Strategic ignorance and the legitimation of remote warfare: The Hawija bombardments

Lauren Gould,Nora Stel

doi:10.1177/09670106211038801

Abstract

How must we understand and conceptualize the rationales and repercussions of remote warfare? This article contributes to scholarship on the ontology of remote war by analysing how Dutch officials engage with responsibility for the bombardment of an Islamic State weapons factory in Hawija, Iraq in 2015 under Operation Inherent Resolve. It observes that the main feature of Dutch officials’ accounts of Hawija is their diverse claims to not knowing about civilian casualties. Official narratives shifted from denial to secrecy to strategic ignorance. Bridging work on secrecy from the field of critical security studies with work on strategic ‘unknowing’ from ignorance studies, we propose a new take on the Foucauldian notion of ‘regimes of truth’. The regimes of truth that emerge to justify shifts to remote warfare – that it is riskless, precise and caring for civilian others – rely not merely on secrecy and denial but on feigned and imposed ignorance about casualties. Whereas denial can be disproven and secrecy has an expiration date, ignorance is more elusive and open-ended and hence politically convenient in different ways. Deliberate unknowing does not just postpone investigation and accountability but fundamentally and indefinitely obstructs it and thus sustains the regimes of truth for future remote wars.

Highlights

Why don’t we know what we don’t know about Hawija?During the night of 2 June 2015, two Dutch F-16s bombed an Islamic State (IS) weapons factory in Hawija, Iraq, as part of the United States-led Global Coalition against IS named Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR)
In our analysis of the ways in which Dutch state officials engaged with questions of awareness and responsibility regarding the Hawija casualties, we explored our data through the lens of epistemic politics to make visible the construction and functionality of political claims of ‘unknowledge’
For our attempt to understand the role of unknowing in Dutch accounts on the Hawija bombardment and the ontologies of remote warfare that this might be indicative of, an agnotological perspective is helpful because it enables us to understand the ways in which ignorance can sustain regimes of truth in ways that denial and secrecy cannot

Summary

Introduction

Why don’t we know what we don’t know about Hawija?During the night of 2 June 2015, two Dutch F-16s bombed an Islamic State (IS) weapons factory in Hawija, Iraq, as part of the United States-led Global Coalition against IS named Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR).

Objectives

Results

Conclusion