The Military and the 'Kill Chain'

Many discussions about defense and 'the military' assume that 'killing' lies at the heart of the profession. I find that assumption not only strange, but wrong. The reason why we have armed forces is to sustainably achieve our defense and security objectives through some capability bundle that (hopefully) provides excellent value for money.  'Force' clearly needs to be part of that capability bundle.  But there are many ways of instantiating, actuating force.

Let us assume that we can, at times, identify 'evil incarnate'. A person or force so demonstrably vile that 'the public good' would agree it should be stopped. Even in a clearcut case like this one, why would the physical annihilation of that person or force be the optimal course of action? The person, it is true, would no longer be able to pursue his (and let's face it: this is the most dominant gender in this category) 'evil' intent. This may arguably even be a 'net gain' for the international community. But the 'kill' will also trigger strong negative reactions from relatives, friends, like-minded people. More importantly, from my point of view, this particular course of action deprives his victims as well as all of us from the salubrious (and potentially cathartic) process of 'legal discovery'. [We have a quite wonderful word in Dutch for this: 'rechtsvinding' - literally 'finding what's right'. Which precedes rechtsschepping and rechtstoepassing - the actual creation and application of law. The German corollary 'Urteilsfinding' is already too focused on the actual trial; as is 'legal discovery'].

It may therefore be more appropriate - not from a legal, not from an ethical, but from a strictly security-pragmatic point of view - to contemplate alternative courses of action. One of the most attractive ones I can identify would be to identify such potential cases, to obtain a 'warrant' to track them, find them, and bring them before a court of law. Killing the perpetrator, in this 'due process' would also kill the rechtsvinding. But incapacitating this person or force, extracting it from the conflict space and bringing it to a neutral space where 

Think of the conflict denial effect (it's more than just prevention, it's the forceful denial of conflict) effect. If the international community, pursuant to a professional, traceable, non-politicized, probabilistic analysis based on a number of clear (politically agreed upon) criteria (as, say, is the standard in modern national legal jurisdictions), would decide such a course of action would be warranted, it could then intervene before the conflict breaks lose.  

Think of the conflict escalation dominance effect - international 'adult supervision' could at any given moment call for a 'time out' in any conflict and 'force' (armed force!)/'nudge'/induce the parties to a conflict to pursue alternative ways of achieving their objectives. 

Maybe even most importantly, think of the deterrent effect of such a course of action. Any individual or group of individuals that would be a party in any conflict would at any given moment in time throughout a possible crisis escalation dynamic realize that his/her actions would be subject to global public scrutiny based on globally recognized principles of international 'law'. The likely proliferation of .