Remote Control War

I recently watched a scary documentary on automated weapons called “Remote Control War”. It goes into some of the scary new issues that we are facing today with automated weapons, and issues we could (will) be facing in the future as the technology continues to adapt.

               Ever since the gulf war, the US has been using drones (UAVs) in the field for reconnaissance and scouting. However today in the modern era there are more unmanned aircraft in the US military then manned aircraft. Needless there are several advantages to having an unmanned system compared to a manned system, such has more flexible design opportunities, being one third of the cost, no human limitations, and keeping a solider out of harm’s way. However there are a few ethical issues that need to be addressed. Armed UAVs give soldiers the ability to hunt and kill men half way around the world from the comfortable post in a US airbase. Many people complain about the ethics of this because it makes killing to easy; however the military has assured them that a human being will always make the call on whether or not to kill. This probably isn’t true due to the fact that the ultimate objective of the unmanned technicians is to develop a swarm of drones that operate on sea, land, and air that can operate without a human commander. So it’s fair to say that the more efficient drones become, it will be more difficult to keep a man in the loop. Another issue is that there are no rules or regulations when it comes to the operations of military drones in the international community. It might also surprise you to know that most US unmanned drone strike aren’t made by the US military at all. The US military is proud to have a set of rules and regulation on the engagement of drones in the field. Most drone attacks are made by the CIA which is not a US military organization and thus doesn’t have these rules and regulations. The CIA has conducted countless UAV bomb strikes all over the Middle East and as killed countless insurgents and citizens alike. They use drones because clearly the use of soldiers or manned aircraft would be an act of war against the country they entered. However there are no rules yet in the UN community to deal with UAV fatalities, or accountability. This gives the CIA the ability to “write the book as they go along” and no one can really slow them down unless other major powers begin to oppose the use of drones, which is unlikely because they are probably planning on developing them as well.

               I would like to consider drones to be the future of western imperialism. They give a free ticket to attack and kill whatever they want and no one can stop them because no one can come to an agreement on how they should be used and who should be held accountable for the results. These things will change the face of war forever because they represent a new means to wage it. What really is the scary fact as to why unmanned weapons are becoming more and more popular is because the cost of developing, creating, and fielding manned systems is skyrocketing while the price of doing the same with unmanned systems is falling like a rock. This means that it could be wide spread and be used by any country with the money to buy them. Imagine if dictatorships around the world were able to purchase small armies of heartless, merciless machines to keep his people in line. Wide spread use of unmanned weapons could lead to humanitarian atrocities like genocide.

King Leopold's Ghost

King Leopold’s ghost is a great documentary on Belgiums imperial conquest of Africa, and goes into detail about the conquered territory which is now the democratic republic of Congo. The documentary reveals horrifying images of a conquest that slaughtered millions and left a country horribly scarred.

               According to the documentary, King Leopold the II inherited a Belgium that was striving to get ahead. It was one of the few European countries that was not a colonial power. So he set his eyes on Africa. He sent men to get as much land as they could “legally acquire”. They did this by having the local chiefs sign away their land with “treaties”. However these illiterate chiefs had no idea that they were signing away their own land. Leopold then sent military forces to seize his territory, and he induced what can only be described as slave labor. He had his workers mine gold and other valuable minerals, use their own bodies to extract rubber by peeling it off their bodies (which was extremely painful), and if they didn’t do as they were told they would be punished severely. They would be denied food and water, their family members would be taken hostages, or they would have their limbs severed. This slave labor allowed merchants to sell certain goods at a profit as high as 700%, and Leopold took full advantage of this. By the time of his death he was sitting on one of the largest fortunes in all of Europe, which was worth roughly 1.1 billion dollars. The death toll of these events rests between five to ten million people.

               This is an excellent example of European imperialism in all its glory. All these horrible acts where justified with the same meta-scientific, racial experience that evolved to justify things like this all over the world, Including all of Africa, Asia, South America, and the middle east. All of these places still carry deep social, cultural, and economic scars inflicted by European economic interests. Imperialism still continues today, it’s simply changed. The tactics have changed, the materials have changed, but it’s still here. The super powers still go out of their way to ensure that their economic interests are met.