Eliminative Killing and the Targeting of Noncombatants Comments on Seth Lazar’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Sparing Civilians</Emphasis>

At the heart of Seth Lazar’s arguments in support of what he calls Moral Distinction – ‘In war, with rare exceptions, killing noncombatants is worse than killing combatants’ – is his treatment of eliminative and opportunistic killing. He adopts the standard line, that eliminative killing is easier to justify than opportunistic killing. And he acknowledges that there are various circumstances in which one might be able to justify killing noncombatants on eliminative grounds. Nonetheless, he relies on the notion of a mixed kind of agency to argue that intentionally killing civilians is normally ‘more opportunistic than intentionally killing soldiers’, and is therefore normally more wrongful. I argue that his argument in favor of this claim fails. If we distinguish objectively available reasons from subjectively motivating ones, and pay attention to the limited relevance of subjectively motivating reasons, then it becomes clear that mixed agency cannot do the sort of work for just war theory that Lazar wants it to do. This failure need not impugn other parts of his defense of Moral Distinction. But it takes the heart out of his defense of it, putting a greater burden on the other parts of his argument.     

Death penalty sentiment in the United States

Pro-death penalty sentiment, at its all-time low in 1966 at 42% of the country's adult population, steadily rose to 71% in 1986. This average percentage varies widely for various subgroups of the population-as widely as between 43 and 93% at the extremes: political leanings, ethnic background, sex, and economic status are the main determinants. Death penalty sentiments are not of uniform strength: about one-third of the pro-death penalty population might give up their position if the alternative were life without parole and if they were convinced that the death penalty is not a deterrent. In the main, death penalty sentiment is not determined by utilitarian considerations but by moralistic ones, which in turn are part of the liberal-conservative dividing lines.     

Reviews

G. N. Khanin, Sovetskii ekonomicheskii rost: analiz zapadnykh otsenok. Novosibirsk: 1993, 156 pp.

William Moskoff, Hard Times: Impoverishment and Protests in the Perestroika Years. The Soviet Union 1985–1991. Armonk, NY and London: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1993, xii + 244 pp., $59.95 h/b, $24.95 p/b.

Simon Clarke, Peter Fairbrother, Michael Burawoy & Pavel Krotov, What About the Workers? London: Verso, 1993, 248 pp., £34.95 h/b, £11.95 p/b.

Kazimierz Z. Poznanski (ed), Stabilization and Privatization in Poland: An Economic Evaluation of the Shock Therapy Program. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993, vii + 269 pp.

Norbert Zmijewski, The Catholic‐Marxist Ideological Dialogue in Poland, 1945–1980. Alder‐shot: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1991, 179 pp., £37.50.

Andrzej K. Kozminski, Catching Up? Organizational and Management Change in The Ex‐Socialist Block. New York: State University of New York Press, 1993, viii + 236 pp., $16.95.

Don van Atta (ed), The ‘Farmer Threat’. The Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in Post‐Soviet Russia. Boulder, CO, and Oxford: Westview Press, 1993, xiii + 221pp., £25.50.

Malcolm R. Hill & Caroline M. Hay, Trade, Industrial Cooperation and Technology Transfer‐Continuity and Change in a New Era of East‐West Relations. Aldershot: Avebury Publishing, 1993, vii + 123 pp.

J. Arch Getty & Roberta T. Manning (eds), Stalinist Terror. New Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, viii + 294 pp., £35.00, $39.95 h/b, £13.95, $17.95 p/b.

Vladimir Andreff, La crise des economies socialistes. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1993, 447 pp., 140 francs.

Alexander J. Motyl, Dilemmas of Independence. Ukraine After Totalitarianism. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1993, xv + 217 pp., $17.95 p/b.

John Dunstan (ed), Soviet Education under Perestroika. Papers from the IV World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, Harrogate, UK, 1990. London: Routledge, xii + 230 pp., £35.00.

Deming Brown, The Last Years of Soviet Russian Literature. Prose Fiction 1975–1991. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, x + 208 pp., £35.00, $54.95.

Carmelo Mesa‐Lago (ed), Cuba—After the Cold War. Pittsburgh, PA, and London: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993, 383 pp., $49.95 h/b, $19.95 p/b.     

Reviews

Archie Brown and Michael Kaser, (eds.) Soviet Policy for the 1980s, London: Macmillan/ St Antony's, 1982. 282 pp. £20.00 (hardback) £7–95 (paperback).

David Holloway and Jane M. O. Sharp, (eds.) The Warsaw Pact: Alliance in Transition? London: Macmillan, 1984, 290 pp. £25.00.

Daniel N. Nelson, (ed.) Soviet Allies: the Warsaw Pact and the Issue of Reliability. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1984—UK suppliers, Bowker Publishing Company, xiii + 273 pp. £22.50.

Bohdan Harasymiw, Political Elite Recruitment in the Soviet Union. London: Macmillan, 1984, xviii + 277 pp. £25.00.

Rex A. Wade, Red Guards and Workers’ Militias in the Russian Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984, ix + 391 pp. $32.50.

Joachim Hoffmann, Die Geschichte der Wlassow‐Armee. Einzelschriften zur militärischen Geschichte des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Band 27. Verlag Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1984, xviii + 468 pp. DM. 32.00 (paperback).

Michal Mirski, The mixed economy: NEP and its lot. Translated from Polish by Roger A. Clarke. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1984, 295 pp. DKr. 125.

Jean‐Charles Asselain, Planning and Profits in Socialist Economies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984, xii + 269 pp. £12.50.

Roger Skurski, Soviet Marketing and Economic Development. London: Macmillan, 1983, 190 pp. £20.00.

Borys Lewytzkyj, Politics and Society in Soviet Ukraine 1953–80. Edmonton: Alberta: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1984, 219 pp.

Timothy Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity 1980–82. London: 1983, George Sanford, Polish Communism in Crisis. London‐New York: 1983.

Jack Bielasiak and Maurice D. Simon, (eds.) Polish Politics: Edge of the Abyss. New York: Praeger, 1984, xv + 366 pp.

Kari Möttölä, O. N. Bykov and I. S. Korolev, (eds.) Finnish‐Soviet Economic Relations, London: Macmillan (in association with the Finnish Institute of International Affairs), 1983, xxi + 358 pp. £30.00

John Dunn, The Politics of Socialism, An Essay in Political Theory Cambridge University Press. 1984, xviii + 107pp. £15 (hardback) £4.95 (paperback).     

Reviews

Prof. W. E. Butler (ed.). Russian Law: Historical and Political Perspectives. Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1977, xi + 266 pp. Dfl. 76.00. $31.50

Peter H. Solomon, Jr., Soviet Criminologists and Criminal Policy. Specialists in Policy‐Making. London: Macmillan Press, 1978. x + 253 pp. £10.00.

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George Garvey, Money, Financial Flows and Credit in the Soviet Union. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1977 (published for the National Bureau of Economic Research Inc.). xii + 223 pp. £11.00.

Stanislaw J. Sawicki, Soviet Land and Housing Law, a Historical and Comparative Study, New York, London: Praeger Publishers, 1977. xxiii + 199 pp. £13.05.

Hélène Carrère d'Encausse: L'empire éclaté. Paris: Flammarion, 1978, 314 pp.

S. G. Solomon, The Soviet agrarian debate, a controversy in social science, 1923–1929. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1977. xvi + 309 pp. $15.25.

David Lane and Felicity O'Dell, The Soviet Industrial Worker: Social Class, Education and Control. Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1978. 167 pp. £7.95.     

Who Can Keep the Peace? Insurgent Organizational Control of Collective Violence

Every armed organization seeks the ability to turn violence on and off by getting fighters to fight when ordered and to stop fighting when similarly ordered. This ability is a defining feature of what makes organized violence, in fact, organized. While state militaries develop clear hierarchies and disciplinary procedures to accomplish this goal, the complexity of civil war makes the task more difficult for insurgent groups. I argue that the leaders of insurgent organizations are able to turn violence on and off when they have deliberately established resource control through the direct, and exclusive, distribution of resources to their followers and those followers are socially embedded, meaning that members are united by strong horizontal ties and group norms. In contrast to existing approaches, I argue that material and social endowments do not predetermine whether leaders can establish resource control or embeddedness. Further, laying out the precise organizational mechanisms that determine when organizations can turn violence on and off challenges the utility of conceptions such as “fragmentation” or “cohesion” for explaining insurgent behavior and conflict outcomes. I test the theory by examining variation in behavior over time in two organizations facing different structural contexts—Jaysh al-Mahdi in Iraq and the Viet Minh in Vietnam—and find strong support for my argument while casting doubt on existing explanations.     

idPAD: Paper Analytical Device for Presumptive Identification of Illicit Drugs

As drug overdose deaths across the United States continue to rise, there is increasing interest in field testing of illicit substances. This work discusses a paper-based analytical device (idPAD) that can run a library of 12 colorimetric tests at the same time, each detecting different chemical functional groups and materials found in illicit drugs, distractor substances, and cutting agents. The idPAD requires no electricity, costs less than $2 USD, and requires minimal training to operate. The results of the 12 tests form a color barcode which is “read” by comparison to standard images. The accuracy of the idPAD was assessed using samples of heroin, cocaine HCl, crack, and methamphetamine at concentrations of 25%–100% in a lactose matrix, as well as pure lactose. Based on 840 “reads” by three different users, the idPAD showed 95% sensitivity and 100% specificity for detecting these drugs; the most common error was mistaking cocaine HCl for crack or crack for cocaine HCl. In a second step, samples of heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine (n = 30) and distractor substances (pharmaceuticals, cutting agents, and other illicit drugs, n = 64) were tested by two readers, yielding a sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 97%. Targeted substances were detected reliably at 55–180 μg/lane, and the idPAD was found to be stable for at least 3 months when stored at room temperature. The library approach used in the idPAD may provide the accuracy and robustness necessary for a presumptive field drug test.