In the global “War on Terror,” the United States Armed Forces have faced adversaries and combat conditions that are quite different from most twentieth-century military conflicts. Insurgents conceal themselves in civilian populations and rarely distinguish between military targets and civilian bystanders. In this challenging environment, the U.S. has adopted armed drones as important weapons. In Armed Drones and Globalization in the Asymmetric War on Terror, Fred Aja Agwu considers the legal ramifications of using drones in combat against unconventional enemies.

Agwu grounds his analysis in the Geneva Conventions that provide much of the law of war. Agwu finds that in many respects the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the use of armed drones, a conclusion that is frustrating, but also supports his argument that drone technology has exceeded the scope of legal rules largely established in the wake of the two world wars. While some of the criteria for conflicts and combatants can be stretched to cover portions of the “War on Terror,” in many cases Agwu argues the criteria are best understood as not covering the “War on Terror” or drones employed during it.

First, Agwu discusses how the insurgents are not lawful combatants. They are not members of a state military (they may have state support, but are not within a lawful chain of command), they do not wear uniforms, and their operations do not distinguish between military and civilian targets. Agwu argues that U.S. intelligence agents are also not lawful combatants because they are not members of the military and many drone strikes fail to distinguish between insurgent targets and civilian collateral damage. Second, Agwu suggests that the “War on Terror” is not a conflict covered by the law of war. While terrorists and insurgents may share common ideological motivations, they are fragmented across territories and organizations. The insurgents’ organizations are not components of sovereign states, and no state of war has been lawfully declared.

Finally, Agwu discusses weapons he categorizes as irregular and not anticipated by the law of war's rules on conventional armaments. In this category he places armed drones, improvised explosive devices, and online recruitment and radicalization of new insurgents. Since Agwu concludes the law of war does not cover the use of armed drones against insurgents in the “War on Terror,” he finds those weapons to be a matter of pragmatic self-defense, a gray area that is not against the law, but rather outside of legal regulation. This conclusion is disquieting since it seems to me armed drones and cross-border military engagements with insurgents should be subject to international regulation, but perhaps that is naïve given states’ preferences to retain sovereign discretion in such conflicts.

Agwu's text is replete with citations, even to the point that the distinction between description and normative argument is obscured. I did not perceive a clear connection between the book's main arguments and the chapters on the history of insurgency and the principle of chivalry in warfare. This book would be most useful for researchers focused on military drones or the limits of the law of war.