Drones and Killing: Ethics of War and Radical Asymmetry

Abstract

Much of the ethical debates surrounding the use of force are primarily concerned with permissibility and with compliance with just war tradition principles. However, these moral elements do not fully grapple with the ethical shortcomings of drone warfare, in which there is a removal of physical risk only to the United States. However, this lack of physical risk- the radically asymmetric nature of drone operations, removes the foundation of whether a war may be justifiable: reciprocity. The lack of reciprocity fundamentally challenges our understanding of whether the use of force might be morally justifiable. With the removal of risk to the United States, war becomes a unilateral occurrence, in which individuals from the other side of the conflict are unable to defend themselves; thus, the use of force is less similar to war than it is to murder. In this paper, I seek to address these moral and ethical shortcomings of radically asymmetric warfare by examining the United States use of drone warfare. I first seek to contextualize the moral justification for the use of force by examining current debates on the ethics of drone warfare, specifically addressing both just war tradition and international law. Next, I examine the application of drone warfare by analyzing the morality of signature strike and personality strike operations, and how these are further complicated by risk-asymmetry. Lastly, I argue that risk-asymmetry is not risk-free to soldiers by examining the psychological consequences of waging radically asymmetric war.