In Drone Warfare John Kaag and Sarah Kreps offer an introduction to key debates about the rapid rise of armed drones in contemporary military conflicts. Accessible to non-specialists, and therefore with plenty of potential as a key teaching resource, Kaag and Kreps nevertheless demonstrate just how extensive a challenge drones represent to established thinking about the politics, law, and ethics of warfare via a sophisticated discussion of current mainstream debates. For those unfamiliar with the technology of current armed drones, the book also includes a helpful primer. Kaag and Kreps are clear that their focus is on armed drones, so the book only addresses in passing what remains the predominant military role of drones: the provision of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance functions. Neither does it do more than touch on civilian uses of drones.
At heart, this is a call to action to recognize the challenge armed drones represent and how their accelerating deployment by the United States is driven by political and military logics that are inadequately scrutinized; rely on permissive interpretations of international and, in some instances U.S. domestic, law; and that neuter effective ethical debate. The potential consequences of U.S. practice, argue Kaag and Kreps (pp. 147–57), has potentially seriously detrimental implications as armed drones proliferate to more states and to non-state actors. These four issues: democratic scrutiny and the role of drones in U.S. politics; the role of international law in restraining the use of armed drones; the need for effective ethical debate and education about a transformatory technology; and the challenges to future regulation of globalized armed drones provide the four principal sections of the book.
Kaag and Kreps do an excellent job of setting out how armed drone use creates concerns in all four instances. For example, they highlight the low levels of Congressional and legal scrutiny that presently exist within the United States, reinforced by, and reinforcing, public opinion strongly supportive of a technology seen as killing ‘terrorists’ whilst reducing, even eliminating, U.S. casualties in parts of the world where deploying U.S. forces is militarily and politically difficult and dangerous. This reduces the democratic restraints imposed by a citizenry liable to bear the costs, in blood and treasure, of their leaders’ military adventures, emboldening those leaders to reach for the military option (pp. 53–77). This links to an ethical concern about the extent to which the extraordinary capabilities of drones reinforces a belief in the possibility of ‘surgical’ strikes that thus a tendency to see political problems in such terms, irrespective of the appropriateness of that framing. When you have more and better scalpels, everything starts to look like a tumor (pp. 98–9; 117–121).
This is illustrative of Kaag and Kreps’ success in sustaining linkages across the book’s four main sections. A further instance is their analysis of international legal debates, which is critical of what they see as excessively permissive interpretations of key principles of self-defense and imminence by the U.S. government (pp. 82–6), links to the final section’s call for U.S. self-denial and to champion multilateral controls to limit other governments in making very similar arguments in pursuit of action highly detrimental to U.S. interests and wider international order (pp. 137–43; 151–6).
Kaag and Kreps skilfully demonstrate the complexity and interconnectedness of aspects of the drone debate, drawing on benchmark texts and scholars in these four issue areas, whilst synthesizing something that is distinctive. The book’s key contribution is challenging compartmentalization of the drone debate as being either a political one, or a legal one, or an ethical one, or a regulatory one. By arguing for interconnection they highlight how work in each area cannot succeed in establishing necessary public debate to secure the benefits armed drones whilst mitigating tendencies to overly militarize and under-scrutinize foreign and security policy, to weaken crucial legal protections and restrictions, to neuter ethical scrutiny and undermine key democratic values, and to risk destabilizing technology transfers that threaten international order.
Kaag and Kreps are clear that their focus is the U.S. experience. There are passing mentions of the UK and Israel as the two other principal states deploying armed drones. They note (p. 7) that the U.S. experience is, “… likely instructive in terms of other countries using drones, especially democracies …” but actually checking whether that is so could have revealed some interesting differences. For example, Kaag and Kreps recognize (p. 27) that neither the UK nor U.S. governments have offered statistics on civilian casualties in Afghanistan, but there are efforts, similar to those relied on throughout the book in relation to casualties in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, to unofficially assess civilian casualties. In the case of the UK, seven years of armed drone use resulted in just four civilian casualties. This reflects rules of engagement requiring RAF personnel to be certain that no civilian casualties would occur and that do not allow a target’s value to be used to justify higher levels of ‘collateral damage,’ effectively trading off discrimination and proportionality. This contrasts with U.S. practice and shows how another democracy has approached some important aspects of drone use in a significantly different way (David Omand, The Security Impact of Drones: Challenges and Opportunities for the UK, University of Birmingham 2014: 24–6).
Absence of significant discussion of Israeli practice is even more important, given drones’ extremely controversial role in operations in recent conflicts in Gaza and the way in which the Israeli Defence Force and some former members have challenged established understandings of the non-combatant immunity principle through arguments around the complicity of ‘enemy civilian’ populations in supporting ‘terrorist’ organizations, and that warnings of strikes, via leaflets, SMS messages, or firing warning shots—the so-called ‘knock on the door’—transfers responsibility for deaths to victims for failing to head the warnings (e.g. Avery Kasher and Asa Plaw, “Distinguishing Drones: an Exchange,” in Bradley Jay Strawser, ed., Killing By Remote Control: the Ethics of an Unmanned Military, 2013).
Comparative perspective would aid Kaag and Krep’s cause, demonstrating how two democracies, both close U.S. allies, have approached these issues differently. There are important lessons to learn from that practice, including cautionary ones, which strengthen their argument.
U.S.-centrism is the first of the book’s principal weaknesses. The second is neglect of more radical perspectives on drones. The debate in Drone Warfare is an intellectually conventional one, drawing on mainstream accounts of democratic accountability, international law, the ethics of technology in warfare, and international regulatory challenges. There is no significant discussion of more radical and critical drones scholarship that explores, for example, the transformation of the nature of military-political space and the technological construction of political, legal, ethical, and geographical uncertainty facilitating power shifts that radically alter accounts of agency and accountability (e.g. Mark Coeckelbergh, “Drones, Information Technology and Distance: Mapping the Moral Epistemology of Remote Fighting,” Ethics and Information Technology 15 [2] 2013; Derek Gregory, “From a View to a Kill,” Theory, Culture and Society 28 [7–8], 2011; Derek Gregory, “The Everywhere War,” The Geographical Journal 177 [3] 2011; Steve Niva, “Disappearing Violence: JSOC and the Pentagon’s New Cartography of Networked Warfare,” Security Dialogue 44[3] 2013; Alison Williams, “Enabling Persistent Presence? Performing the Embodied Geopolitics of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Assemblage,” Political Geography 30 [7] 2011). Indebted to a post-structural tradition, recognition of this work’s contribution would reinforce the urgency of broad-spectrum, critical public debate that Kaag and Kreps see as so important (pp. vii–ix).
Nevertheless, Drone Warfare is an important contribution because it stresses the necessity for debate and its insistence on the interconnectedness of the challenges armed drones present. Anyone looking for an account of why armed drones matter, how to get to grips with the debate, and where that debate should be heading will benefit from Drone Warfare. Those new to the issue will find sound foundations for developing their interest, whilst those already involved will have existing judgements tested by Kaag and Kreps’ lucid analysis, and new interest piqued by their defence of the necessity of a full-spectrum debate that of necessity crosses conventional disciplinary boundaries.
