Last weekend, when NATO leaders met in Chicago, they unveiled a series of new projects, among them, apparently, a programme to develop and expand the use of unmanned aircraft to confront the security threats of the future and make better use of tighter budgets.
Used first for surveillance, and increasingly for strikes, UAS have considerable operational attraction. But killing with these stealth weapons stretches legal boundaries to the breaking point, and alienates people in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, countries in which neither NATO nor the United States, its most powerful member, are actually fighting wars — unless the “war on terror” has opened the entire world as a battlefield.
NATO’s attraction to UAS, almost exclusively US-built at the moment, is understandable. They are relatively cheap, can be deployed quickly in inhospitable terrain over vast distances and help keep troops and airmen out of harm’s way. But this push-button solution to warfare poses very real risks to civilians, especially as targeting criteria deteriorate to the point where a special rapporteur to the United Nations has described them as a “vaguely defined licence to kill.” The rules for using strike UAS should be clarified, and the tests that determine who is a legitimate target should be explicit. The standards NATO sets and its respect for international law will stand as a powerful example to all, especially as other governments seek to expand their production and use of UAS.
Operations are conducted in isolated areas under the utmost secrecy, making it virtually impossible to determine who has been killed or injured and whether the strike complied with the laws of war. Recent studies estimate one civilian dies for every four to five suspects killed.
While these strikes are described as clinical and surgical, there is no independent way for the public in NATO countries to evaluate the extent of their impact on civilians. It may well be the requirement of proportionality in the laws of war — that civilian casualties not be disproportionate to the legitimate military objective of the operation — is satisfied in a given operation. But this cannot be taken for granted, particularly if these supposedly precision operations result in one civilian killed for every five combatants.
As NATO countries prepare to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan and expand their UAS programs commensurately, they must carefully weigh the policies and practices for using a weapon that distances them from the human, political, legal, and moral costs of war.
Source: Winnipeg Free Press