that the lax definition of “imminent threat,” coupled with the overly broad indicia used for determining such threats, often led to killings of innocent civilians.
<…>
During the war in Iraq, for example, most checkpoint incidents, including incidents in which US troops preventively used force against what they believed were imminent threats, went unreported and uninvestigated. If civilians were killed in such incidents, they were not officially recorded.
As I noted above, the author writes that such “incidents” involving military personnel and civilians, in which a civilian is killed, rarely—or perhaps never—resulted in punishment for the American military. I think this is due to the “friend or foe” principle, i.e., punishing one’s own people can lead to backlash from one’s own society, which is especially important for democracies. However, even non-democratic regimes are in no hurry to punish their own citizens if they have committed crimes against foreigners.
As one soldier explained: “What constituted a threat was open to such broad interpretation that nearly all shootings […] were never investigated.”
<…>
According to US military investigating officers, the troops were permitted to preventively use force against persons possessing objects that could be weapons, for example, “objects that could be IEDs.”
<…>
When soldiers admitted during military investigations that they had not clearly seen what the suspects were doing—for example, soldiers described those situations with statements such as “it looked as if he [the victim] was working on something that was on the ground or he was placing something on the ground”—military investigators accepted such uncertainty as a legitimate part of “imminent threat” determinations, and, consequently, concluded that the preventive use of force in those situations was in line with the rules of engagement.
<…>
In the aftermath of attacks against civilians, military officers sometimes denied the existence of civilian victims, particularly when they wanted to either stall or prevent investigations into these attacks, including attacks involving the preventive use of force. When denying the existence of civilian victims, US military officers sometimes simply claimed that the victims were combatants, without considering evidence suggesting otherwise.
In short, the gist of the book is that civilians should stay away from the military, since the military views virtually any strange, incomprehensible, or suspicious behavior as a potential threat, which in turn makes the civilian a potential threat. At best, such a person will be detained; at worst, they will be shot on the spot. Another conclusion that can be drawn from this book is that any army in the world behaves in a similar manner in an occupied region.
Книга является описанием того как американские войска, преимущественно во время военных кампаний на ближнем востоке, совершали военные преступления, а так же чем руководствовались эти солдаты совершая эти акты. Действительно, намеренного акта убийства гражданских тут не было, но были ошибки, вернее, чрезмерные меры предосторожности. Впрочем, слово «предосторожность» тоже не отражает суть действий американских военных, поэтому для более точного описания обратимся к самому началу книги, где находим следующее очень точное описание того о чём собственно суть:
Referring to the anticipatory use of force, Gentili contended that one did not have to wait for the enemy to attack because “it is lawful to strike those who are preparing to strike us.” In the early seventeenth century, Grotius argued that when danger was immediate, it was permissible to respond with the use of force. “It has already been proved,” wrote Grotius, “that when our lives are threatened with immediate danger, it is lawful to kill the aggressor, if the danger cannot otherwise be avoided.”
Как видим, речь идёт не просто об ошибочном убийстве гражданских, а о том, что этих гражданских принимали за потенциальных агрессоров. И далее:
In the Cold War era, the US consistently reaffirmed its conviction that preventive wars launched against non-immediate threats were illegitimate. President Truman, for example, rejected preventive wars because he viewed them as wars of aggression, the “weapon of dictators, not of free democratic countries like the United States.” Like Truman, President Eisenhower refused to accept the argument for preventive wars. The National Security Council Report, approved by the Eisenhower administration in 1955, stated that the US and its allies “must reject the concept of preventive war” or any similar acts intended to provoke war. The Reagan administration rejected the idea of preventive war…
Как я понял, продлилась такая ситуация ровно до событий 9/11 в США, после чего была принята совсем другая доктрина, полностью противоречащая предыдущей, суть которой была приведена выше.
It was after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that a major shift occurred from anticipatory self-defense against imminent threats to preventive self-defense against more remote threats. Signaling the transition to a new preventive war doctrine, President Bush stated, in a speech in June 2002, that the US must “confront the worst threats before they emerge.”
После этого события начались военные кампании США, в которых и совершались военные преступления, которые рассматривает автор. Вернее причины, по которым они совершались, а так же последствия (для американских военных совершившие их). Итак, когда американские военные оказываются в ситуации оккупационной армии, они сталкиваются с ситуацией, когда потенциальным врагом может оказаться любой гражданский.
The expanded notion of imminence enabled US troops to categorize as imminent threats a range of movements and actions that did not represent an immediate threat but merely suggested that a threat might emerge at some unspecified moment in the future. Mere speculation about which movements and actions could evolve into a threat in the future thus became the basis for decisions on when to preventively use force in self-defense.
<…>
Instead of trying to obtain evidence about direct participation in hostilities, US soldiers used an array of assumptions, hypotheses, and guesses that did not prove with certainty that the targets were combatants.
В результате подозреваемых либо отправляли в специальные лагеря или тюрьмы, либо убивали не месте т.к. в некоторых случаях считали длительные процессы неэффективными.
The overwhelming majority of those “security internees” have never been charged with a criminal offense and tried by an independent and impartial court of law.
<…>
Security detention—also termed preventive detention, administrative detention, and internment—is traditionally defined as the non-criminal detention of persons based on the serious threat that their activities pose or will pose to the security of the detaining authority in relation to an armed conflict.
<…>
In international armed conflicts, the belligerent parties are permitted to hold prisoners of war in detention (e.g., members of the armed forces and affiliated militias and volunteer corps) and, under certain conditions, civilians.
Если взять кейс Бучи, который произошёл во время войны России и Украины в 2022 году, именно это и должны были делать российские солдаты в отношении тех гражданских, которых подозревали в работе на ВСУ, а не заниматься пытками и внесудебными казнями. Впрочем, как показывает книга, американские солдаты тоже не всегда соблюдали это правило и что более интересно, действовали в той же логике что и российская армия в Буче.
Instead of detaining and transferring suspects to a court of law, the US forces opted to kill them. The US military believed that such orders were necessary to defeat the insurgency and protect US troops, because merely detaining and bringing suspected insurgents to a court of law proved to be ineffective.
<…>
…a serious problem with killing suspected insurgents based on hostile intent determinations was that the lax definition of “imminent threat,” coupled with the overly broad indicia used for determining such threats, often led to killings of innocent civilians.
<…>
During the war in Iraq, for example, most checkpoint incidents, including incidents in which US troops preventively used force against what they believed were imminent threats, went unreported and uninvestigated. If civilians were killed in such incidents, they were not officially recorded.
Как я отметил выше, автор пишет, что подобные «происшествиях» с участием военных и гражданских, в которых дело заканчивается смертью гражданского, редко или возможно даже никогда не заканчивались наказанием американских военных. Я думаю это связано с тем, что действует принцип «свой-чужой», т.е. наказывая своих можно наткнуться на неприятие со стороны собственного общества, особенно это важно для демократий. Впрочем, и не демократические режимы вовсе не спешат наказывать своих граждан, если те совершили преступления в отношении иностранцев.
As one soldier explained: “What constituted a threat was open to such broad interpretation that nearly all shootings […] were never investigated.”
<…>
According to US military investigating officers, the troops were permitted to preventively use force against persons possessing objects that could be weapons, for example, “objects that could be IEDs.”
<…>
When soldiers admitted during military investigations that they had not clearly seen what the suspects were doing—for example, soldiers described those situations with statements such as “it looked as if he [the victim] was working on something that was on the ground or he was placing something on the ground”—military investigators accepted such uncertainty as a legitimate part of “imminent threat” determinations, and, consequently, concluded that the preventive use of force in those situations was in line with the rules of engagement.
<…>
In the aftermath of attacks against civilians, military officers sometimes denied the existence of civilian victims, particularly when they wanted to either stall or prevent investigations into these attacks, including attacks involving the preventive use of force. When denying the existence of civilian victims, US military officers sometimes simply claimed that the victims were combatants, without considering evidence suggesting otherwise.
В общем, суть написанного в том, что гражданским нужно держать подальше от военных т.к. военные рассматривают практически любое странное, непонятное или подозрительное поведение как возможную угрозу, что переводит гражданского в статус потенциальной угрозы. В лучшем случаи такого человека задержат, а в худшем – застрелят на месте. Другой вывод, который можно сделать на основании этой книги, это что любая армия в мире ведёт себя подобным образом в ситуации оккупированного региона.
The book describes how American troops, primarily during military campaigns in the Middle East, committed war crimes, as well as what motivated these soldiers to commit such acts. Indeed, there were no deliberate acts of killing civilians here, but there were mistakes—or rather, excessive precautions. However, the word “precaution” also fails to capture the essence of the American military’s actions, so for a more accurate description, let’s turn to the very beginning of the book, where we find the following very precise description of what the book is actually about:
Referring to the anticipatory use of force, Gentili contended that one did not have to wait for the enemy to attack because “it is lawful to strike those who are preparing to strike us.” In the early seventeenth century, Grotius argued that when danger was immediate, it was permissible to respond with the use of force. “It has already been proved,” wrote Grotius, “that when our lives are threatened with immediate danger, it is lawful to kill the aggressor, if the danger cannot otherwise be avoided.”
As we can see, this is not simply a matter of civilians being killed by mistake, but rather of these civilians being mistaken for potential aggressors. And then:
In the Cold War era, the US consistently reaffirmed its conviction that preventive wars launched against non-immediate threats were illegitimate. President Truman, for example, rejected preventive wars because he viewed them as wars of aggression, the “weapon of dictators, not of free democratic countries like the United States.” Like Truman, President Eisenhower refused to accept the argument for preventive wars. The National Security Council Report, approved by the Eisenhower administration in 1955, stated that the US and its allies “must reject the concept of preventive war” or any similar acts intended to provoke war. The Reagan administration rejected the idea of preventive war…
As I understand it, this situation persisted right up until the events of 9/11 in the United States, after which a completely different doctrine was adopted—one that was entirely at odds with the previous one, the essence of which was outlined above.
It was after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that a major shift occurred from anticipatory self-defense against imminent threats to preventive self-defense against more remote threats. Signaling the transition to a new preventive war doctrine, President Bush stated, in a speech in June 2002, that the US must “confront the worst threats before they emerge.”
Following this event, the United States launched military campaigns during which the war crimes discussed by the author were committed. More precisely, the author examines the reasons behind these crimes, as well as their consequences (for the American soldiers who committed them). Thus, when American soldiers find themselves in the role of an occupying force, they face a situation in which any civilian could be viewed as a potential enemy.
The expanded notion of imminence enabled US troops to categorize as imminent threats a range of movements and actions that did not represent an immediate threat but merely suggested that a threat might emerge at some unspecified moment in the future. Mere speculation about which movements and actions could evolve into a threat in the future thus became the basis for decisions on when to preventively use force in self-defense.
<…>
Instead of trying to obtain evidence about direct participation in hostilities, US soldiers used an array of assumptions, hypotheses, and guesses that did not prove with certainty that the targets were combatants.
As a result, suspects were either sent to special camps or prisons or killed on the spot, since, in some cases, some trials were considered ineffective.
The overwhelming majority of those “security internees” have never been charged with a criminal offense and tried by an independent and impartial court of law.
<…>
Security detention—also termed preventive detention, administrative detention, and internment—is traditionally defined as the non-criminal detention of persons based on the serious threat that their activities pose or will pose to the security of the detaining authority in relation to an armed conflict.
<…>
In international armed conflicts, the belligerent parties are permitted to hold prisoners of war in detention (e.g., members of the armed forces and affiliated militias and volunteer corps) and, under certain conditions, civilians.
If we take the case of Bucha, which occurred during the 2022 war between Russia and Ukraine, this is precisely what Russian soldiers should have done with regard to civilians suspected of working for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, rather than engaging in torture and extrajudicial executions. However, as the book shows, American soldiers did not always follow this rule either, and, more interestingly, acted according to the same logic as the Russian army in Bucha.
Instead of detaining and transferring suspects to a court of law, the US forces opted to kill them. The US military believed that such orders were necessary to defeat the insurgency and protect US troops, because merely detaining and bringing suspected insurgents to a court of law proved to be ineffective.
<…>
…a serious problem with killing suspected insurgents based on hostile intent determinations was that the lax definition of “imminent threat,” coupled with the overly broad indicia used for determining such threats, often led to killings of innocent civilians.
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During the war in Iraq, for example, most checkpoint incidents, including incidents in which US troops preventively used force against what they believed were imminent threats, went unreported and uninvestigated. If civilians were killed in such incidents, they were not officially recorded.
As I noted above, the author writes that such “incidents” involving military personnel and civilians, in which a civilian is killed, rarely—or perhaps never—resulted in punishment for the American military. I think this is due to the “friend or foe” principle, i.e., punishing one’s own people can lead to backlash from one’s own society, which is especially important for democracies. However, even non-democratic regimes are in no hurry to punish their own citizens if they have committed crimes against foreigners.
As one soldier explained: “What constituted a threat was open to such broad interpretation that nearly all shootings […] were never investigated.”
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According to US military investigating officers, the troops were permitted to preventively use force against persons possessing objects that could be weapons, for example, “objects that could be IEDs.”
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When soldiers admitted during military investigations that they had not clearly seen what the suspects were doing—for example, soldiers described those situations with statements such as “it looked as if he [the victim] was working on something that was on the ground or he was placing something on the ground”—military investigators accepted such uncertainty as a legitimate part of “imminent threat” determinations, and, consequently, concluded that the preventive use of force in those situations was in line with the rules of engagement.
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In the aftermath of attacks against civilians, military officers sometimes denied the existence of civilian victims, particularly when they wanted to either stall or prevent investigations into these attacks, including attacks involving the preventive use of force. When denying the existence of civilian victims, US military officers sometimes simply claimed that the victims were combatants, without considering evidence suggesting otherwise.
In short, the gist of the book is that civilians should stay away from the military, since the military views virtually any strange, incomprehensible, or suspicious behavior as a potential threat, which in turn makes the civilian a potential threat. At best, such a person will be detained; at worst, they will be shot on the spot. Another conclusion that can be drawn from this book is that any army in the world behaves in a similar manner in an occupied region.
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