Killer robots are the stuff of sci fi nightmares. To speak of their ethical use sounds like an oxymoron. Their whole point is that they have no morality. But now killer robots — drones in an advanced stage of development — are a daytime reality. They will be autonomous in their operation, able to identify targets, track them down, work out the best way to destroy them, and learn from their failures — all without the need for human direction. These qualities do raise serious ethical questions.
Many of them are also raised in the ethical debate about the use of guided drones in military action. Over 50 nations possess drones, including the United States, with about 4000. They have been used to kill suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, causing a significant number of civilian casualties. Many are launched from neighbouring air bases but controlled in Nevada.
The military like drones because they do not endanger soldiers' lives and are less costly than manned missions. In the face of disquiet about their covert use to kill suspected militants, President Obama defended them on classical 'just war' grounds, saying that they were being used in a just war against the terrorism of Al Quaeda and its affiliates, were authorised by legislation following the September 11 attacks, and responded proportionately to a clear and imminent threat.
This argument is faulty because its misuse of the metaphor of war subverted the point of just war argument. This theory was developed and used, not to justify war, but to insist that war should not be seen as simply a horrible and uncontrollable event without any moral boundaries. War was a human activity in which human beings were involved and had to take responsibility. They had to conduct themselves in human ways. Not all wars, nor all that happened in war, were acceptable
It visualised war, therefore, as between two opposed powers, each with authorities responsible for the making of war, and with soldiers responsible for their conduct. Those who participated in war could imagine from experience its horror and could appreciate the compassion as well as the brutality soldiers show in it. Just war theory rests on a moral imagination informed by experience of its human reality.
From this perspective, to speak of a just war against terror is to misuse a metaphor perniciously. You can no more declare war against terror than you can against hunger, fear, the devil,