Drone strikes outside declared battlefields violate international law

Evidence

As the jurist Mary Ellen O’Connell, who describes the present-day drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen as illegal, reminds us: “Drones launch missiles or drop bombs, the kind of weapons that may only be used lawfully in armed conflict hostilities.” The fact is that “there was no armed conflict on the territory of Pakistan because there was no intense armed fighting between organized armed groups. International law does not recognize the right to kill with battlefield weapons outside an actual armed conflict. The so-called ‘global war on terror’ is not an armed conflict.” These strikes therefore constitute grave violations of the laws of war. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 251

Categorization

• XREF: O’Connell’s legal ruling grounds the reader’s interest in how drone warfare manufactures its own legitimacy. — connects to: Neither law-enforcement nor laws-of-war frameworks can legally justify drone strikes; Drones undermine the tacit geographic limits built into the laws of war — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 851; Drone warfare operates everywhere rather than only on defined battlefields — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 827 (+14 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 251

Related

• Neither law-enforcement nor laws-of-war frameworks can legally justify drone strikes (similarity 0.91)
• Drone strikes occur in countries officially at peace, not just war zones. (similarity 0.89)
• Drone warfare operates everywhere rather than only on defined battlefields (similarity 0.86)
• Geocentric war law is attacked to justify lethal policing beyond borders (similarity 0.84)
• Clarity on legal framework would prohibit most current drone strikes (similarity 0.84)
• Obama’s drone campaign targeted five Muslim-majority countries and violated international law. (similarity 0.84)
• Choosing a legal framework would render US drone strikes unlawful (similarity 0.84)
• Drones undermine the tacit geographic limits built into the laws of war (similarity 0.83)
• Drone warfare creates a new configuration that is neither war nor peace (similarity 0.82)
• Modern drone asymmetry is a continuation of colonial weapons double standards (similarity 0.82)
• US justifies drone strikes by blending two inconsistent legal paradigms (similarity 0.82)
• Drone strikes constitute weapons of state terrorism (similarity 0.82)
• Drones cannot comply with law-enforcement rules because they offer no graded force options (similarity 0.81)
• Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace (similarity 0.80)
• Drones abolish the condition of combat that makes combatants identifiable. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Drones undermine the tacit geographic limits built into the laws of war #corroborates (0.85) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 851
• Drone strikes occur in countries officially at peace, not just war zones. #corroborates (0.85) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 112
• Drone warfare operates everywhere rather than only on defined battlefields #corroborates (0.80) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 827
• Drone warfare establishes a norm neither war nor peace via imperial immunity #expands (0.65)
• US justifies drone strikes by blending two inconsistent legal paradigms #expands (0.60)
• Drone warfare creates a new configuration that is neither war nor peace #expands (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 1
• Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace #expands (0.60)
• Clarity on legal framework would prohibit most current drone strikes #corroborates (0.60)
• Geocentric war law is attacked to justify lethal policing beyond borders #expands (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 248
• Choosing a legal framework would render US drone strikes unlawful #corroborates (0.55) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 537
• Unilateral drone warfare collapses war into a one-sided putting-to-death #complicates (0.50)
• Drones abolish the condition of combat that makes combatants identifiable. #corroborates (0.50)
• Modern drone asymmetry is a continuation of colonial weapons double standards #expands (0.50)
• Drone surveillance cannot reliably distinguish combatants from civilians #expands (0.45)
• Drone strikes constitute weapons of state terrorism #complicates (0.40)