dc.description.abstract | Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - more commonly referred to as drones - have been deployed in the context of
war as early as the Vietnam War. Since the turn of the century, armed drones have increasingly been used
by the United States and its allies in counterterrorism operations, in- and outside conventional warzones.
This thesis argues that the growing deployment of drones constitutes part of a broader shift among Western
states to counter threats at a distance, while minimizing the human and economic costs of war. It also argues
that this approach to war - referred to as remote warfare - helps obscure the loss of innocent life and prevents
states from being held accountable. In the light of this development, the European Forum on Armed Drones
(EFAD) has been taken as a case study. EFAD is an international network of civil society organizations
that seeks to regulate the use of armed drones by European states. An assemblage approach is taken to
understand how and why the members of EFAD act in dynamic alliances of states, institutions,
organizations, groups, expert individuals, discourses, treaties, laws and regulations to govern to the use of
armed drones. Placing the work of EFAD in the light of transitional justice, mechanisms of justice are
explored in the context of remote warfare. This thesis concludes that in the context of remote warfare, such
mechanisms must first and foremost bridge the distance between victims, states and the societies that those
states represent. In other words, these mechanisms must counter the asymmetry of contemporary warfare
by reintroducing the reality of loss and suffering that threatens to slip entirely from our experience of war. | |