Brutality in an Age of Human Rights: Activism and Counterinsurgency at the End of the British Empire

摘要

During its late-twentieth-century wars of decolonization, Great Britain employed counterinsurgency methods, such as indefinite detention and coercive interrogations, that human rights activists challenged. Initially in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States employed the same counterinsurgency policies and tactics the British had used decades earlier, and, not surprisingly, the United States faced the same legal challenges in the first decade of this century that the British faced from the 1950s through the 1970s. The U.S. legal battles have been well documented over the past decade, and now Brutality in an Age of Human Rights exposes the controversial colonial policies and tactics sanctioned by British civilian and military authorities from 1955 to 1975. When the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan began, U.S. leaders studying past counterinsurgencies had relatively few scholarly works to consult. Then, as the focus on international human rights law grew, so too did the number of books that exposed contentious wartime policies and methods. Brian Drohan's book is a valuable resource for lawyers, planners, and policy writers studying the history of human rights and its effect on counterinsurgency warfare.