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Matthew Evangelista Drones and the Future of Armed Conflict: Ethical, Legal, and Strategic Implications. Edited by David Cortright, Rachel Fairhurst, and Kristen Wall. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015. 288p. $45.00. Legitimate Targets? Social Construction, International Law and US Bombing. By Janina Dill. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 386p. $90.00 cloth, $34.99 paper. lthough estimates vary, since November 2001 the accounts based often on leaked documents, at least A United States has used armed drones—known episodically attracts attention.2 more formally as unmanned or remotely piloted Not surprisingly, the controversy surrounding drones aerial vehicles—to kill several thousand people, among has generated quite a number of popular and academic whom hundreds were noncombatants and perhaps un- studies. Drones and the Future of Armed Conflict, edited by intentionally or mistakenly targeted. By contrast, during David Cortright, Rachel Fairhurst, and Kristen Wall, is that same period, U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq one of the most comprehensive and evenhanded; its —and the civil conflicts that exploded in their wake—have authors represent a range of views and areas of expertise, claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands, large numbers and the quality of the research and writing is uniformly of them civilians innocent by any standard. Yet the attacks high. The complexity of the issues surrounding drones— by drone, especially when they kill innocents, arguably ethical, legal, strategic, and political—helps explain the attract more media attention than the more mundane otherwise puzzling question of why the weapons have violence produced by less exotic weapons—if and when attracted so much attention relative to the number of the drone strikes become known. The program’s very people they have killed. secrecy has contributed to the controversy. Without more Not that death and destruction wrought by U.S. wars transparency, it is hard to judge the ethical, legal, or of the early twenty-first century have escaped scholarly strategic rationales for drone use. Without oversight, many attention. Janina Dill’s Legitimate Targets? begins by critics believe, it has simply become too easy for the United citing “criticism that US military practices inflict un- States to launch drone strikes, too easy for the country to acceptable harm on civilians.” But she pairs that criticism become involved in wars. with acknowledgment of widespread praise for the U.S. The last decade has witnessed an explosion of excellent “subjection of every aspect of combat operations to legal scholarship analyzing the legal and ethical dimensions of review” (pp. 1–2). This juxtaposition generates the warfare—with particular focus on the United States as the puzzle that motivates her study: How can the United world’s preeminent military power. One common feature States simultaneously adhere to international law govern- of recent work, from journalists as well as scholars, is ing warfare and still harm unacceptably large numbers of the paradoxical observation that the United States has civilians? Her answer has produced a unique combination become increasingly preoccupied with the legalization of of international relations theorizing, legal exegesis, nor- its wartime practices.1 Lawyers sign off on decisions mative philosophy, and empirical analysis. Dill provides ranging from detention to targeted killing—yet, however a synthetic yet innovative theory of the way that legal, the wars go on, most of the time occasioning little international law functions in the international system, response from the U.S. public. One notable exception has particularly in the domain of armed conflict; a persuasive been the U.S. use of drones, which, thanks to journalists’ interpretation of the positive and customary law govern- ing the targeting of military objects; and an explication and critique of U.S. bombing practices since the war in Vietnam. Her study culminates in a normative assess- ment of whether law can serve the interests of states that Matthew Evangelista ([email protected]) is wage war, yet still limit harm to civilians (and even President White Professor of History and Political Science in combatants) to the extent that international public the Department of Government at Cornell University. opinion seems increasingly to demand, and that the law doi:10.1017/S1537592715003278 132 Perspectives on Politics © American Political Science Association 2016 itself—known as International Humanitarian Law for behavior, we do not have a theory as to how” (p. 41). (IHL), after all—mandates. One of her many tasks in this ambitious book is to As Dill points out, the law of war was traditionally create one. considered lex specialis: Human-rights protections did not A simple summary of Dill’s theory risks doing damage apply during armed conflict. In the current normative to its careful construction and nuance. The author’s basic environment that fosters promotion of individual rights, claim is that international law, and the law of war in she claims, “this understanding no longer prevails” particular, represents a compromise between states’ pur- (p. 273). “In order for warfare to meet with public suit of their interests and their prior normative principles, approval IHL has to find a way to avoid the large-scale “between utility and appropriateness,” as she puts it violation of individual rights in war” (p. 274). If it fails to (p. 299). How to effect such a compromise in practice do so, the alternative way to protect rights is to make wars depends on interpreting the law. Her own “contextual” harder, not easier, to launch—and consequently rarer. interpretation is found in Chapters 3 (positive law) and 4 A short review cannot begin to do justice to the (customary law). The argumentation is original and the richness, complexity, and subtlety of either of these interpretation itself persuasive. Dill argues that to comply books.