Acceso usuarios
Alejandro Chehtman
Las aeronaves remotamente tripuladas (popularmente conocidas como drones) han tenido una incidencia creciente en los conflictos armados contemporáneos, y es esperable que ésta no haga sino aumentar en el futuro cercano. A menudo han sido presentados como “revolucionarios” y tanto resistidos como defendidos a ultranza en la literatura especializada. Este artículo procura analizar cómo los drones nos obligan a repensar el marco normativo en virtud del cual consideramos el uso de la fuerza permisible. En particular, examina cómo algunos de sus principales rasgos inciden no solamente en la aplicación de los principios de necesidad y proporcionalidad, sino también en su precisión conceptual, y argumenta que las probabilidades de éxito forman parte sustancial de una concepción plausible del principio de proporcionalidad. El artículo cierra considerando (y rechazando) el argumento de Walzer según el cual, dado que el daño causado es finalmente responsabilidad de quienes usan a civiles inocentes como escudos humanos, y no de quienes operan los drones, el hecho de que puedan causar una cantidad desproporcionada de daño es irrelevante a la hora de evaluar su permisibilidad
Remotely piloted aircrafts (popularly known as drones) have been increasingly resorted to in contemporary armed conflicts, and their influence is only expected to grow in the near future. They have often been described as a “game changer”, and their use has been as often advocated as it has been criticized in the specialized literature. In this paper I argue that they force us to re-examine the normative framework regulating permissible resort to armed force at the bar of justice. I suggest that some of their main features affect not just how we apply the principles of necessity and proportionality as conditions for the permissible resort to armed force, but also force us to refine their conceptual structure. In particular, I argue that the chances of success of any resort to force are internal to its proportionality, and that this finding has momentous implications for the assessment of the permissibility of resorting to force through drones, given their proven lower efficacy vis-à-vis alternative weapons systems. This article closes by rejecting Walzer’s claim that because the harm at issue is ultimately the responsibility of the belligerent using civilians as shields, and not of that using drones, the fact that they may cause a disproportionate amount of collateral harm is irrelevant for the purposes of assessing its permissibility
