Chris Coles from Drone Wars UK: Predator or Protector? Framing the Debate on Drones

07 March 2016

Chris Cole spoke in the Department of International Politics on March 15th, 2016 on  ‘Predator or Protector? Framing the Debate on Drones’

The David Davies Memorial Institute (DDMI) was delighted to welcome Chris Cole for his talk: ‘Predator or Protector? Framing the Debate on Drones’. Being the founder of the Internet blog Drone Wars UK (www.dronewars.net), Cole presented his ongoing research which focuses on questions regarding the changing nature and conceptualization of warfare, both in practical and ethical terms, since the introduction of drones. Divided into two main parts, his talk began with a definition of drones, generally categorized into two different types: those used for intelligence, so-called ‘protective’ drones; and those used for battle, so-called ‘combat drones’. The focus of his talk lay primarily with the latter. Pointing to an increased use of ‘combatant drones’ during the past decade – current countries involved in such conduct are the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, and, more recently, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, and Nigeria – Cole presented a thorough debate on a variety of political implications, related to this development. As such, the second part of his talk focused on four underlying questions: a) Do drones lower the threshold for the use of force? b) Are drones risk free or a risk transfer? c) The panacea of precision? d) Do drones cause ‘forever war’? Related to his public anti-drone political activism – for example his founding of the NGO ‘Drone Wars UK’ – his arguments revealed a definite scepticism towards the use of drones in modern warfare. Thus, Cole presented a fear that the use of drones as a method, which allows for sharp intervention, would increasingly replace political negotiations in times of international crisis. Followed by the claim that drone warfare violates the commitment to jus in bello, where distant combat leads to a greater protection of ‘our’ soldiers, compared to ‘their’ civilians, Cole illustrated that the latter have, indeed, become ever greater in casualty-numbers where the use of drones is involved. Further, illustrating that the definition of precision in regard to drone attacks is blurred in a public discourse, where in reality the notion of precision is limited to a discriminate targeting process, he presses for a return to the adherence of international criminal law. Cole ended his talk with the claim that what we see in the contemporary use of drones in combat is a breaking of legal, moral, and political barriers, which blurs the war- and peacetime dichotomy, concluding that ‘wartime is the only paradigm known to contemporary politics.’ The talk was followed by an engaging Q & A with the audience, and words of thanks by Dr. Jan Ruzicka, head of the DDMI.