You are missing the biggest differentiating factor of terrorism, the targeting of innocent civilians. Yes, US drone strikes do cause fear in a similar way to terrorism. Yes, civilians are being killed by US drone strikes. Yes, that fact is morally reprehensible. But no drone strike is launched with the sole intent of killing civilians. That is a world of difference.
This is a fun discussion because you're both right and tomes have been written about the definition of terrorism. Some of the actions of the IRA or the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 82 are interesting events to consider in the civilian/military distinction.
It's also worth noting that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of terror under most definitions.
This is a good definition, which IIRC was compiled from a lot of other academic sources:
Alex Schmid and Albert Jongman: “Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-)clandestine individual, group, or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal, or political reasons, whereby—in contrast to assassination—the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators.”
That is a better definition than mine since I used the word civilian. You are right that terrorist attacks can be directed at military members.
I would maybe challenge or tweak the state actors inclusion in potential perpetrators. The bombing of population centers like London, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. during WWII feels like a separate category. Those should still be war crimes, however the fact that they were carried out during an active war by the military would seem to make them a little different than traditional terrorist attacks.
> But no drone strike is launched with the sole intent of killing civilians. That is a world of difference.
I used to agree with your assertion. I will explain why I no longer do.
The goal of warfare is very simply to break the will of the opposing population to keep fighting.
Taking out roadways and bridges and sewage treatment plants with smart bombs is another way to break the opponent's will. Not quite as demoralizing as a funeral for a loved one killed by the enemy, but demoralizing nonetheless. That is why we use smart bombs to take out infrastructure... to make life harder for the enemy so that its will is broken.
In the revolutionary war, guerrilla tactics like taking cover behind a tree were considered morally cowardly and abhorrent by the British, yet were embraced by revolutionaries as an effective tactic in an asymmetric battle.
During WW2 the US carpet bombed the Japanese mainland, intent on total devastation of entire cities (civilians included) so that the Japanese would relent and give up the fight.
During the Vietnam war the US used chemical weapons extensively, which had extensive civilian consequences.
The point if the argument so far is to illustrate that the line between acceptable and unacceptable civilian casualties is (for the US, at least) very flexible based on the urgency of the battle. The closer we are to not winning the more readily we will do away with any aversion to civilian casualties. The same is true for any nation or other group of fighters.
The second question is, why has the US invested so much money in smart bombs and drones? We are told that it is because the US has an extremely high moral standard when it comes to warfare, and we are spending Trillions on these weapons systems simply because we value the lives of civilian populations so much that we are willing to make this massive investment.
The real reason we have done this is because after the cold war the US lost its appetite for discretionary war-making. The jig was up. The threat of the spread of communism never panned out and a generation had been deeply impacted by the Vietnam war. Many had seen combat, many had lost friends or family in a war that was widely viewed as a horrible mistake.
In order to sell Americans on war again, our leaders had to be able to launch a hygienic war. Recall during GW1 how we saw live video of bombs dropping precisely onto targets that we were told contained munitions or other weapons bunkers. These bombs could be dropped right next to a hospital or school and create no harm for the patients or students. Finally, the US had technology that allowed the exceptional moral character of our war initiatives to be reflected in the character of the battle. The people were reassured that only the bad stuff was being harmed.
As US entanglement in the middle eastern wars got bigger and bigger, opposition groups grew more resilient to the smart bombs and were able to put up a fight that required something even more precise.
So drones were created that contain precision cameras and weaponry, allowing areal executions of enemies to be undertaken cleanly, without killing anyone who wasn't deemed guilty by whoever in the US had ordered the strike.
This all makes sense if you believe the story that Afghanistan and Iraq (for example) are full of mostly US-loving people and a few hostile combatants who hate us for our freedoms.
In reality, there is widespread public support of so-called terrorist groups, widespread resentment of US involvement. How can the US manage to police this sort of environment?
If you are driving a car and you go too fast you can be caught speeding. The penalty of the time wasted and the cost of the ticket discourages people from speeding. In US drone-controlled areas, the drone killings offer a broad deterrent for behavioral misconduct.
Only if one buys into the US definition of guilt as being appropriately determined by someone who has been authorized to order the strikes is this remotely fair or reasonable.
What is more effective to intimidate a population into compliance, a system with too many false negatives or one with too many false positives? I'd argue that false positives (unwarranted or loosely-justified killings) are exactly the sort of thing that helps enforce the sort of control that the US wants.
Imagine if in the US we heard about people being killed via drone killings on American soil. It would terrify lots of people. Imagine if some foreign body was determining who was guilty and innocent and we had no democratic say in the criteria used to make this determination?
It leaves no choice for the target population but to live in fear and to supplicate to the US and hope for mercy. We Americans are told that there is some incredibly humane stuff going on and that we are able to make all this happen without sending as many American troops into harm's way. But in reality we are being led to believe a story of humane and judicious use of force that is simply a story meant to get us to support the war and nation building efforts and has no basis in reality.
Drones are like lethal sheep dogs herding the population (sheep) in a way that the US wants. They use just enough brutality to get the job done, and the brutality comes in the form of actual death for some, but constant teeth gnashing stress as the propellors are heard overhead, constant empty reassurances given to children that everything will be OK and that they won't be targeted, etc. The purpose of the drones is to keep the level of terror and fear just high enough to get compliant behavior... to coerce the target population into compliance.
I agree with a lot of what you said (and thanks for laying that out in depth, it was an interesting read), but that still doesn't change the fact that the method the US uses to target drones strikes is completely different than the method terrorists use to target their strikes. It is possible to recognize the ethical problems of the drone program while also saying it is on a higher moral ground than the random killing that terrorists employ.
> It is possible to recognize the ethical problems of the drone program while also saying it is on a higher moral ground than the random killing that terrorists employ.
Are those ethical parameters or economic parameters? If every regime that would possibly end up in conflict with the US is expected to develop the satellite technology, smart bomb tech, drone tech, etc., before engaging in battle, that's pretty much impossible for any non-first-world country.
So one must conclude either that any non-first-world country must instantly surrender out of an inability to fight at the same moral level as the US, or that the distinction is not actually a moral one.
In the US, we are told that is a highly important moral distinction... but this is simply because the public prefers to feel the satisfaction of operating from a moral high ground and so it's a great way to sell a population on the idea of sacrificing trillions of dollars (enough to pay for education, healthcare and a 3 day work week for all Americans for decades) so that our nation can do the morally righteous thing and kill (usually brown) people.
I think they have to be ethical standards. If they are economic standards then you open up the possibility that any method of war/killing is acceptable in dire economic circumstances. That is how you get a country like North Korea threatening nuclear war.
This idea isn't uniquely American. Humanity as a whole has decided that there are different levels of morality in warfare and killing. Those standards evolve over time. You example of the American revolutionaries and the extensive use of chemical warfare in WWI are examples of things ebb and flow. But at the heart of it I think most can agree that people have a right to fight for their own freedom, but they do not have the right to indiscriminately kill. That indiscriminate killing is what separates drone warfare from terrorism.
How do you define indiscriminate killing? Carpet bombing and terrorism are at one extreme, WWII style bombing of military targets is a bit less indiscriminate, drone strikes are much less indiscriminate. Lincoln and JFK type assassinations are perhaps at the other extreme.
How do you draw the line at what's OK and not OK? As the GP suggests, it seems to be drawn at whatever level of technology the most advanced group has.
Personally, I think terrorism is one of the most moral ways of fighting. By definition, it creates a high level of fear with a small number of casualties. That's far better than, say, trench warfare with a high level of casualties but isolated from the majority of the population.
>That is how you get a country like North Korea threatening nuclear war.
To be clear, North Korea has not threatened starting a nuclear war. They have threatened that if they are attacked, they will respond with nuclear weapons. This is essentially the same threat that all nuclear powers make.
I'm sympathetic to your view because I used to hold it.
> I think they have to be ethical standards. If they are economic standards then you open up the possibility that any method of war/killing is acceptable in dire economic circumstances.
Why should any method be acceptable? Why not have (for example) Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un put on boxing gloves and determine the fate of NK's nuclear program with a boxing match?
The US has been enacting sanctions on NK for decades which have caused significant suffering of NK's population. The pain and suffering caused by those sanctions, the starving children, etc., are viewed by the US to be the fault of NK's leaders simply because they do not obey US directives.
From the perspective of the US, the sanctions are a humane way of putting pressure on NK's regime that are nonviolent. Are the pangs of hunger felt by the children who are starving or malnourished due to those sanctions nonviolent?
In international conflict, all that matters is one nation's ability to force another nation's hand. Imagine if NK were able to do something to cause Americans to miss three meals per week until the US backed down from its extreme position on NK's regime. We laugh about this because it is so unlikely, but what is the difference?
The hawks will tell us with a straight face that KJU is mentally unstable. Note that all leaders that the US wishes to remove from power are labeled mentally unstable or insane and unpredictable. Our propagandists leverage the fear that many people feel for mental illness and label the enemy with it to make us more easily mistrust and hate the enemy.
By every rational account, KJU is playing a cool, long-term game and is using his power and resources effectively to stave off US bullying. While I would certainly prefer he not have nuclear weapons, there is no evidence that he is unstable or irrational. He simply hasn't gone for the carrots that have been halfheartedly offered, and multiple US presidents have failed to improve the situation.
Is KJU supposed to simply say "OK, Donald Trump, I will step down because I would never threaten to launch a nuclear weapon at a country that declares my regime illegitimate and threatens me with military operations in nearby waters"? It's pretty absurd to think he'd do that. His incentive at this point (based on what has been offered) is to make the US worry that any strikes or attempts to unseat his government could result in a nuke being launched at one of the population centers of the US or a US ally.
Note that KJU has not threatened nuclear war in isolation, it has simply threatened to respond if attacked.
> Those standards evolve over time.
What has occurred is that the US now has much more control over which wars it wishes to enter, and has a more difficult time persuading citizens to risk their lives fighting. So the sort of military that we have today is designed to allow wars to continue in spite of the lack of obvious threats. Since the threats are not obvious, it is not possible to convince the American people to carpet bomb a country that is not obviously at war with us, so a more surgical method must be used in order to get enlistees for optional wars.
The moral progress narrative is just that, a narrative. If we ended up in a fight with a true adversary we would throw it out the window and use all sorts of newly developed weapons (such as EMF weapons that peel the skin off of enemy soldiers, sound weapons that deafen the enemy and cause months of headaches, etc.).
War is about force and coercion, and war requires public support in a democracy. Those two things are (I believe) the fundamentals from which all of the rest of the scenarios (technology, morality, etc.) fall out.
