Rethinking remote warfare

Remote Warfare is a product of the bellicose twenty-first century in which we live. Promises of a century, that would shun violence, revere international law, and outshine the darkness of the Cold War, have long since fallen by the wayside. Instead, the tragic events of 9/11, 2001, led the USA and its allies down the path to war and to the unforeseen consequences that transpired. As Sir Michael Howard argued back in 2006, ‘President Bush’s declaration of a “War Against Terror” was a war for which the United States claimed a hunter’s licence to use force anywhere in the world and the right to dispense with all the restraints of international law that they had done so much to create’ (Howard, 2006). This special issue analyses the legacies and emerging international implications of this ‘hunter’s licence’ and the remote military technologies/remote practices of Western warfare that were pioneered to fulfil it.