Justified Drone Strikes are Predicated on R2P Norms

Abstract

Traditional just war principles of going to war (jus ad bellum ) regulate the moral permissibility of a state’s resorting to armed force. Based on contemporary just war doctrine, a state can justifiably resort to war as a result of individual or collective self-defense in order to defend a state’s political sovereignty, territorial integrity, or the human rights of its people. These forms of defense (individual and collective) are a state’s inherent right. By ex tension, the U.S. declares that drone strikes can be used to stop imminent threats from abroad because doing so is consistent with a state’s inherent right self-defense. 2 However, drone strikes for that reason constitutes a violation of traditional jus ad bellum principles ( just cause and last resort) according to just war theory. In addition, and even more alarming is that conducting drones strikes into a state that the U.S. is neither at war with nor morally justified to be at war with (since that state or a non-state actor operating in that state) does not actually constitute