Asymmetric Killing: Risk Avoidance, Just War, and Warrior Ethics.

• Author: Mattingly, David A.

Renic, Neil C. Asymmetric Killing: Risk Avoidance, Just War, and Warrior Ethics. Oxford: Oxford Press, 2020. 272 pages. Hardback, $85.00.

When is it moral to kill a human during war? This question has been asked since the first soldier stepped foot onto a battlefield. Dr. Neil C. Renic of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg is a noted international researcher in the field of modern warfare and the law of armed conflict. In Asymmetric Killing, Renic explorers the question within the historical context of the development of weapons which afford one side the ability to wage war against an enemy without the risk of the enemy's ability to retaliate.

To introduce the subject, Renic contrasts Junger Ernst's memoirs of World War I, Storm of Steel, to an article written in the New Yorker in 2009. The article described the killing of a Pakistan Taliban leader by a drone, controlled by a pilot and operator located in Nevada. Ernst describes the hurling of hand grenades to that of fencing: "It's the deadliest of duels as it invariably ends with one or other of the participants being blown to smithereens. Or both" (p. 1). In the 2009 article, there was no chance of anyone killing the CIA pilot or operator in the engagement.

"The focus of this book is whether this intensifying risk imbalance represents a challenge to the existing moral frameworks that justify killing in war." (p. 2) Within the context of current warfare, Renic focuses on the United States use of Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAVs) on the battlefield while looking historically back to weapons such as "early projectiles, firearms, the submarine, military sniping, and aerial bombing" (p. 5). Each of these afforded one side the ability to attack without fear of losing men or materials, which can affect whether the government has the political support to go to war or whether "...democratic leaders will be greater empowered and incentivized to war in the absence of public consultation and support." (p. 19).

Although Renic focuses on the United States use of armed UAVs after the 9/11 attacks in the Global War on Terrorism, he also discusses the use of high altitude manned bombing missions conducted during Operation Allied Force (OAF), the NATO air campaign to counter Serbian attacks in Kosovo. The U.S. and its NATO allies flew high altitude and stealth bombing missions that were largely immune from ground or air attack by Serb forces. Renic quotes a...