DRONES AND KILLING
By Thomas Nagel
1 Pacifists are rare. Most people believe that lethal violence may be used ∈ self-defence, or the defence of others, against potentially lethal threats. Military action is
justified by a collective institutional version of this basic human \right, which sets an outer limit on the \right to life. Lethal aggressors who cannot be stopped by lesser
means are liable to lethal attack, and this does not violate their \right to life so long as they remain a threat. Killing ∈ self-defence is distinct from execution, the killing of
someone who is no longer a threat as a punishment for past conduct. It is also usually distinct from assassination, which can be carried out for a wide range of reasons:
revenge, political or religious hatred, nationalistic passion and so forth – though occasionally someone who is a lethal threat to the assassin or his community may be
targeted.
2 The development of drone warfare has put these distinctions under strain, and that helps to explain the visceral reaction many people have against it, ∈ spite of its
being much less destructive than more traditional forms of military violence. Drones, or UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), are more selective ∈ the killing of enemies,
produce less collateral damage to non-combatants and impose no physical risk to those who pilot them, since they are sitting ∈a control station thousands of miles away.
Who could ask for more?
3 In his book Objective Troy, Scott Shane explains why Barack Obama, when he became president, favoured drone warfare as his chief anti-terrorism tactic over the
conventional wars of his predecessor:
4 “The number of al-Qaida plotters whose aim was to attack Americans was ∈ the hundreds. Yet several hundred thousand Iraqis and Afghans, and some four thousand
American troops, had died ∈ the two big wars since 2001 … The drone, it seemed, if used judiciously, offered a way to scale the solution to the problem, picking off
America’s real enemies one by one.”
5 Even so, the legitimacy of drone warfare has been persistently and rightfully contested, by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch among others, on multiple
grounds: 1) that those targeted may not be combatants under the laws of war; 2) that the intelligence used to identify and locate targets is often unreliable; 3) that the
concept of an ‘imminent threat’ used as the basis for lethal action has been grossly distorted, beyond the bounds of legitimate self-defence; 4) that there is unacceptable
collateral damage to civilians, without acknowledgment or any attempt at compensation; 5) that the targeting of individuals outside a war zone amounts to extrajudicial
execution; 6) that the alternative of capture and trial is systematically disregarded; 7) that the remoteness and safety of the drone operators encourages a lighthearted
attitude to killing.
Adapted from the London Review of Books March 3, 2016.
At the end of paragraph 2, the question “Who could ask for more?” is most likely
