Analyzing The Drone Debates Targeted Killing Remote Warfare And Military Technology

The book examines principal arguments for and against the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for surveillance and 'targeted killing.' Addressing both sides of the argument with clear and cogent details, the book provides a thorough introduction to ongoing debate about the future of warfare and its ethical implications.

The book examines principal arguments for and against the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for surveillance and 'targeted killing.' Addressing both sides of the argument with clear and cogent details, the book provides a thorough introduction to ongoing debate about the future of warfare and its ethical implications.

This book explores the implications of drone warfare for the legitimacy of global order. The literature on drone warfare has evolved from studying the proliferation of drones, to measuring their effectiveness, to exploring their legal, moral, and ethical impacts. These "three waves" of scholarship do not, however, address the implications of drone warfare for global order. This book fills the gap by contributing to a "fourth wave" of literature concerned with the trade-offs imposed by drone warfare for global order. The book draws on the "English School" of International Relations Theory, which is premised on the existence of a society of states bounded by common norms, values, and institutions, to argue that drone warfare imposes contradictions on the structural and normative pillars of global order. These consist of the structure of international society and diffusion of military capabilities, as well as the sovereign equality of states and laws of armed conflict. The book presents a typology of contradictions imposed by drone warfare within and across these axes that threaten the legitimacy of global order. This framework also suggests a confounding consequence of drone warfare that scholars have not hitherto explored rigorously: drone warfare can sometimes strengthen global order. The volume concludes by proposing a research agenda to reconcile the complex and often counter-intuitive impacts of drone warfare for global order. This book will be of considerable interest to students of security studies, global governance, and International Relations.

The deployment of remotely piloted air platforms (RPAs) - or drones - has become a defining feature of contemporary counter-insurgency operations. Scholarly analysis and public debate has primarily focused on two issues: the legality of targeted killing and whether the practice is effective at disrupting insurgency networks, and the intensive media and activist scrutiny of the policy processes through which targeted killing decisions have been made. While contributing to these ongoing discussions, this book aims to determine how targeted killing has become possible in contemporary counter-insurgency operations undertaken by liberal regimes. Each chapter is oriented around a problematisation that has shaped the cultural politics of the targeted killing assemblage. Grayson argues that in order to understand how specific forms of violence become prevalent, it is important to determine how problematisations that enable them are shaped by a politico-cultural system in which culture operates in conjunction with technological, economic, governmental, and geostrategic elements. The book also demonstrates that the actors involved - what they may be attempting to achieve through the deployment of this form of violence, how they attempt to achieve it, and where they attempt to achieve it - are also shaped by culture. The book demonstrates how the current social relations prevalent in liberal societies contain the potential for targeted killing as a normal rather than extraordinary practice. It will be of great use for academic specialists and graduate students in international studies, geography, sociology, cultural studies and legal studies.

The increased military employment of remotely operated aerial vehicles, also known as drones, has raised a wide variety of important ethical questions, concerns, and challenges. Many of these have not yet received the serious scholarly examination such worries rightly demand. This volume attempts to fill that gap through sustained analysis of a wide range of specific moral issues that arise from this new form of killing by remote control. Many, for example, are troubled by the impact that killing through the mediated mechanisms of a drone half a world away has on the pilots who fly them. What happens to concepts such as bravery and courage when a war-fighter controlling a drone is never exposed to any physical danger? This dramatic shift in risk also creates conditions of extreme asymmetry between those who wage war and those they fight. What are the moral implications of such asymmetry on the military that employs such drones and the broader questions for war and a hope for peace in the world going forward? How does this technology impact the likely successes of counter-insurgency operations or humanitarian interventions? Does not such weaponry run the risk of making war too easy to wage and tempt policy makers into killing when other more difficult means should be undertaken? Killing By Remote Control directly engages all of these issues. Some essays discuss the just war tradition and explore whether the rise of drones necessitates a shift in the ways we think about the ethics of war in the broadest sense. Others scrutinize more specific uses of drones, such as their present use in what are known as "targeted killing" by the United States. The book similarly tackles the looming prospect of autonomous drones and the many serious moral misgivings such a future portends. "A path-breaking volume! BJ Strawser, an internationally known analyst of drone ethics, has assembled a broad spectrum of civilian and military experts to create the first book devoted to this hot-button issue. This important work represents vanguard thinking on weapon systems that make headlines nearly every day. It will catalyze debates policy-makers and military leaders must have in order to preserve peace and protect the innocent. - James Cook, Department Chair/Head of Philosophy, US Air Force Academy "The use of 'drones' (remotely piloted air vehicles) in war has grown exponentially in recent years. Clearly, this evolution presages an enormous explosion of robotic vehicles in war - in the air, on the ground, and on and under the sea. This collection of essays provides an invaluable contribution to what promises to be one of the most fundamental challenges to our assumptions about ethics and warfare in at least the last century. The authors in this anthology approach the ethical challenges posed by these rapidly advancing technologies from a wide range of perspectives. Cumulatively, they represent an essential overview of the fundamental ethical issues involved in their development. This collection makes a key contribution to an urgently needed dialogue about the moral questions involved." - Martin L. Cook, Adm. James B. Stockdale Professor of Professional Military Ethics, Professor Leadership & Ethics, College of Operational & Strategic Leadership, U.S. Naval War College

Does the lethal use of drones pose any new or difficult moral problems? Or is the controversy over these weapons merely a distraction from deeper questions regarding the justice of war and the United States' bellicose foreign policy? Opposing Perspectives on the Drone Debate pulls no punches in answering these questions as five scholars square off in a lively debate over the ethics of drones and their contentious use in a point-counterpoint debate. The contributing authors are some of the foremost thinkers in international affairs today, spanning the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, political science, and law. Topics debated range from the US's contested policy of so-called "targeted killing" in Pakistan's tribal regions to fears over the damaging effects such weaponry has on our democratic institutions to the more abstract moral questions raised by killing via remote control such as the duty to capture over kill.

The practice of armed conflict has changed radically in the last decade. With eminent contributors from legal, government and military backgrounds, this Research Handbook addresses the legal implications of remote warfare and its significance for combatants, civilians, policymakers and international lawyers.

The intense debate over US targeted drone strikes outside war zones has been limited by the failure to review and assess a considerable body of quantitative research and qualitative material on the impacts of such strikes on terrorist groups and civilians. This book fills an important gap in the literature by conducting a careful and rigorous review of such evidence. It argues that decisions about the use of targeted strikes as a counterterrorism instrument, as well as legal and ethical evaluations of such use, must be informed by our best understanding of the insights that empirical evidence can provide on the effectiveness of strikes and the costs they impose on populations where they occur.