A history of drones: moral(e) bombing and state terrorism

ABSTRACT

This article argues that an historical investigation of air power makes possible the critique of current regimes of drone surveillance and bombing as a practice of state terrorism. By identifying certain key themes regularly used in terrorism studies for the classification of violence as “terrorism”, this article shows that early air power theorists understood military aircraft as essentially instruments of terrorism. A central argument permeating these theorists’ conception of air power was that the military value of aviation lay in its capacity to target the enemy’s population and, by means of bombing, generate a significant “moral effect” – that is, a psychological effect against the morale of civilians. This strategic formula constituted a central component of British air control schemes during the interwar period, where terror bombing was deployed systematically in order to control and pacify colonial populations. In arguing that widespread and long-lasting terror remains an inalienable feature of air power, this article concludes with a call for a critique that accounts for the fact that current deployments of armed drones – for instance, the US “targeted killings” programme – effectively reproduce these historical and material conditions of terrorist violence.

KEYWORDS:

• Drones
• state terrorism
• air power theory
• moral effect
• air control
• colonial bombing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The US use of drones for counterterrorist purposes (i.e. the US targeted killings programme) in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen is the foremost example of how drones can be deployed as instruments of aerial control. As Emery and Brunstetter (2015, 424) observe: “The near perpetual loitering ability of drones has resulted in … the occupation of a geographical space by a foreign power through the constant presence of airborne military force”; a situation where drones “provide an omniscient ‘god’s eye view’ of territories, holding the power of life and death” over the population below.

2. With the notable exception of the aforementioned challenge to accounts that obscure or reject the capacity of state actors to act as terrorists.

3. In his What’s Wrong with Terrorism? Robert E. Goodin notes that an understanding of terrorism based on “killing innocents” – which is often the formulation promulgated by just war theorists – is mistaken. Among Goodin’s various objections (Goodin 2006, 9–30) is the argument that the identification of terrorism solely with killing innocents, non-combatants or civilians reduces terrorist acts to (mass) murder and thus obscures its (moral) distinctiveness as a political violence intending to instil fear. While I agree with Goodin’s concerns, the reason why I include “killing innocents” as an element of terrorist violence is not because I consider it an analytically valid criterion – that would have be the case only if I were trying to define terrorism. Rather, my argument is that insofar as killing civilians is regularly taken to be a characteristic of terrorism, then, even if that claim is analytically flawed, this raises the question of why US drone strikes which have killed civilians should not also be interrogated as potential cases of terrorist violence.

4. For a more detailed analysis of how this resonates with the terrorising effect of drone surveillance, see Marina Espinoza’s contribution in this special section.

5. For more, see Marina Espinoza’s article in this issue.

6. According to Carvin and Williams (2015), presenting new war technologies as humane advancements in killing, injuring, torturing or terrorising techniques is an inherent imperative of the Western liberal way of warfare. Thanks to the anonymous reviewer for pointing out the wider implications of this argument.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Afxentis Afxentiou

Afxentis Afxentiou is a PhD student specialising in critical political thought at the University of Brighton.