Changing Societies & Personalities, 2020
Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 553–557

http://dx.doi.org/10.15826/csp.2020.4.4.118

BOOK REVIEW

Jean-François Caron (2020). Contemporary
Technologies and the Morality of Warfare.
The War of the Machines. London: Routledge

Georgy A. Vedernikov
Ural Federal University, Yekaterinburg, Russia

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project
No. 20-18-00240

This recent book on morality of warfare is written by Jean-François Caron,
Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science and International
Relations at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan, and fellow at the Institute of
Political Science and Administration at the University of Opole, Poland. The
author aims to show that the ethics of weapons systems such as autonomous
and semi-autonomous robots, AI, cyber technologies and human enhancement
technologies depends on which states use them. J. F. Caron argues that these
should be “reasonable states” or the states that adhere to the rules of modern
warfare (international treaties and conventions). In this case, their use of modern
lethal and non-lethal weapons against opposing military forces is morally and
legally justified.

Since 1977, when Michael Walzer published his seminal work Just and
Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, the problematique
of normalization and humanization of warfare has gained increased scholarly
attention. The Journal of Military Ethics published in the 2000s provided a
platform for just war theorists to develop the principles that would limit the
scope of permissible violence and make armed conflicts less bloody. In Russia,
the growing number of publications in journals Logos, Voprosy filosofii and
Sotsiologicheskoye obozrenie also point to increased interest in this topic.
Caron’s book logically continues the debate about modern military practices
by putting the main emphasis on technology, which is a rather underexplored
aspect of the problem.

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554 Georgy A. Vedernikov

The book consists of six chapters. The first chapter starts with an overview of the
most advanced methods and means of warfare, describing the distinctive features of
different types of weapons, some of which, according to the author, can justify the use
of these weapons. In the following chapters the author explains why the use of modern
technologies is not only morally justified but is essential for a just war. The second
chapter deals with the duty of care that the military institution has towards its members,
in other words, the military commanders’ obligation to treat soldiers with care, ensure
their safety during the period of service and curb any negligence towards them. The
third chapter focuses on the ability of modern military technologies to discriminate
between combatants and non-combatants (civilians) during military operations. The
following three chapters cover the critique and arguments brought up by scholars and
wider public against the use of modern military technologies. In the fourth chapter,
the author argues against the opinion that even the most advanced technologies not
only are incapable of reducing but, on the contrary, increase the number of breaches
of just war morality. Caron insists that to prevent war crimes from going unpunished,
it is important to set strict rules for the use and development of military technologies.
The fifth chapter discusses whether or to what extent moral it is to use the cutting-
edge military technologies against the enemy’s soldiers due to the asymmetry that
arises between those who possess such technologies and those who do not. Finally,
the last, sixth chapter describes the ethical and political fears concerning the use of
modern military technologies from the perspective of the just war theory. The author
argues that advanced technologies can serve as means of preventing wars rather
than escalating unlawful violence.

In his book, not only does Caron provide an overview of the key works discussing
the potential of the emerging military technologies and their implications but he also
provides an in-depth analysis of the military reports about the operations that marked
different stages in the evolution of such technologies in the second half of the 20th and
early 21st century. Nevertheless, in our view, in some parts of his analysis the author is
prone to giving rather subjective interpretations. However, we cannot but agree with
the author’s opinion that precision strikes against the attacker, which came to replace
the “war until final victory” principle, appear to be a morally justified measure.

In our view, the author leaves room for uncertainty when he fails to provide
clear distinctions between what is “just”, “acceptable” or “legal” in the use of military
technologies. As a result, the use of advanced weapons by a more developed country
can easily turn the latter from a sovereign state seeking to protect its citizens into
an aggressor persecuting undesirable communities and individuals. In this case the
technological aspect that the author highlights is shifted to the political domain and
requires a more conceptually elaborate reflection.

Modern Military Technologies

One of the book’s obvious strengths is the detailed description of modern military
technologies and their conceptualization. The author provides a careful examination
of the new military weapons and their characteristics. Another important strength

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of the book is that the author manages to stay immune to widely spread fears and
misconceptions concerning the use of aerial vehicles (UAVs) based on artificial
intelligence applications. It is shown how even the most technologically developed
countries such as the USA, UK and China still have a long way to go on the creation
of fully autonomous UAVs or other similar devices before they are able to exclude
humans from the decision-making chain. Thus, the problem of the legitimate use of
violence remains within the human sphere, which means that legally it is the drone
operator, hired hacker or developer of an automated air defense system that can be
charged with criminal negligence and misuse of military power. In his book, Caron
provides a clear-cut classification of the types of technical autonomy in modern
military systems (p. 8):

Types of autonomy Technical specificities

Automated systems

Weapons without autonomy Weapons that have no autonomy and whose
capacity to act depends on direct human control.
Examples: machine guns and remotely controlled
robots that inspect, detect, or disarm explosives or
bombs

Non-lethal pre-
programmed autonomy

Weapons whose autonomy can be pre-programmed
and whose lethal capacities are an exclusive human
responsibility. Example: drones

Lethal or destructive pre-
programmed autonomy

Weapons targeting specific programmed objects
with lethal force. Examples: the Israeli Iron Dome
and the South Korean SGR-AI system.

Autonomous systems

Lethal autonomy without
human intervention

Hypothetical weapons able to show moral
judgement when using lethal force against targets
akin to human moral agency

Automatic Decision-Making Systems

The majority of prominent thinkers on the ethics of modern war (Michael Walzer, Paul
Christopher, Nicholas Fotion, and Brian Orend) pay considerable attention to the
notion of collateral damage, which is seen as the main counterargument against
the use of lethal autonomous weapons. Inhuman killer robots stand out vividly in
the public’s mind, which means that any failures or errors in the work of automated
systems are perceived as a sufficient reason to completely ban their use.

To counter this view, the author brings up a tragic incident that happened in 1988,
when the USS Vincennes, a US Navy cruiser, shot down an Iranian civilian plane,
killing all 290 passengers and crew members on board. This tragedy resulted from a

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556 Georgy A. Vedernikov

series of human errors on the part of the US military commandment and pilots of the
civilian plane. Importantly,

the USS Vincennes was at the time one of the first vessels of the US Navy that
was equipped with the AEGIS combat system, a missile system that combined
computer and radar technology to guide and destroy targets in record time and
that could engage a multitude of targets simultaneously, the caveat being that the
firing options could only be activated by a human being (pp. 46–47).

The limited time, stress and hostile environment led the crew of the American
cruiser to see the civilian plane as a threat although the ship’s automated combat
system provided evidence of the opposite.

This and other examples discussed in the book show that more objective and
emotionless decision-making may provide a moral counterbalance in the discussion
about collateral damage in drone warfare. Following the Western intellectual tradition,
Caron filled his book with practical cases and examples, which allowed him to avoid
ungrounded theoretical speculations.

Principles of Legality of the Use of Modern Military Technologies

The UN’s principle of “the responsibility to protect” (or R2P principle) is included
in the international law regulating sovereign states’ rights and duties in relation to
their citizens. The aim to prevent massive atrocities and crimes such as genocide
and ethnic cleansing is at the core of this principle. As the author makes clear,
this principle can be applied not only to the above-mentioned crimes but also to
terrorist attacks committed by radical Islamist organizations. In Caron’s view, it is
this principle that allowed to launch the international anti-terrorist struggle and gave
Western countries more opportunities for interference in the internal affairs of states
that, according to their intelligence services, were helping terrorists. This reasoning
brings us to the key question as to how to identify the actual need to engage in
warfare with and without modern military technologies, especially if these military
operations are to be conducted on the territory of another state and do not have a
clearly defensive character. For the sake of conceptual clarity, Caron proposes the
following key principles. First, a state’s use of advanced military weapons against
combatants (and non-combatants as “collateral damage”) of the opposing side
can be considered legitimate if this state acts “reasonably” by adhering to all the
international conventions. Second, the state’s use of such weapons is considered
legitimate if, in doing so, the state seeks to minimize the destructive effect of such
weapons and to enhance their precision targeting.

The author considers these principles universal in the sense that they apply to all
modern types of weapons,

since chapter 7 of the UN Charter does not refer to any specific weapons in its
definition of acts of aggression, and because international law does not refer

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to any particular level of intensity in its definition of an attack, the lawful use of
force ought to apply independently of the arms or weapons used against another
country’s sovereignty, a principle that is thought to also apply to a country’s
cyberspace (pp. 108-109).

Being “reasonable” is understood by the author as the ability to follow UN
treaties, that is, a “reasonable” state will engage in a just, defensive war only if
it has found itself under attack and there is a real threat to its civilians or military
staff. The author does not deny that when conducting military operations involving
high-tech weapons, a state may be pursuing its own hidden political or economic
agenda. An air strike, deployment of special forces and maintaining full-time
surveillance over leaders of terrorist organizations are univocally recognized as
legal and ethical if they are likely to bring a decline in violence in the future. Caron
underlines that the moral side of preventive military action taken by developed
countries against terrorist and similar organizations is a debatable issue since
such military operations resemble police sweeps much more than ideological
struggle between different cultures and worldviews.

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