By the 1990s, nations regularly resorted to economic sanctions, such as those against Haiti, Serbia, and Iraq. They were never confined to military objects, but included civilian goods and services, such as oil and banking. The resulting pain primarily struck civilians.62 Sanctions on Serbia in the early 1990s, for example, produced an “economic meltdown,” in which unemployment and extreme poverty engulfed half the population and average income actually dropped by fifty percent.63 If the Council hoped to induce governments to change their positions, it was by threatening them with domestic disorder as food and other civilian necessities became more scarce and more costly.
U.N. Charter rules, however, may not justify even armed attacks on military targets if the purpose is coercion. AP I insists that “attacks” must be launched solely at “military objectives.”64 When there is no purpose to incapacitate the target state’s military capacity, it may be the case that there is no “military objective.” In the 1980s, the United States accused Libya of involvement in a terror attack on American soldiers in a Berlin nightclub. Libya had not invaded American territory. Its terrorism was not ongoing, though it might have been repeated. The Reagan administration retaliated by bombing Tripoli. It took care to say that the bombs were aimed at Libyan military installations, including a civilian site where the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was known to meet with top military commanders. Gaddafi “was not personally immune from the risks of exposure to a legitimate attack,” stated Abraham Sofaer, legal advisor at the U.S. State Department. “He was and is personally responsible for Libya’s policy of training, assisting, and utilizing terrorists in attacks on U.S. citizens, diplomats, troops, and facilities.”65 Nothing achieved by the bombing would have made it substantially more difficult for Libya to organize future terror attacks in Europe or elsewhere.
The U.S. attack on Libya also skirted the conventional understanding of discrimination and proportionality. One can see the point by thinking about “collateral damage.” Close members of Gaddafi’s family were killed in that attack. They were civilians who took no part in military affairs. AP I does not make clear how much incidental loss of life among civilians would have to occur before an attack would be “excessive” in relation to the “concrete and direct military advantage” achieved by attacking Gaddafi’s meeting place. A critic of the U.S. attacks might argue that the military advantage was so remote and speculative that it could not justify any incidental harm to civilians. A defender of the strike could respond that the air attacks might deter Gaddafi from pursuing further terror attacks.66 The U.S. gained a concrete and direct military advantage by deterring Libya from future international terrorist attacks on U.S. troops. Its limited strikes achieved an objective that otherwise might have demanded far greater attacks, with more loss of life and destruction. Again, they reveal the growing incompatibility between the formal rules of international humanitarian law, spun together out of the U.N. Charter and AP I, and the demands for coercive, limited uses of force in today’s world.
Two trends now seem to be converging. On the one hand, the underlying architecture of international politics is becoming more disordered. Instability is spreading throughout the world, in Eastern Europe, East Asia and Central Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. The European Union has not developed any military capacity of its own but NATO is under more internal stress than ever before. Meanwhile, insurgent or revanchist forces have found ways to project intimidating force without the risk of full-scale military invasion. We face hybrid war in Eastern Europe, terror campaigns in Western Europe, and the construction of new islands to extend maritime claims in the South China Sea.
Part of the response may be new weapons technologies, but only if they are accompanied with new thinking on how and where they can be used. The most important characteristic of new technologies, in cyber, drone, and robotic weapons, is the capacity for remarkable degrees of precision. It was once possible to claim that bombs aimed at “military objectives” were only incidentally working “collateral damage” on civilian objects. Now, military technology gives us the capacity to strike with precision, which means destroying relatively little beyond intended targets. New technologies may offer a compelling response to the challenges of our time by allowing western nations to respond to the provocations of authoritarian aggressors or reach out to strike terrorists far removed from a battlefield.
We are not claiming that new weapons will, by themselves, resolve every challenge and deliver us to a new era of stability and peace. Every weapon, even supposedly autonomous or robotic ones, requires human guidance and strategy in the background. We may misjudge our challenges or our opportunities. We may underestimate the resolve of enemies or overrate the immediate threats they pose. Technology does not make statecraft obsolete. It simply offers more tools and options.
Embracing new technologies does not require us to believe in literal magic bullets that will render confrontational opponents supine after one volley. Nor would relaxing current understandings of the laws of war. The point is to provide alternatives to avoid the choice between all-out war and fatalistic resignation. The aim of many interventions would not be so much to disable the military capacity of the opposing side as to indicate the Western capacity and willingness to impose costs.
Short of completely incapacitating the opposing side, even large-scale war is a tacit bargaining situation, as Thomas Schelling pointed out more than fifty years ago.67 Part of the bargaining may involve inflicting harm on an opponent to signal readiness to do so on a larger scale. It may not be feasible to penetrate the delusions of the most crazed, megalomaniacal dictator—but even sobering those in his circle may be helpful. At any rate, most tyrants have concerns about preserving themselves. Signaling, as we will argue later on, is an important element of military exchanges. One might think of new technologies as providing us the capacity to communicate with more exclamation points, and to indicate that our enemies cannot rely on the protections afforded by highly restrictive interpretations of the laws of war.
Conclusions
By the end of 1862, Union armies had been struggling for almost two years against Confederate armies in the American Civil War. On December 1, President Lincoln offered a new strategy in his message to Congress. He proposed a constitutional amendment, authorizing federal compensation to states that abolished slavery over the next four decades. His message concluded with this memorable admonition: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”68
It was an offer of peace through compromise. As Lincoln may have expected, the offer was not accepted. Perhaps that gave Lincoln the confidence—or the political support in the North—to proceed with an alternative approach. A month later, on his own authority as commander-in-chief, President Lincoln proclaimed the emancipation of all slaves in all states “in rebellion against the United States.”69
Infuriating Southerners, the Emancipation Proclamation cut off hopes for a compromise peace. But it also meant that Southern states would have to retain more military units to guard the home front, thus depleting manpower available to the main Confederate armies. Many slaves were encouraged to escape, undermining agricultural production. Many escaped slaves then reinforced Union strength as laborers or soldiers. Those who remained often provided valuable intelligence to advancing Union armies. Making the war a battle over slavery helped deter European powers from offering support to the Confederacy. Though an extreme and risky measure, the Emancipation Proclamation proved to be a highly effective tactic.
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation should remind us of this fundamental truth: Conflict stimulates new thinking. To suppress the Southern rebellion, the North harnessed its industrial prowess to deploy a number of historic innovations, from ironclad ships to repeating rifles. President Lincoln was personally involved in promoting these technical innovations. But he remained mindful that war is, above all, a political, not a technical undertaking.
Lincoln’s