Anywhere Wars

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates that drone programs – the combination of legal narratives, shifts in military strategy, and technological change – bring about an anywhere war. Combat drones have been deployed against non-state actors extraterritorially, including on the territory of non-belligerent states, because of the presence on those territories of members of terrorist groups. To allow this, drone programs have involved the creation of concepts such as “outside areas of active hostilities” or “outside hot conflict zones.” These non-legal concepts posit that jus in bello applies wherever the belligerent is, including on the territory of a state where the hostilities are not taking place. This practice, accompanied with supportive legal and political rationales, has sparked a heated debate among scholars on the geographical scope of armed conflicts under the jus in bello. Departing from the normative discussion for or against a geographical limitation of conflicts, the chapter shows that there is no such a thing as a legal geographical limitation of conflicts in the law and that its absence is exploited by drone programs, whose technological features eventually create the prospect of an anywhere war taking place wherever the enemy is.