Drone warfare and morality in riskless war

Abstract

In this article, we examine the more or less instinctive uneasiness felt towards the use of armed drones by many scholars, policy-makers and military personnel. How is it, we ask, that many people – including members of the armed forces – acknowledge that armed drones offer an expedient and legally defensible solution to pressing security challenges and yet feel uncomfortable about them? The article's main argument is that much of the criticism of drone warfare is associated with an underlying ethically conditioned discomfort with so-called “riskless warfare”. The very feature that makes drones so attractive to policy-makers and military commanders – their risk free deployment – is, paradoxically, also one of the primary causes why many feel fundamentally uncomfortable with them. To make this argument, we build on the works of Martin van Creveld and Paul W. Kahn. While van Creveld argues that war should first and foremost be perceived of as a social activity governed more by the soldiers conducting the war than by the rationalty of states, Kahn identifies a ‘paradox of riskless warfare’ because our pursuit of asymmetry undermines reciprocity and thereby also the moral justification for killing the opponent's combatants.

Keywords:

• armed drones
• riskless war
• reciprocity
• asymmetry
• battlefield morality
• ethics of drone warfare
• legitimate killing

Notes on contributors

Dr Anders Henriksen is associate professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He specializes in international law and the use of force and armed counter-terrorism. He directs the Centre for International Law and Justice.

Dr Jens Ringsmose is associate professor at the Department for Political Science at the University of Southern Denmark. He specializes in NATO and contemporary war. He is the Head of the Department of Political Science and Public Management at the University of Southern Denmark.

Notes

1. A brief clarification is in order. While it is true that drone warfare is less risky for a state than to commit conventional “boots-on-the-ground”, it is not entirely devoid of risk. Even though the drone-operator is usually located out of harm's way thousands of miles away from where the missiles are being employed, a well-functioning drone programme (still) depends on the presence of local agents and “spotters” on the ground that can provide the necessary intelligence on the exact location of the target and the presence of potential innocent civilians. It is not, in other words, as if no one is put in harm's way. Moreover, as existing armed drones have a rather limited combat radius, countries employing them need bases in the vicinity of the area of operations.

2. For a similar focus on the non-political motives for fighting, see Coker (2002).

3. For a persuasive analysis of the moral challenges faced by a weak state under attack from remote weaponry, see Killmister (2008): Killmister (2008, p. 122) argues: “Remote weaponry restricts the moral options for retaliation available to the state under attack. A state under attack from remote weaponry is unable to respond in the traditional, just war sanctioned, manner of targeting combatants on the battlefield – there simply are none. There are thus three options available to such a state: it can surrender; it can target enemy civilians; or it can target what I have termed civilian combatants within the aggressor state.”

4. For perceptive criticisms of Strawser's main arguments, see Kaag and Kreps (2014, ch. 5) and Steinhoff (2013).