Discriminating Tastes: ‘Smart’ Bombs, Non-Combatants, and Notions of Legitimacy in Warfare

Much has been made in recent years of the remarkable technological advances driving what has been described as the latest Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Typically, however, a disproportionate emphasis on the astounding capabilities of new military hardware has come at the expense of investigations into the socio-political consequences of the transformation of warfare presently underway. Reflection upon the less neglected social aspects of previous RMAs is instructive, suggesting that technological determinism does not yield reliable accounts of the most important implications of new military technologies. In light of this, a historically informed reconsideration of prevailing assessments of the nature and significance of the current RMA seems in order. In particular, rapidly evolving attitudes toward discrimination between combatants and non-combatants in warfare are in need of consideration, as these have traditionally been bound up with watershed military innovation. Implicated in the reversal of a trend toward greater tolerance of indiscriminacy, the advent of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) increasingly bears directly on perceptions of legitimacy in the conduct of war. In this context, unequal access to PGMs suggests unequal legitimate recourse to war measures, and this might well turn out to be the most important implication of the RMA to which we are witness.