Decapitation (military strategy)
Decapitation is a military strategy aimed at removing the leadership or command and control of a hostile government or group.[1][2] The strategy of shattering or defeating an enemy by eliminating its military and political leadership has long been utilized in warfare.
Genocide
- The deportation of Armenian intellectuals in 1915, considered the start of the Armenian genocide[3]
- Nazis during World War II[4]
- The Katyn massacre by the Soviet Union against Polish military officers. As Polish law required every university graduate to be a reserve officer, executing the officers among the Polish POWs allowed Lavrentiy Beria to stunt Polish science, culture and leadership.[citation needed]
In nuclear warfare
This section needs additional citations for verification. (February 2024) |
In
Strategies against decapitation strikes include the following:
- Distributed command and control structures.
- Dispersal of political leadership and military leadership in times of tension.
- Delegation of SLBM launch capability to local commanders in the event of a decapitation strike.[6]
- Distributed and diverse launch mechanisms.
A failed decapitation strike carries the risk of immediate,
Other nuclear warfare doctrines explicitly exclude decapitation strikes on the basis that it is better to preserve the adversary's command and control structures so that a single authority remains that is capable of negotiating a surrender or ceasefire. Implementing fail-deadly mechanisms can be a way to deter decapitation strikes and respond to successful decapitation strikes.
Conventional warfare, assassination and terrorist acts
This section needs additional citations for verification. (February 2024) |
Decapitation strikes have been employed in as a strategy in conventional warfare. The term has been used to describe the assassination of a government's entire leadership group or a nation's royal family.
- Assassination attempts on Volodymyr Zelenskyy
- The air strikes failed to kill their intended targets.[9]
- The U.S. and its ISIL, that threaten the United States and allies.[10]
- April 14, 1865: The assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth was part of a larger plot to disrupt the presidential line of succession by also killing then-Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward, at the close of the American Civil War
- February 1, 1908: King Manuel Buiça, both connected to the Carbonária (the Portuguese section of the Carbonari)
- July 17, 1918: Tsar Bolshevik firing squad under the command of Yakov Yurovsky
- November 9, 1939: Attempt on German Führer in order to cripple the Third Reich and its war effort. Several died, but Hitler escaped due to a change in schedule, leaving the rostrum 13 minutes before detonation.
- July 20, 1944: Claus von Stauffenberg attempted to assassinate Hitler and his inner circle of advisers by a suitcase bomb as part of a broader military coup d'état against the Nazi government, which ultimately failed.
- Yemen 1948 Alwaziri coup.
In recent warfare,
Some military strategists, like
Robert Pape has argued that decapitation is a relatively ineffective strategy. He writes that decapitation is a seductive strategy as it promises "to solve conflicts quickly and cheaply with... little collateral damage, and minimal or no friendly casualties", but decapitation strikes frequently fail or are not likely to produce the intended consequences even if successful.[13]
Counterterrorism theorists Max Abrahms and Jochen Mierau argue that leadership decapitation in a terrorist or rebel group has the tendency to create disorder within the group, but find decapitation ineffective because group disorder can often lead to politically ineffective, unfocused attacks on civilians. The two conclude that "[t]his change in the internal composition of militant groups may affect the quality and hence selectivity of their violence." [14]
One tactic that is sometimes used to inform the target selection for decapitation strikes is social network analysis. This tactic involves identifying and eliminating higher ranked members in a hierarchically arranged rebel or terrorist group by targeting lower members first, and using intel gained in initial strikes to identify an organization's leadership. Some strategists, like Generals David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, have also called for dedicated task units that are non-hierarchical and can be reorganized, in order to face similar distributed or decentralized terrorist groups.[15] Others, however, argue that decapitation strikes combined with social network analysis are more than unproductive, but can prolong a conflict due to their habit of eliminating rebel or terrorist leaders who are the most capable peace negotiators or have the potential to advance communities hardest hit by terror campaigns after the cessation of hostilities.[16]
See also
- Continuity of government
- Designated survivor
- Preemptive war
- Preventive war
- Samson Option
- Targeted killing
- List of military strategies and concepts
- List of military tactics
- Operation Looking Glass
- Burr dilemma - a kind of "decapitation" in party politics.
References
- ISBN 978-1-4408-3424-0.
- S2CID 236227864.
- ^ Blinka, David S. (2008). Re-creating Armenia: America and the memory of the Armenian genocide. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 31.
In what scholars commonly refer to as the decapitation strike on April 24, 1915...
- ^ "The Truth About Poland's Role in the Holocaust". The Atlantic. 6 February 2018.
- ISBN 978-0-8108-7814-3
- ^ "Documents on Predelegation of Authority for Nuclear Weapons Use". Archived from the original on 2020-12-18. Retrieved 2015-05-17.
- ^ "U.S. Launches 'Decapitation' Strike Against Iraq; Saddam Personally Targeted". Fox News Channel. 20 March 2003. Retrieved 9 September 2013.
- ^ "Cruise missiles target Saddam". CNN. 20 March 2003. Retrieved 9 September 2013.
- ^ "Airstrikes on Iraqi leaders 'abject failure'". New York Times News Service. 13 June 2004. Retrieved 27 August 2017.
- ^ Shinkman, Paul D. "Obama: 'Global War on Terror' Is Over". U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved April 4, 2017.
- .
- OCLC 1049576269.)
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - JSTOR 10.7591/j.ctt1287f6v.
- S2CID 146507596.
- CiteSeerX 10.1.1.431.3800.
- S2CID 109972592.