At the end of World War II, as we stared at those foreboding mushroom clouds, military experts told us they would mean the end of war forever. Supposedly, warfare would just be too horrible, and no one would bother to engage in warfare anymore.
But, alas, the superpowers figure out a way around that – enter the proxy war. The superpowers figured out “how much can we fight without triggering a nuclear response.“ Proxy war sprouted up across the globe: Vietnam, Oman, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Syria, and dozens of states in Africa. The devastation to the civilian populations per capita was no different in World War II but, they gave us an early peek into what was to come in the future of asymmetrical warfare. But asymmetrical warfare just needed technology
to catch up before it could change the true nature of modern war.
Now, enter the drone. Cheap, and effective. If properly used, it has the advantage of being very surgical, giving the ability to attack only military targets and sparing civilian casualties. Unless, of course, you are Vladimir Putin, or potentially a non-state actor who wants to use them as a tool of terrorism rather than warfare.
What makes the drone unique in that we have the first primary weapon system in over 100 years that can easily avoid civilian collateral damage. Utterly unlike aerial bombing, land mines, chemical weapons and long-range rockets, the drone operator can steer its payload within inches of its intended target, and abort its attack if desired. It presents the opportunity for the international community to, similar to the 1999 Ottowa Treaty on land mines, join together and agree on the proper use of drones and heavily sanction any nation state that uses them against civilians.
Returning to the introduction, drones represent a new paradigm of war – the idea that commencing aggression against another state may become so painful that it could maybe cause nations to reconsider and end the war before it even begins. Unlike nuclear weapons, this is not because of the horrible effects on civilian populations, but because spending years shooting down a $30,000 drone with a multimillion dollar interceptor is just economically unviable, even for a superpower like the United States. Professional U.S. military planners have known this for years, watching Ukraine hold their own against an enemy with vastly more extensive resources.
However, our failed war against Iran has laid the folly of modern warfare out for the entire world to see. The only thing that remains is for the world to join together and develop an International Convention on Drone Warfare to prohibit their use against civilians, with strong enforcement provisions. Such a convention would also serve to save thousands of civilian lives in Ukraine.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Drones represent a new paradigm of war | Opinion
