Chapter

Detention operations : a strategic view

Sandra L. Hodgkinson

U.S. military operations : law, policy, and practice

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2016

p. 275-305

eng

This chapter provides a rare glimpse into the interagency policymaking world of U.S. detention operations during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. It sets the stage with a broad overview of the U.S. position on the international legal authority to detain captured personnel in the course of military operations, and specifies influential U.S. domestic law. This chapter characterizes the interagency process of developing and implementing detention policy as laden with competing interests and heavily influenced by external actors, as well as the media, as well as battlefield exigencies. The chapter argues that battlefield detention remains vital to U.S. warfighters and must remain a key weapon in the U.S. military arsenal for the future. The chapter adroitly highlights how international perceptions and U.S. foreign policy concerns can have a significant impact on an area that was once just a concern of commanders and military lawyers abroad on a battlefield.

• Full text (restricted access : ICRC)

• U.S. military operations : law, policy, and practice / ed. by Geoffrey S. Corn, Rachel E. VanLandingham and Shane R. Reeves ; foreword by Stanley A. McChrystal