When war becomes too easy
Though drone strikes in Pakistan have declined sharply this year, the recent attacks on al-qaeda fighters in Yemen have brought attention to the United States’ expanding and secretive campaign.
Incidents like these have inspired the fear that drones make it easier to not only conduct but perhaps even go to war. This general argument is intuitive and moves in three broad steps: drones are appealing because they save the lives that would otherwise be committed to action; dollars are generally easier to expend than human lives; and because if we can go to war for less, we will.
Today, there is mounting evidence that this is true. In March 2011, the U.K. Defence Ministry concluded that drone availability played a role in the decisions to engage in military operations in both Pakistan and Yemen. There is also a justifiable worry that many U.S. airstrikes in Pakistan and Yemen have hinged on drone usage. Despite their ability to save soldiers’ lives, those who remember the anti-war movements in the United States fondly should be wary of a nation that doesn’t have to internalize the horrors of war.
Drones have also spawned many other concerns. The ones we are better at articulating include worries about civilian casualties, the legality of strikes and their efficacy in the war on terror. Periodically, we also worry about the separation of the public — usually in the context of the United States — and those who have the authority to use drones. This is always done with an eye toward political checks and oversight.
We can address the usual concerns without having to put soldiers into war zones. Better target-setting technology can reduce civilian casualties, mission control can be made to submit to the demands of sound international law, and better legislation or democratic oversight can alleviate fears that too much power has been concentrated in too few hands. We should not, however, dismiss the importance of the human element in war. Internalizing war’s horrors have guided how we have considered our conflicts for the last century. With drones we have to be prepared to lose that internalization.
It has not been long since the ending of the Vietnam War, and although only about one-third of those who served are still alive (the youngest people to serve were approximated to be 54 in 2009), the war’s lessons still reverberate throughout the United States. It was the first “livingroom war,” which civilians were able to follow on TV in the removed comfort of their homes. It was also a war that took people from home via the draft and sent bodies back to the U.S. in coffins, two factors that inspired much of the early anti-war efforts. Some of the most important protests against the war came from disillusioned veterans themselves. At its height, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War only had about 25 000 members, but the organization proved critically influential in the protest movement. The war pervaded American culture and invaded numerous facets of American life.
We know that there is a correlation between how a domestic population internalizes a war and how much they engage with it. It is no secret that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have not faced opposition on the scale that the Vietnam War did. Whether or not this is lamentable is a matter of perspective, but we have to keep in mind that a vast number of people believe the wars to have been illegitimate or, at the very least, mishandled. Among this group there is no shortage of people who wonder what happened to the anti-war spirit that once infused America’s population.
Though a great deal of internalization is about branding, the other side of that coin is the human cost of war. The return of soldiers and civilians can bring the horrors of war home, revealing truths that are otherwise distant from us. Just consider the mass adoption of Gertrude Stein’s term, the “Lost Generation,” after World War I. Although many would applaud the thought of keeping citizens safe from those psychological traumas, we must remember how important they were in inspiring us to think about why we go to war in the first place. For many people the legacy of the anti-war movement is a positive one, viewed as a time of American conscience. Those who share that belief should be wary of taking the human element out of conflict. Although it is a noble cause, it was once only possible by stopping violence altogether. Twenty years from now we may not need to stop because we will be able to put a machine at the helm, and no machine can inspire a domestic conscience. David Kepes is in the Masters of Global Affairs program at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto.