Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Spring 2018
Abstract
One important theme in Rosa Brooks’s How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything is that in Iraq and Afghanistan the United States has increasingly given the military reconstruction tasks that seem more like civilian jobs. This is part of the pivot to a “hearts-and-minds” counter-insurgency strategy; but in larger part it reflects our great trust in our military and diminishing trust in civilian government. The result is a vicious circle: As resources shift from civilian agencies to the military doing similar jobs, the civilian agencies become less effective, which seems to vindicate the judgment that the military can do it better. In this reflection, I suggest that alongside the vicious circle that concerns Brooks, another problem with using the military for civilian tasks is that the moment strategy changes away from “hearts and minds,” the military will abandon the civilian jobs. Thus, the moral character of the work is different. I use Phil Klay’s reality-based short story “Money as a Weapons System” and the career of T. E. Lawrence to illustrate the point.
Publication Citation
David Luban, Humanitarianism as a Weapons System, 32 Temple Int'l & Comp. L.J. 47-51 (2018).
Scholarly Commons Citation
Luban, David, "Humanitarianism as a Weapons System" (2018). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 2075.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/2075