Force protection and its trade-offs

So far, scholars of war and international relations have treated force protection either as a dependent variable resulting from casualty sensitivity or as an independent variable accounting for the incapacity of discriminating between civilians and enemy combatants in the warzone. In doing so, scholars have succeeded in covering both some of the consequences of force protection and some of its main ethical implications, but they have so far disregarded an interesting line of inquiry. By considering a number of possible trade-offs originating from the adoption of force protection measures, this essay is intended to fil this gap. In particular, we argue that force protection trades off with military effectiveness in irregular conflict.