Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) saw the United States Army employ Special Forces (SF) on a scale not seen since the Vietnam War.1 Since 11 September 2001, U.S. Army Special Forces have experienced a renaissance with unconventional warfare (UW), the role for which SF was originally founded in June 1952.2 In his 12 March 2002 testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Charles R. Holland, Commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, stated that the "long-standing SOF mission" of surrogate warfare was receiving deserved new attention.3 In fact, according to General Holland, U.S. strategic objectives in Afghanistan would not have been achieved if not for surrogate warfare.4 Interestingly, however, surrogate warfare is not mentioned in Joint or Army doctrine. This raises the primary research question for this monograph, what does SF need to do to prepare for future surrogate warfare? This monograph will argue that surrogate warfare is indeed a form of unconventional warfare and that U.S. Army Special Forces are clearly the force of choice for conducting it because of their cultural and regional expertise. The attacks of September 11th, 2001, demanded a swift response. President Bush made it clear in his address to the nation that the U.S. would hunt down those responsible and hold them accountable.5 Intelligence suggested that Osama Bin Ladin and al-Qaeda were operating out of Afghanistan, which meant the military task fell to Central Command (CENTCOM), because it was in its geographic area of responsibility (AOR). In deciding how to respond militarily, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and CENTCOM Commander General Tommy Franks were keenly aware of the failure of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and did not want to repeat that failure. They agreed that the force would have to be small, flexible, and possess the capabilities to operate with precision and lethality.6 CENTCOM directed its Special Operations Command (SOCCENT) to begin planning. SOCCENT in turn notified the 5th Special Forces Group to begin preparations to conduct UW in Afghanistan. Operation Enduring Freedom saw SF take an unprecedented role as the main effort in the campaign to overthrow the Taliban and root out al-Qaeda. The unconventional war fought in Afghanistan involved working by, with, and through the Northern Alliance to achieve strategic, operational and tactical objectives. The Northern Alliance, under the advisement and direction of SF, served as a surrogate army in place of the large conventional U.S. force that Rumsfeld and Franks wanted to avoid using. SF's success in Afghanistan would foreshadow what was to come a year later in Iraq. In Operation Iraqi Freedom, SF was employed on an even larger scale. When the 4th Infantry Division was not allowed to enter northern Iraq through Turkey, the 10th Special Forces Group was used to open up a second front with surrogate forces. Kurdish militia, which numbered approximately 70,000, were used by SF to disrupt 13 Iraqi divisions, preventing them from interfering with the Combined Forces Land Component Command's (CFLCC) march on Baghdad.

Surrogacy is India's new form of outsourcing, as couples from all over the world hire Indian women to bear their children for a fraction of the cost of surrogacy elsewhere with little to no government oversight or regulation. In the first detailed ethnography of India's surrogacy industry, Amrita Pande visits clinics and hostels and speaks with surrogates and their families, clients, doctors, brokers, and hostel matrons in order to shed light on this burgeoning business and the experiences of the laborers within it. From recruitment to training to delivery, Pande's research focuses on how reproduction meets production in surrogacy and how this reflects characteristics of India's larger labor system. Pande's interviews prove surrogates are more than victims of disciplinary power, and she examines the strategies they deploy to retain control over their bodies and reproductive futures. While some women are coerced into the business by their families, others negotiate with clients and their clinics to gain access to technologies and networks otherwise closed to them. As surrogates, the women Pande meets get to know and make the most of advanced medical discoveries. They traverse borders and straddle relationships that test the boundaries of race, class, religion, and nationality. Those who focus on the inherent inequalities of India's surrogacy industry believe the practice should be either banned or strictly regulated. Pande instead advocates for a better understanding of this complex labor market, envisioning an international model of fair-trade surrogacy founded on openness and transparency in all business, medical, and emotional exchanges.

In Surrogate Humanity Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora trace the ways in which robots, artificial intelligence, and other technologies serve as surrogates for human workers within a labor system entrenched in racial capitalism and patriarchy. Analyzing myriad technologies, from sex robots and military drones to sharing-economy platforms, Atanasoski and Vora show how liberal structures of antiblackness, settler colonialism, and patriarchy are fundamental to human---machine interactions, as well as the very definition of the human. While these new technologies and engineering projects promise a revolutionary new future, they replicate and reinforce racialized and gendered ideas about devalued work, exploitation, dispossession, and capitalist accumulation. Yet, even as engineers design robots to be more perfect versions of the human—more rational killers, more efficient workers, and tireless companions—the potential exists to develop alternative modes of engineering and technological development in ways that refuse the racial and colonial logics that maintain social hierarchies and inequality.

Surrogate Warfare explores the emerging phenomenon of “surrogate warfare” in twenty-first century conflict. The popular notion of war is that it is fought en masse by the people of one side versus the other. But the reality today is that both state and non-state actors are increasingly looking to shift the burdens of war to surrogates. Surrogate warfare describes a patron's outsourcing of the strategic, operational, or tactical burdens of warfare, in whole or in part, to human and/or technological substitutes in order to minimize the costs of war. This phenomenon ranges from arming rebel groups, to the use of armed drones, to cyber propaganda. Krieg and Rickli bring old, related practices such as war by mercenary or proxy under this new overarching concept. Apart from analyzing the underlying sociopolitical drivers that trigger patrons to substitute or supplement military action, this book looks at the intrinsic trade-offs between substitutions and control that shapes the relationship between patron and surrogate. Surrogate Warfare will be essential reading for anyone studying contemporary conflict.

Birthing a Mother is the first ethnography to probe the intimate experience of gestational surrogate motherhood. In this beautifully written and insightful book, Elly Teman shows how surrogates and intended mothers carefully negotiate their cooperative endeavor. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork among Jewish Israeli women, interspersed with cross-cultural perspectives of surrogacy in the global context, Teman traces the processes by which surrogates relinquish any maternal claim to the baby even as intended mothers accomplish a complicated transition to motherhood. Teman’s groundbreaking analysis reveals that as surrogates psychologically and emotionally disengage from the fetus they carry, they develop a profound and lasting bond with the intended mother.

Modern warfare is becoming increasingly defined by distance. Today, many Western and non-Western states have shied away from deploying large numbers of their own troops to battlefields. Instead, they have limited themselves to supporting the frontline fighting of local and regional actors against non-state armed forces through the provision of intelligence, training, equipment and airpower. This is remote warfare, the dominant method of military engagement now employed by many states. Despite the increasing prevalence of this distinct form of military engagement, it remains an understudied subject and considerable gaps exist in the academic understanding of it. Bringing together writers from various backgrounds, this edited volume offers a critical enquiry into the use of remote warfare.