Drones The Times 7 Feb 2013
A Royal Marine I once knew would, in any given tactical situation, come up to me, a worried frown on his face, and say “But Sir, what if a tank comes along”. My answer was always the same: “Marine Snodgrass, if a tank comes along, we’re f****ed. Alright?”. Satisfied, he would then cheerfully go off upon his duty. I eventually concluded that his question was asked, not out of fear, but from a desire to be helpful by checking that I had spotted the danger he had spotted.
The current debate about drones is, no doubt fired by the same intention. And with good reason. Drones have become the weapon of choice of President Obama and – perhaps especially – of his new CIA Director, the rather scary looking Mr John Brennan. The issue is now a matter of hot debate on the other side of the Atlantic and, increasingly here too. Some call for constraints; others for clear guide lines; others still for a new international treaty governing their use, as we had for cluster bombs. Given that drones are (relatively) new and offer commanders new choices, this debate is all, no doubt perfectly healthy – provided it is properly rational.
But that’s the problem – so far it hasn’t been. The result is that misunderstanding – even perhaps deliberate mis-representation – are clouding the real issues involved.
First a health warning. War is a revolting practice and cannot be discussed without using revolting words. So the squeamish and those morally offended by all violence should look away now.
The first point may appear semantic, but it is not – it is fundamental. Drones are not a weapon like cluster bomb – they are a delivery system. They do not, like cluster bombs, scatter themselves indiscriminately over large areas, or lie there unexploded for children to step on later. The weapon they deliver is a so called “smart” bomb which has the same purpose, effect and horrible result, wherever and however it is launched. If this is what offends because it leads to “extra-judicial executions” (and that does indeed raise serious moral questions) then it should offend whether the weapon is launched from a drone, a nearby Special Forces team, a helicopter at 10,000 feet, an aircraft at 25,000, satellite at the edge of space or even nowadays with their accuracy, a submarine launched Cruise missile from hundreds of miles away.
Of course if it’s the “smart” bombs we don’t like, fine; then lets ban them. Then we can all go back to good old indiscriminate high explosive – not “smart”, not trying to be selective (not always succeeding, but at least trying) and of course not at all pleasant for the inadvertent innocent who, in much larger numbers, will get killed and maimed along with the intended target. To say nothing of our own servicemen, more of whom who will also have to die in the use of it.
We don’t want to do that do we? Of course not.
So if its not the “smart” bomb we object to it must be the drone itself.
But why?
A Peer who ought to know better said in the House of Lords the other day that it was because the drone was especially dangerous since it “kills people remotely from some a leafy suburb in the middle of one’s own country” – as though this was somehow happening in a garden shed close to you.
But of course it is not. Yes, these decisions are being controlled from thousands of miles away. But is that more or less thousands of miles away than the decision to send in a stealth fighter? or give the order to launch a missile from a nearby Special Forces team? Or a Cruise from a submarine? And – and here’s the point – thousands of miles from the battlefield, is thousands of miles closer to the politicians who have to be accountable and many tens of people less for them to hide behind. It is said that every week president Obama sits down with his advisors and personally decides how drones will be used in the week ahead. Can we imagine what that must be like for a democratically elected politician? No taking shelter behind a command chain which reaches right down to the judgement of the poor bloody soldier on the ground. This time the President is personally involved – personally accountable; perhaps even in a way which could, theoretically at least, be open to challenge before an international court of law. So if we want political accountability for the violent actions of war taken in our name – and presumably we do – then we get more of it, not less from a decision to launch a “smart” bomb from a drone which politicians have to take, than one taken, for instance by a pilot in a split second, in the heat of conflict, 25,000 feet above the battlefield.
For some the worry about drones is the way they are being used extra-territorially – in other nation’s jurisdictions. That too is a proper concern – but it’s not a new one.
In the Borneo jungle conflict of the early 1960s I was ordered to take my unit across the Indonesian border to carry the war to “terrorists” sheltering on Indonesian territory. The operation was secret, sanctioned by the Cabinet and never came to light at the time. But if it had I am sure that the Government would have claimed that the action was consistent with the well established practice of “hot pursuit” and a country’s legal right to take “self defensive” action where its security is threatened from the territory of another nation. Of course such action is always highly debatable and often used as a pretext for something much more sinister. But the point is that this is not a new practice, it’s a very old one and there is an established body of law to cover it. And that law is neither less valid nor less applicable because the instrument is a drone today, rather than me and my Royal Marines colleagues in the 1960s.
Drones may be new. But they come from a long line that goes back to the Roman trebuchet. In contemplating their use we should doubtless carefully consider how the old laws and practices apply. But we do not need new ones.
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