Advances in high-precision bombing and unmanned aircraft may change the way America fights wars forever.

 In 1991, I was living in Moscow, and when I went into work at the international foundation where I was a program officer, my Soviet colleagues all clapped me on the back and said the Russian equivalent of “way to go!”  They were congratulating me for America’s effort to rebuff Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army from Kuwait. 

 I hadn’t heard the news the night before that Operation Desert Storm had begun. 

 This being the USSR, in spite of glasnost, and without access to CNN, I still tended to get my international news from the radio – Voice of America and the BBC.  But I had missed this one, and was surprised at my Soviet colleagues’ hearty support.  After all, the Soviet government officially opposed the coalition’s efforts.  But my officemates believed that America was doing the right thing by fighting Saddam Hussein’s military advance into Kuwait.  They knew injustice when they saw it.  As for the war, it was hardly a fair fight, but then again, Iraq had asked for it.  In any case, the war was between two militaries – Iraq’s and that of the allied coalition.  It was a conventional enough war, one that fit into the “good war” narrative we Americans had thrived on for decades.  And it was accurate — Americans and their allies were risking their lives for the people of Kuwait and, of course, for the West’s broader strategic interests in the region.

 When the United States joined with NATO forces to bomb Belgrade and force the Milosevic regime into submission during Operation Allied Force in 1999, after several years in the U.S., I again happened to be working in Moscow.  But this time the response was different.  The Soviet Union had ceased to exist, and many ethnic Russians were supporting their “Slavic brothers” in Serbia for reasons of ethnic solidarity.  There was an ugly demonstration in front of the U.S. Embassy, and Americans for the first time felt threatened on Moscow’s streets.  Still, Russian support for Milosevic was half-hearted.  Many people understood what the Serbs had done in Kosovo.  They knew that Milosevic was corrupt and dangerous, his leadership a bane to the people of Serbia, who had been mired in war and violence for years.

The way the war was fought, however, didn’t sit well with just about anyone I knew in Moscow.  CNN footage of the bombings of Belgrade showed the accuracy of U.S. bombs laser-guided to the center of Belgrade (and misguided, as in the case of the Chinese Embassy).  The pictures were disturbing.  Miles of altitude detached us television viewers from the city’s inferno.  The rough grey-scale video further abstracted the violence as Serbian government buildings imploded.  It was like watching a giant stomp an anthill, except the ants in those buildings were human beings, and many of them were civilians. 

As the bombs rained down, I was struck by a televised comment from one Russian opponent of NATO’s efforts, filmmaker and one-time Russian presidential candidate Nikita Mikhalkov.  He said that the Americans weren’t fighting fair – that “you don’t kill people at such a distance.”  He implied that America was inflicting violence while facing no risk, paying no price – not even the respectable price of bringing the fight to your enemies on the ground.

Scan forward to Operation Iraqi Freedom, and most Americans are even further removed, intellectually, visually, and emotionally, from the destruction and mayhem of war.  You can surf the internet and find footage of American planes, helicopters, and pilotless aircraft destroying Iraqi planes and buildings, and also watch, detached, as a commander watching from miles away gives the order to an aerial gunner to shoot into a crowd of people on a Iraq street. You’re so far from the actual deaths taking place on the ground that it feels much more like a videogame than real life. 

The violence on the ground is, of course, described elsewhere on the internet, as well as by print media, television, and radio.  All these news sources bring home the dangers faced by American soldiers who are fighting (and now living) on the ground in Iraq’s neighborhoods. As we consider the broader question of why America is still in Iraq, we know that American and other coalition soldiers fighting Iraqi insurgents on the ground are at least facing the age-old challenge that removes the need for deliberation:  kill or be killed. 

War from the air is a different prospect, and the pull of technology is strong enough that we may soon enter an era where America never has to put “boots on the ground.”  More and more, we will view war through the lens of a high-performance video camera that is being directed from thousands of miles away.  A recent story by Charles Duhigg in the New York Times describes the ascent of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the developer of the Predator drone, originally a reconnaissance vehicle that has quickly become the weapon of choice for long-distance destruction of selected targets, including human ones.  Certainly, the “wow” factor with this weapon is significant, and its tactical abilities are impressive.  It is possible to track enemies for hours, and even days, from thousands of miles away.  It must be peculiar to sit in an air-conditioned trailer in Nevada and blow things up in Iraq.  But if you want to avoid casualties for your side, then that’s the beauty of this technology. 

Once innovative weapons become standard equipment, they can shape warfare for years and decades to come.  One of Duhigg’s interviewees points out that when a military technology gains acceptance in the armed forces (often for reasons beyond its effectiveness alone), companies will create the infrastructure to compete for long-term contracts, and “that’s when things become permanent.”  That’s when a machine or technology becomes part of every military commander’s calculations, because it’s there and it needs to be deployed. 

The problem is, you get enough of these unmanned, armed drones in the air and you may not need soldiers on the ground.  If you don’t need soldiers on the ground, then what are you fighting for?  You’re not pacifying neighborhoods, protecting peaceful citizens from insurgents, or even ostensibly defending natural resources while rebuilding the country.  It’s no longer “Kill or be killed.”  We’re left with only the first word of that sentence. 

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