Opening Pandora’s box: the use of drones as preventive self-defense through the normative framework

Abstract

Since the United States began to use armed drones in its war on terror, the US has ignited a debate on the lawfulness of the use of force in preventive self-defense and about respect for international human rights. On the one hand, from a realist perspective, as rational actors in an anarchic international system, states seek to first bolster their security and, therefore, try to compile as many drones as they can in case their neighbors should attack them. On the other hand, from the normative framework, states justify their use of drones through international documents, as the US and Israel do when they argue that their use of armed drones on battlefields satisfies the law of war principles of distinction and proportionality. By applying Sandholtz’s cyclic theory of norm change, this article examines how the US invasion of Iraq and the US’s use of drone technology in the war’s aftermath have changed the doctrine of preventive self-defense. In doing so, the article argues that although states are now beg...