Autonomous Weapons Systems and Force Short of War

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55613/jeet.v32i2.115

Keywords:

Autonomous Weapons Systems, Military Ethics, Force Short of War, Russo-Ukrainian War

Abstract

Though war is never a good thing, all things considered, there are times when it is arguably justified. Most obviously, providing direct military assistance to a victim of unjust aggression would constitute a rather clear case for military intervention. However, the providing of direct military assistance may in some cases be a prospect fraught with risks and dangers, rendering it politically (and possibly even morally) difficult for states to adequately justify such action. In this article I argue that autonomous weapons systems present a way past this dilemma, providing a method for delivering direct military assistance, but doing so in a way that is less politically overt and hostile than sending one’s own combat units to aid a beleaguered state. Thus, sending autonomous weapon systems (AWS) presents an additional forceful measure short of war which states may employ, adding to the political options available for combating unjust aggression, and allowing one to provide direct assistance to victim states without necessarily bringing one’s own state into the conflict. In making this argument I draw on the current Russian invasion of Ukraine as a running example.

References

Altmann, J. and Sauer, F. (2017). Autonomous weapon systems and strategic stability. Survival, 59(5):117–142.

Anderson, K. and Waxman, M. (2012). Law and ethics for robot soldiers. Policy Review, 176.

Asaro, P. (2008). How just could a robot war be. In Briggle, A., Waelbers, K., and Brey, P. A., editors, Current Issues in Computing and Philosophy, pages 50–64. Ios Press, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Asaro, P. (2012). On banning autonomous weapon systems: Human rights, automation, and the dehumanization of lethal deci-sion-making. International Review of the Red Cross, 94(886):687–709.

Baker, D. (2022). Should We Ban Killer Robots? Polity.

Barnett, M. N. (2002). Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.

Birnbacher, D. (2016). Are autonomous weapons systems a threat to human dignity? In Bhuta, N., Beck, S., Geiß, R., Liu, H.-Y., and Kreß, C., editors, Autonomous Weapons Systems: Law, Ethics, Policy, pages 105–121. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Boothby, W. H. (2016). Weapons and the Law of Armed Conflict. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2 edition.

Boulanin, V., Davison, N., Goussac, N., and Carlsson, M. P. (2020). Limits on autonomy in weapon systems: Identifying practical elements of human control. Technical report, International Committee of the Red Cross and Stockholm International Peace Reseach Institute.

Brown, D., Horton, J., and Ahmedzade, T. (2022). Ukraine weapons: What military equipment is the world giving? BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62002218, Accessed: Sep. 25, 2022.

CNBC Meets (2014). Interview with Bill Clinton on Rwanda. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpKV8psvnaQ, Accessed: Sep. 22, 2022.

Cooper, R. H. and Kohler, J. V., editors (2009). Responsibility to Protect: The Global Moral Impact for the 21st Century. Palgrave MacMillan, New York, NY.

de Sio, F. S. and Van den Hoven, J. (2018). Meaningful human control over autonomous systems: A philosophical account. Fron-tiers in Robotics and AI, 5:1–14.

Dinstein, Y. and Dahl, A. W. (2020). Oslo Manual on Select Topics of the Law of Armed Conflict: Rules and Commentary. Springer, Cham, Switzerland.

Docherty, B. L., Duffield, D., Madding, A., and Shah, P. (2018). Heed the call: A moral and legal imperative to ban killer robots. Technical report, Human Rights Watch.

Evans, G. (2009). The responsibility to protect: From an idea to an international norm. In Cooper, R. H. and Kohler, J. V., editors, Responsibility to Protect: The Global Moral Compact for the 21st Century, pages 15–30. Palgrave MacMillan, New York, NY.

Geist, E. and Lohn, A. J. (2018). How might artificial intelligence affect the risk of nuclear war? Technical report, RAND Corpora-tion, Santa Monica, CA.

Guarini, M. and Bello, P. (2012). Robotic warfare: Some challenges in moving from noncivilian to civilian theaters. In Lin, P., Ab-ney, K., and Bekey, G. A., editors, Robot Ethics: The Ethics and Social Implications of Robotics, pages 129–144. MIT Press, Cam-bridge, MA.

Gubrud, M. (2014). Stopping killer robots. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 70(1):32–42.

Guichaoua, A. (2020). Counting the Rwandan victims of war and genocide: Concluding reflections. Journal of Genocide Research, 22(1):125–141.

Heyns, C. (2013). Report of the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions: UN doc. A/HRC/23/47. Technical report, UN General Assembly.

Heyns, C. (2016). Autonomous weapons systems: Living a dignified life and dying a dignified death. In Bhuta, N., Beck, S., Geiß, R., Liu, H.-Y., and Kreß, C., editors, Autonomous weapons systems: Law, ethics, policy, pages 3–20. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Horowitz, M. C. (2019). When speed kills: Lethal autonomous weapon systems, deterrence, and stability. Journal of Strategic Stud-ies, 42(6):764–788.

Human Rights Watch (2016). Killer robots and the concept of meaningful human control. https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/04/11/killer-robots-andconcept-meaningful-human-control, Accessed: June 17, 2022.

International Committee of the Red Cross (2014). Autonomous weapons systems: Technical, military, legal and humanitarian as-pects. Technical report, International Committee of the Red Cross.

International Committee of the Red Cross (2021a). ICRC position and background paper on autonomous weapons systems. Tech-nical report, International Committee of the Red Cross.

International Committee of the Red Cross (2021b). ICRC position on autonomous weapons systems. Technical report, International Committee of the Red Cross.

International Institute for Strategic Studies (2022). The Military Balance 2022. Routledge.

Johnson, A. M. and Axinn, S. (2013). The morality of autonomous robots. Journal of Military Ethics, 12(2):129–141.

Johnson, J. (2020). Delegating strategic decision-making to machines: Dr. Strangelove redux? Journal of Strategic Studies, 45(3):439–477.

Kirby, J. and Guyer, J. (2022). Russia’s war in Ukraine, explained. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2022/2/23/22948534/russia-ukraine-war-putin-explosions-invasion-explained, Accessed: Sep. 7, 2022.

Kofman, M. (2022). Why the Kremlin will seek regime change in Ukraine. The Economist. https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/02/23/michael-kofmanan-expert-on-russias-armed-forces-explains-why-the-kremlin-willseek-regime-change-in-ukraine, Accessed: Sep. 22, 2022.

Kofman, M., Migacheva, K., Nichiporuk, B., Radin, A., Tkacheva, O., and Oberholtzer, J. (2017). Lessons from Russia’s operations in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. Technical report, RAND Corporation.

Meierhenrich, J. (2020). How many victims were there in the Rwandan genocide? A statistical debate. Journal of Genocide Research, 22(1):72–82.

PBS Frontline (1999). “The Triumph of Evil”, interview with Philip Gourevitch. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/interviews/gourevitch.html, Accessed: Sep. 22, 2022.

Raine, J. (2022). Time for NATO to find a way out of the escalation trap in Ukraine. Technical report, International Institute for Strategic Studies. https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2022/03/time-for-nato-tofind-a-way-out-of-the-escalation-trap-in-ukraine, Accessed: Sep. 25, 2022.

Roff, H. M. (2013). Killing in war: Responsibility, liability, and lethal autonomous robots. In Allhoff, F., Evans, N. G., and Henschke, A., editors, Routledge Handbook of Ethics and War: Just War Theory in the 21st Century, pages 352–364. Routledge, New York, NY.

Roff, H. M. (forthcoming). An ontology of autonomy and autonomous weapons systems. In Finkelstein, C., MacIntosh, D., and Ohlin, J. D., editors, The Ethics of Autonomous Weapons. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Rosert, E. and Sauer, F. (2021). How (not) to stop the killer robots: A comparative analysis of humanitarian disarmament cam-paign strategies. Contemporary Security Policy, 42(1):4–29.

Sauer, F. (2020). Stepping back from the brink: Why multilateral regulation of autonomy in weapons systems is difficult, yet im-perative and feasible. International Review of the Red Cross, 102(913):235–259.

Sharkey, N. (2010). Saying “no!” to lethal autonomous targeting. Journal of Military Ethics, 9(4):369–383.

Sharkey, N. (2012). Killing made easy: From joysticks to politics. In Lin, P., Abney, K., and Bekey, G. A., editors, Robot Ethics: The Ethics and Social Implications of Robotics, pages 111–128. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Sparrow, R. (2007). Killer robots. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 24(1):62–77.

Sparrow, R. (2016). Robots and respect: Assessing the case against autonomous weapon systems. Ethics & International Affairs, 30(01):93–116.

Strawser, B. J. (2010). Moral predators: The duty to employ uninhabited aerial vehicles. Journal of Military Ethics, 9(4):342–368.

Toh, M., Ogura, J., Humayun, H., Yee, I., Cheung, E., Fossum, S., and Maruf, R. (2022). The list of global sanctions on Russian for the war in Ukraine. CNN Business. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/25/business/list-globalsanctions-russia-ukraine-war-intl-hnk/index.html, Accessed: Sep. 25, 2022.

UK Ministry of Defence (2017). Joint doctrine publication 0-30.2: Unmanned aircraft systems. Technical report, United Kingdom Ministry of Defence.

UN News (2022). General Assembly resolution demands end to Russian offensive in Ukraine. https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1113152, Accessed: Sep. 25, 2022.

United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (2022). Conflict-related civilian casualties in Ukraine. Tech-nical report, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

US Department of Defense (2017). DoD Directive 3000.09. Technical report, United States Department of Defense.

Williams, A. P. (2015). Defining autonomy in systems: Challenges and solutions. In Williams, A. P. and Scharre, P. D., editors, Au-tonomous Systems: Issues for Defense Policymakers, pages 27–62. NATO Communications and Information Agency, The Hague, Netherlands.

Wong, Y. H., Yurchak, J. M., Button, R. W., Frank, A., Laird, B., Osoba, O. A., Steeb, R., Harris, B. N., and Bae, S. J. (2020). Deterrence in the age of thinking machines. Technical report, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA.

Wood, N. G. (2020). The problem with killer robots. Journal of Military Ethics, 19(3):220–240.

Wood, N. G. (forthcoming). Autonomous weapon systems: A clarification. Journal of Military Ethics.

Wood, N. G. (unpublished manuscript). Rethinking proportionality. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351658489_Rethinking_Proportionality.

Zając, M. (2022a). Autonomous Weapon Systems from a Just War Theory Perspective. PhD thesis, University of Warsaw.

Zając, M. (2022b). Beyond Deadlock; Low Hanging Fruit and Strict yet Achievable Options in AWS Regulation. Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

Downloads

Published

2022-12-13

How to Cite

Autonomous Weapons Systems and Force Short of War. (2022). Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies, 32(2), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.55613/jeet.v32i2.115

Similar Articles

11-20 of 50

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.