Precision Strike Warfare and International Intervention

This book explores whether the new capabilities made possible by precision-strike technologies are reshaping approaches to international intervention.

Since the end of the Cold War, US technological superiority has led to a more proactive and, some would argue, high risk approach to international military intervention. New technologies including the capacity to mount precision military strikes from high-level bombing campaigns and, more recently, the selective targeting of individuals from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have facilitated air campaigns, supported by Special Forces, without the commitment of large numbers of troops on the ground.

Such campaigns include, for example, NATO’s high-level aerial bombardment of Milosevic’s forces in Kosovo in 1999 and of Gaddafi’s in Libya in 2011, and the US operation involving Special Forces against Osama Bin Laden. The development of UAVs and electronic data intercept technologies has further expanded the potential scope of interventions, for example against Islamic militants in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

This volume examines three key and interrelated dimensions of these new precision-strike capabilities: (1) the strategic and foreign policy drivers and consequences; (2) the legal and moral implications of the new capabilities; and (3), the implications for decision-making at the strategic, operational and tactical levels.

This book will be of much interest to students of war and technology, air power, international intervention, security studies and IR.

Mike Aaronson is the Executive Director of cii – the Centre for International Intervention – at the University of Surrey. He is a former chief executive of Save the Children UK and was previously a British diplomat.

Wali Aslam is Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Bath. He is the author of The United States and Great Power Responsibility in International Society: Drones, rendition and invasion (Routledge, 2013).

Tom Dyson is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He is the author of European Defence Cooperation in EU Law and IR Theory (2013, with Theodore Konstadinides).

Regina E. Rauxloh is Senior Lecturer at the Southampton School of Law, Southampton University. She is the author of Plea Bargaining in National and International Law (Routledge, 2012).