Tactical Decision Making on Targeting: A Comparative Overview of Counter-Insurgency and Near-Peer Scenarios

Military Briefings

DIVIDSHUB

Soldiers have to make split second decisions about whether to kill or risk their lives to let the situation develop further. These decisions are informed by the soldiers’ knowledge of the laws governing armed conflicts, their rules of engagement, and common sense. Importantly, their training and prior experiences can also have a significant role in such targeting decisions, even though the law on targeting regulating the two scenarios remains the same.

In this Military Briefing, we will look into how decisions on targeting take place in practice in contextually different conflicts and the operational difficulties involved in the process.

Speaker

Molly Kovite is the Registered In-House Council at the Open Philanthropy and a Judge Advocate with the US Army Reserves. As a reservist, she serves as a professor of National Security Law at The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School. Prior to joining Open Philanthropy, she worked as the Senior Legal Advisor for the International Humanitarian Law Team at the American Red Cross.

She holds a BA in Political Science from Columbia University, a MA in International Relations from Dublin City University, and a JD from the New York University School of Law.

During her active duty service with the US Army, she deployed twice in Afghanistan, where she provided legal advice to commanders on ongoing operations to ensure compliance with legal requirements and guidelines, including conducting on-the-spot evaluations on airstrikes of moving targets. She has written on the notion of direct participation in hostilities at the tactical level as well as gender in the military.

Online

This Military Briefing will take place online on the platform Zoom.

To follow it, click on this link.

About the Military Briefings

Military Briefings are a unique series of events relating to military institutions and the law. They aim to improve our students’ knowledge of military actors and operations and build bridges between the military and civilian worlds.