Robot Guardians: Teleoperated Combat Vehicles in Humanitarian Military Intervention

Abstract

Abstract Perhaps the most common criticism of teleoperated combat vehicles is that they make war more likely by reducing the associated costs. However, it is not as obvious as is usually presumed that this would be a bad thing: it could as easily be case that drones enable just wars as unjust ones. This chapter advances a version of this argument specific to humanitarian military intervention, holding that, if the claim that drones "lower the threshold" to war is true, drones are likely to significantly improve the practice of intervention to stop genocide and other mass atrocities. In particular, the internal logic of the "lowering the threshold" argument suggests that drones will not only make intervention more likely in cases where it is warranted, but that they will significantly reduce the civilian casualty count during interventions.