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17 Ethical Dilemmas in the Use of Airpower in Counterinsurgency War Air power contains the seeds of our own destruction if we do not use it responsibly. —General Stanley McChrystal1 Ideas about the most militarily useful application of airpower have changed a good deal over the century of its use. At various times, surveillance and reconnaissance, air-to-air engagement with enemy aircraft, strategic bombing (whether area bombing of built up areas, or the attempt to locate and destroy transportation, manufacturing, etc.), close air support of ground forces, and even deterrence of possible actions by adversaries have been deemed the central mission. In parallel with these questions of military theory and doctrine regarding airpower, the discussion of the legal and ethical constraints of airpower under the terms of just war thinking have similarly evolved. Furthermore, the technical, military, legal, and ethics questions have necessarily evolved and interacted with changes in the contexts of the application of airpower. Every war presents novel challenges, and all military organizations struggle to adapt their particular military expertise and equipment so as to be as relevant and effective as possible to the particular contours of that conflict. In addition, air power is one of the most technologically dependent of the branches of the military. Consequently, the technology, capability, and limitations of the utility of airpower evolve rapidly. With each technological advance new capabilities for airpower appear, and with those capabilities also come unforeseen consequences and challenges regarding the legal and ethical use of airpower. It will be helpful, therefore, before looking directly at the contemporary challenge regarding the use of airpower in the kinds of conflicts the United States is engaged in at the moment, to review at least the major stages in the evolution of both the technology and the thinking about its application over the century of the development of military aviation. 223 224 Issues in Military Ethics Review of Airpower Theory and Application Although military aviation made a limited debut during World War I, the first serious thinking about the implications of the availability of airpower occurred in the interwar years. That thinking took several forms: legal, ethical, and operational. On the legal/ethical front, there was a clear recognition of the need to try to insure that future uses of airpower be brought squarely under the tent of just war theory and the laws of armed conflict (LOAC). This was addressed explicitly on a number of occasions in international contexts. Recognizing that airpower offered the opportunity to reach over lines of ground defenses and directly attack cities, for example, the Hague Conference of 1907 introduced a prohibition of “bombardment, by whatever means” of “undefended” cities. Although this provision was not ratified by any state, many air forces accepted it as customary international law and incorporated it into their operational manuals.2 Recognition of this acceptance of the standard is reflected in the comments of the British prime minister to the House of Commons in 1938: “In the first place, it is against international law to make deliberate attacks upon civilian populations. In the second place, targets that are aimed at from the air must be legitimate military objects and must be capable of identification. In the third place, reasonable care must be taken in attacking those military objects so that by carelessness a civilian population in the neighbourhood is not bombed.”3 As that legal and ethical discussion of the limits of the use of airpower in future conflicts was evolving, however, a rather different discussion was evolving in military circles. Believing it was essential to avoid the extended attrition warfare of the past war, airpower theorists between the wars looked to the capabilities of the airplane to shorten wars dramatically and perhaps even to limit loss of life. In order to do so, however, some of them explicitly argued for violation of the LOAC in the name of those hoped-for benefits. Italian theorist Douhet is the most prominent of these thinkers who argued in The Command of the Air (1921) for direct and indiscriminate attacks on the enemy civilian population. Such attacks, he argued, would so demoralize the population as to bring political pressure on leaders to terminate hostilities quickly. Similar arguments were made in Britain by military theorist Trenchard. A slightly different tack was taken by American theorist Billy Mitchell. Although not always crystal clear on the specifics of the targets he has in mind, he argues for attacking “vital centers” and seems to mean industrial, transportation and...

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