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.