Precision-Strike Technology and International Intervention ― Strategic, Legal and Moral Implications

This book explores whether the new capabilities made possible by precision-strike technologies are reshaping approaches to international intervention.

Since the end of the Cold War, US technological superiority has led to a more proactive and, some would argue, high risk approach to international military intervention. New technologies including the capacity to mount precision military strikes from high-level bombing campaigns - and more recently the selective targeting of individuals from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – have facilitated air campaigns, supported by Special Forces, without the commitment of large numbers of troops on the ground. Such campaigns include, for example, NATO’s high-level aerial bombardment of Milosevic’s forces in Kosovo in 1999 and of Gaddafi’s in Libya in 2011. The development of UAVs and electronic data intercept technologies has further expanded the potential scope of interventions, for example against Islamic militants in the tribal areas of Pakistan. In addition, the US has undertaken targeted manned operations involving Special Forces against selected targets, for example Osama Bin Laden.

This volume examines three key and interrelated dimensions of these new precision-strike capabilities: (1) the strategic and foreign policy drivers and consequences; (2) the legal and moral implications of the new capabilities; and (3), the implications for decision-making at the strategic, operational and tactical levels.

This book will be of much interest to students of war and technology, air power, international intervention, security studies and IR.

Tom Dyson is Lecturer in IR at the Department of Politics and IR, Royal Holloway, University of London, and is author of The Politics of German Defence and Security (2007); Neoclassical Realism and Defence Reform in post-Cold War Europe (2010) and European Defence Cooperation in EU Law and IR Theory (with Theodore Konstadinides, 2013).

Wali Aslam is a Lecturer in International Politics at Brunel University and is the author of The United States and Great Power Responsibility in International Society: Drones, Rendition and Invasion (Routledge 2013).

Regina Rauxloh is senior lecturer at the University of Surrey.

Sir Mike Aronson is now a Civil Service Commissioner, appointed by the Crown to maintain the principle of fair and open recruitment to the UK Civil Service. He is a Senior Adviser to NATO, working on the political/military aspects of NATO transformation, and is an occasional lecturer at the UK Defence Academy.