Enhanced Interrogation, the Report on Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation, and the Return of Kriegsraison

Abstract

Last year’s release of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Report on Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation (RDI Report) reinvigorated debate over the United States’ so-called enhanced interrogation program in the years following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Defenders of the enhanced interrogation program posit that enhanced interrogation techniques were militarily necessary to prevent additional terrorist attacks against the United States and to defeat al-Qaeda — and that this military necessity excused any deviation from domestic and international law prohibiting the use of harsh interrogation techniques. This essay argues that the rhetorical and legal reliance defenders of enhanced interrogation techniques place on military necessity is nothing more than a return to the dangerous and invalid doctrine known as Kriegsraison.

Keywords: international law, international humanitarian law, Kriegsraison, military necessity, torture, interrogation, RDI