Samuel Moyn, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021).
In this extraordinary book, Yale University historian Samuel Moyn examines how the U.S. military’s effort to make war more “humane” by limiting civilian casualties has served to make American wars seemingly endless. The American use of drones since 9/11 to target terrorists individually has served to greatly reduce the possibility of U.S. military casualties and limit (though not eliminate) “collateral damage” to civilians when drone attacks are launched against terrorist targets. This has made the longstanding continuation of the “War on Terror” drone campaign more palatable to the American public than the large-scale 1960s-70s era American military campaign in Southeast Asia resulting in so many U.S. military (and even more Asian) casualties that led to widespread domestic opposition to the war effort in the U.S. But, as Moyn points out, this more “humane” form of warfare has led to endless American surveillance over large parts of the Middle East in particular and the ever-present possibility of sudden death to civilians who happen to be in the vicinity of where U.S. intelligence believes—rightly or wrongly—terrorist targets might be.
In the early part of the book, Moyn discusses how the current post-9/11 consensus (in America, at least) about going to war is acceptable if it is conducted humanely did not always exist. During much of the 19th century and the early 20th century, there were influential figures and movements on both sides of the Atlantic that sought to abolish war altogether. Many agreed with the great Russian writer, Count Leo Tolstoy, who argued that making war more humane would only make war more likely. He strongly opposed the activities of the newly formed Red Cross on just these grounds. Those who focused on making war more humane and not abolishing it were likened to those who argued for making slavery more humane and not abolishing it.
Moyn also discusses how the 19th century/early 20th century transatlantic movement to abolish war only envisioned abolishing it among Europeans while tolerating or even condoning wars against non-European peoples. Moyn details how American armed forces inflicted massive civilian casualties in their wars against Native Americans through the end of the 19th century, and then against non-Whites in the Philippines, Japan, Korea, and Indochina. After the rise of strong American domestic opposition to the U.S. war in Indochina which led to U.S. withdrawal from there, Moyn points out, the U.S. military itself began to embrace a more “humane” approach to warfare that sought through the use of advanced technology to minimize casualties both within what became an all-volunteer U.S. military after the end of conscription as well as among civilian populations in the non-European countries where the U.S. usually intervenes.
This trend came into full flower after 9/11 when the U.S. launched large-scale interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as became militarily involved in several other countries in the greater Middle East. These conflicts had far fewer U.S. military casualties than the earlier war in Indochina. While the George W. Bush administration undertook drone campaigns, it was under Barack Obama—who ran for president in 2008 in opposition to the war in Iraq—that the U.S. came to rely especially heavily on targeted drone attacks. This practice continued under Trump. President Biden has also made clear that even though U.S. forces have left Afghanistan, the U.S. could still launch attacks against terrorist targets there and elsewhere from a distance.
Moyn argues that part of the reason the U.S. has sought to minimize civilian casualties is to make its interventions more palatable to Americans and other Westerners. People in Middle Eastern and other countries where these U.S. drone attacks take place, though, are not so sanguine about them. Civilian casualties may be lower than in pre-21st century wars, but they are still too high for the people living in these countries. This would appear to be an example of the dynamic of international relations that Thucydides described in ancient times: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Moyn anticipates that this trend will continue and perhaps even intensify with the development of autonomous weapons (robots).
But will it? The U.S. being able to continue this “humane” style of warfare depends on it being able to launch drone strikes in countries which cannot respond in kind. Military history, though, shows that technological advances developed in one country can help them gain dominance over others for a time, but eventually others can and do acquire these advances themselves and thereby even the playing field. While the U.S. has shown its willingness to launch targeted drone attacks against opponents that do not possess this technology, this could change if and when those opponents acquire the ability (whether through developing it themselves or acquiring it from certain of America’s rivals) to launch such attacks themselves. The Trump Administration’s lack of response to what is believed to have been an Iranian attack on Saudi oil facilities in September 2019 may only serve to encourage other countries to acquire the means to conduct “humane” warfare.
And sure enough, drones have played a strong role in the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. While both sides have used them, Russia in particular has made massive use of its own as well as Iranian drones against both civilian and military targets. Clearly, the U.S. can no longer expect to have a monopoly on the use of drones in any future conflict that it is involved in.
Just as America’s nuclear monopoly was fleeting, America’s dominance in the field of drone warfare was too. But if the diffusion of drone warfare technology means that one country may no longer be able to employ these weapons without fear of like retaliation, it also opens up the possibility of arms control agreements regarding them. As we saw with nuclear weapons, it is mutual vulnerability to certain kinds of weapons that can increase the willingness of governments to reach arms control agreements regarding them. This, however, does not appear to be likely any time soon. Indeed, arms control agreements regarding nuclear weapons have broken down. What this portends, unfortunately, is that things may have to get much worse before they get better. But while things might indeed get much worse, there is no guarantee that they will get better as a consequence.
Adjusting to Change: American Foreign Policy in a Complex World 