Just Finished Reading: Drones and Targeted Killing – Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues edited by Marjorie Cohn (FP: 2015)

Despite covering much the same ground as my previous book on Drone Warfare this was in no way a boring read. For one thing, as a compilation of views, it had both a wider and a narrower focus of some of the issues raised by the use (and abuse) of this technology. I was particularly interested in the legal aspects of targeted killing – most especially of a state’s own citizens abroad (much in the news over here recently with the Governments first confirmed kills of British citizens fighting in Syria. Although more that touched upon in the previous book several articles in this volume (particularly US Policy of Targeted Killing with Drones: Illegal at Any Speed by Jeanne Mirer and Drone Warfare and Just War Theory by Harry van der Linden) were very informative and powerfully put across. In the same section (on the Legality and Morality of Drone use) was an article focused on an area barely mentioned in the previous book: Israel. Ishai Menuchin’s The Case of Israel: A Covert Policy of Political Capital Punishment is quite an eye opener.

A subject dear to my heart and, again only lightly brushed over in the previous book, had its own section here – the Future use of Drones. One obvious thing to look out for is the spread of the technology and the increase in their use across the world. Previously confined to Israel and the US (and now the UK) expect that other countries – probably Russia, China, India and Pakistan to begin with – will start using Drones for surveillance and targeted killing. With much precedent to go on their use will be almost beyond criticism even when innocents (or European/American citizens) are inevitably killed. Of course the spread of this method of assassination to ‘questionable’ nations such as Iran might prompt the UN Security Council to ban or at least regulate things. We all know how difficult it is to put genies back in bottles though. Another aspect is the increasing demand (and soon legalised use) of surveillance Drones over US and (probably) other Western cities. With the ability to ‘loiter’ over a target for days (or longer) and camera’s capable of covering multiple square miles in their never blinking vision it would mean that any of us could be under observation whenever we leave the house. Welcome to the Future! Finally there is the ever present issue of automation.

Presently all Drones are essentially UAV’s – Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – which are flown by long-range remote control. There is pressure to reduce human input and allow the Drones to become semi-autonomous meaning that the boring functions can be taken over by the computer in the craft itself and humans only get involved during any action. Inevitably there are already calls for Drones to become fully autonomous – where they can pilot themselves over target areas, decide on targets and engage when they decide things are optimal. Basically here we have machines built and designed to hunt down a kill human enemies. Does that ring any (alarm) bells with anyone? I understand that the programme to develop such machines will not be called Skynet.

If any of this, or the occasional headline grabbing story about Drones, piques your interest then this is definitely the book for you. Packed with information and pages of source notes at the end of each article this is an excellent place to start any research project on the subject. Highly recommended.