A War Without Coffins: How Drones Have Made The World More Volatile, Yet Less Explosive

The Scene Of Intercepting A Drone In The Sky Of The Black Sea Is No Longer A Fleeting Event In News Bulletins. In March Of The Year 2023, A Russian Fighter Jet Of The Sukhoi 27 Type Shot Down An American Drone Of The MQ-9 Reaper Type Over International Waters, So It Fell Into The Sea, And The News Ended In Two Lines, Without An American Threat Of Retaliation, And Without An Emergency Meeting Of The Security Council, And Without That Angry Language That We Used To Hear When A Pilot Is Killed Or A Soldier Is Captured. A Few Years Earlier, Specifically In The Summer Of 2019, The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Shot Down The Most Expensive And Most Advanced American Drone, The RQ-4 Global Hawk, Which Is Worth More Than One Hundred And Thirty Million Dollars, Over The Strait Of Hormuz. The American President At That Time, Donald Trump, Ordered A Retaliatory Strike, Then Cancelled It At The Last Moment, Saying That The Response Would Be Disproportionate Because The Attack Was On An Unmanned Machine, Not On Humans.

These Two Scenes, And Many Others That Have Become A Daily Routine In The War In Ukraine, And In The Sky Of Gaza And Lebanon, And In The Ongoing Confrontation In The South China Sea, Are The Starting Point From Which The Book “The Remote Revolution: Drones And Modern Statecraft” By The American Researcher Erik Lin-Greenberg, A Professor At The Massachusetts Institute Of Technology Who Specializes In International Security And American Foreign Policy, And Which Was Published This Year By One Of The Most Prestigious Academic Publishing Houses In The World, Cornell University, Starts.

The Book Is Not A Book About Drones As A Weapon, And It Is Not A Technical Manual About Its Range And Its Ability To Stay In The Air For Twenty Hours, Nor About The Accuracy Of The Hellfire Missiles It Carries. This Angle Has Been Saturated With Research And Writing. What Lin-Greenberg Does Is Completely Different, And More Exciting And Dangerous At The Same Time. He Asks A Question That Seems Simple But Shakes The Foundations Of Deterrence And Escalation Theories That Governed The Cold War And Beyond: What Happens To The Policies Of States When It Becomes Possible For Them To Fight Without Dying? What Happens To The Calculations Of Leaders, And To Decisions Of Revenge, And To The Logic Of Deterrence, When What Fell Into The Sea Or Burned In The Sky Is Just A Machine, And Not A Coffin Wrapped In The Flag Returning To A Military Base In Norfolk Or San Diego?

The Traditional Answer That Analysts And Strategic Thinkers Used To Give Says That Drones Are A Revolution Because They Are Cheaper And More Accurate And Reduce Human Losses, And That They Therefore Make War Easier And More Likely. Lin-Greenberg Does Not Reject This Answer, But He Considers It Incomplete And Misleading. The Real Revolution, In His View, Is Not In Metal And Electronics, But In Minds. It Is A Psychological And Political Revolution Before It Is A Technical One. The Drone, As He Argues, Changes The Psychology Of The Decision Maker On Both Sides Of The Conflict: The Side That Uses It, And The Side That Is Targeted By It.

And From Here The Book Builds Its Central Thesis On Two Interconnected Hypotheses That It Names With Great Clarity, And Tests Throughout The Chapters Of The Book With A Strict Methodology That Combines Laboratory Behavioral Experiments, And Secret Archival Documents That Have Recently Been Declassified, And Comparative Historical Case Studies.

The First Hypothesis He Calls “Restrained Retaliation” Or Restrained Retaliation. Its Essence Is That When States Are Attacked And Their Manned Aircraft Piloted By Humans Are Shot Down, They Feel Tremendous Pressure, Internal And External, To Respond Forcefully, To Punish The Aggressor, To Restore Dignity, And To Deter Recurrence Of The Attack. The Killing Of Pilots Or Their Capture Creates What Political Scientists Call “Audience Cost,” And Awakens Popular Anger, And Makes Tolerance Seem Like Weakness And Betrayal. But When What Fell Is A Drone, Without Blood And Without A Family Crying On Television Screens, Then This Pressure Drops Significantly. It Becomes Possible For The President Or Prime Minister To Swallow The Insult, To Be Satisfied With A Verbal Condemnation, To Send A Diplomatic Protest, Without Being Accused Of Cowardice. The Result Is That The Shooting Down Of Drones, Even If It Is Provocative And Deliberate, Does Not Lead To The Same Spiral Of Escalation That Incidents Of Manned Aircraft Lead To.

The Second Hypothesis, Which Is The Other Side Of The Coin, He Calls “Increased Incidence” Or Increased Incidence. Because Leaders Of States Know, Consciously Or Instinctively, That Shooting Down A Drone Will Not Bring Devastating Revenge Upon Them, And Because They Themselves Know That Sending A Drone To A Dangerous Area Will Not Put The Lives Of Their Pilots At Risk, They Become More Daring. Their Appetite For Risk Rises. They Send Drones To Places They Would Not Have Dared To Send A Manned Aircraft To: Over A Heavily Armed Artificial Chinese Island, Inside A Dense Iranian Air Defense Area, Over The Line Of Contact In Donbas, Or Over The Gaza Strip At The Height Of War. This More Daring Behavior Means, Logically, More Friction, And More Shooting Down Incidents. Drones Do Not Reduce Conflict, But Change Its Nature: Make It More Frequent, But Less Lethal In Each Incident On Its Own.

And To Prove These Two Hypotheses, Lin-Greenberg Is Not Satisfied With Theorizing. He Goes In The Second And Third Chapters To Behavioral Experiment Laboratories. He Designed Tight Experiments In Which He Presented Identical Scenarios To Samples Of The General American Public, And To Samples Of The American Military And Security Elite, Of Current And Former Officers And Officials Of The Ministry Of Defense. The Only Difference In The Scenario Was The Type Of Aircraft That The Enemy Shot Down: Whether It Is A Manned Reconnaissance Aircraft On Board Two Pilots, Or An Unmanned Reconnaissance Drone, With The Same Mission And The Same Place And The Same Value Of Information It Collected.

The Results Were Amazing In Their Consistency. When The Aircraft Was Manned, The Percentage Of Supporters Of A Strong Retaliatory Military Strike, Even Directly Against The Bases From Which The Missiles Were Launched, Rose Sharply. The Participants In The Experiment Talked About The Necessity Of “Punishing” The Enemy, And “Not Allowing Him To Get Away With His Act,” And “Protecting The Lives Of Our Soldiers.” But When The Aircraft Was A Drone, The Mood Completely Flipped. The Same People, With The Same Political Background, Preferred Non-Combat Options: Economic Sanctions, Protest In The United Nations, Increasing Reconnaissance Sorties. The Word “Punish” Almost Disappeared From Their Answers. Even The Military Elite, Which Is Supposed To Be More Sensitive To The Value Of The Military Platform Regardless Of The Presence Of A Pilot, Showed The Same Difference. It Is Not A Matter Of Material Cost, But Human And Symbolic Cost.

If The Laboratory Experiments Conducted By Erik Lin-Greenberg In The First Two Chapters Of His Book Proved That The Ordinary American Citizen And The Professional Officer Think In Two Completely Different Ways When It Comes To A Manned Aircraft And A Drone, Then The Historical Chapters That Follow Are What Give The Book Its Real Weight, And Transform It From Just An Academic Study Into A Document That Reveals How Decisions Of War And Peace Are Made Behind Closed Doors.

The Author Takes Us On A Deep Journey Into The American Archive That Was Declassified A Few Years Ago, Specifically Into The Archive Of The National Security Council, And The Central Intelligence Agency, And The American Air Force, To Extract Stories That Have Not Been Told Before With This Analytical Link. The Central Story Is The Story Of American Aerial Reconnaissance Over The Territories Of Adversaries During The Cold War, Which Is The Story That Lin-Greenberg Considers The True Grandfather Of The Current Drone Era.

In The Fifties And Sixties, The United States Was Obsessed With Knowing What Was Happening Inside The Soviet Union And China And North Korea And Cuba. Satellites Had Not Yet Matured, And The Only Way Was To Send Aircraft. In The Beginning They Were Manned Aircraft: The U-2 That Flies At High Altitude, And The RB-47, And The RB-50. And The Result Was Catastrophic From A Political Point Of View. On The First Of May In 1960, The Soviets Shot Down The U-2 Aircraft Piloted By Francis Gary Powers Over Sverdlovsk, And The Incident Turned Into A Major International Crisis That Blew Up The Paris Summit Between Eisenhower And Khrushchev, And Forced The American President To Lie Publicly Then Admit Publicly. In 1969, North Korea Shot Down The American Reconnaissance Aircraft EC-121 Over The Sea Of Japan, And All Thirty-One Members Of Its Crew Were Killed. The Book Narrates In Detail, Quoting From The Minutes Of White House Meetings, How National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger Woke Up To The News, And How Some Generals Proposed An Immediate Response By Bombing Two North Korean Air Bases, And How President Richard Nixon, While In A State Of Severe Anger, Thought Of Using A Tactical Nuclear Weapon. But The Response Did Not Happen. Why? Because America Was Mired In Vietnam, And Because The Cost Of A New War Was Exorbitant. However, The Documents Of The Book Show That The Whole Discussion Was About Blood: Thirty-One Dead, Thirty-One Families, Thirty-One Coffins. The Popular And Media Pressure Was Huge.

Lin-Greenberg Compares This With What Happened In Approximately The Same Period, But With Unmanned Aircraft. Since 1964, The American Air Force Began A Top Secret Program Under The Name “Ryan Model 147 Lightning Bug,” Which Is The First Real Jet Drone, Also Known As AQM-34. These Aircraft Were Launched From Mother Aircraft Of The C-130 Type, And Flew Over China, And Over North Vietnam, Over The Densest Air Defenses In The World. And Many Of Them Fell. According To The Numbers Provided By The Book, The United States Lost More Than Three Hundred And Fifty Drones Of This Type Over China Alone Between 1964 And 1973. China Displayed Its Wreckage In Museums, And Published Its Pictures In The People’s Daily As Evidence Of American Aggression, And Held Popular Celebrations For Each Shoot Down.

What Did Washington Do? Almost Nothing. No Threat Of Revenge, No Moving Of Aircraft Carriers, No Angry Speeches At The United Nations. The Book Cites An Amazing Internal Memo From Assistant Secretary Of Defense John McNaughton To Secretary Robert McNamara In 1965, In Which He Literally Says: “The Beauty Of The Unmanned Aircraft Is That When It Is Shot Down Over China, We Do Not Need To Hold An Emergency Meeting In The White House. We Can Simply Send Another One The Next Day.” This Sentence, Which The Author Found In The National Archive In College Park, Summarizes The Entire Thesis Of The Book.

This Is The Logic Of “Restrained Retaliation” In Its Historical Form. When There Is No Dead Or Captured Pilot, That Raw Material That Ignites Crises Disappears. President Lyndon Johnson, Who Was Making Daily Decisions About Bombing Vietnam, Was Dealing With Reports Of Drone Shoot Downs Over China With Administrative Coldness. He Reads The Report, Signs It, And Continues His Day. While When The Crew Of The Pueblo Ship Was Captured In 1968 By North Korea, And 83 American Sailors Were Detained For A Year, The Issue Turned Into A Political Nightmare That Lasted For Months, And Almost Led To A Second War In Asia.

Lin-Greenberg Is Not Satisfied With Narrating Tales, But Builds A Methodological Comparison. He Takes Two Incidents Identical In Terms Of Geographical Location And Military Provocation, But Different In The Presence Of Humans. The First Case Is The Shooting Down Of A Manned Reconnaissance Aircraft Of The RB-47 Type Over The Barents Sea In 1960, Which Led To The Killing Of Four Pilots And The Capture Of Two, And An Angry American Response And Cutting Of Military Communications With Moscow For Weeks. The Second Case Is The Shooting Down Of A Firebee Drone Over Approximately The Same Area After Five Years, And The American Response Was A Terse Statement From The Ministry Of Defense Of Three Lines.

What Is Exciting In The Author’s Analysis Is That He Reveals How States Learned This Lesson Quickly. The Soviet Union Itself, Which Used To Exaggerate In Celebrating The Shooting Down Of Manned Aircraft, Began To Deal With The Shooting Down Of American Drones As A Routine Event Not Worthy Of Escalation. Even The Soviets, As Documents Of The Soviet Ministry Of Foreign Affairs That The Book Used Through Translators Show, Were Deliberately Not Showing The Wreckage Of Drones Sometimes, So As Not To Have To Respond Publicly And Embarrass Washington, In A Reference To A Kind Of Implicit Unwritten Understanding: “We Shoot Down Your Machines, And You Continue To Send Them, And We Will Not Let The Matter Turn Into A War.”

This Implicit Understanding Is What The Book Calls “The New Rules Of The Game.” Drones Created A Space For Violent Competition Without War. You Can Test The Enemy’s Defenses, See How Its Radars Behave, Gather Intelligence Information Meters Away From Its Airspace, And You Know That The Worst That Can Happen Is That You Lose A Machine Worth Millions Of Dollars, Not That You Lose A Pilot And Have To Enter A War.

And Here Comes The Other Side Of The Coin, Which The Author Allocates The Second Half Of The Historical Chapter To. Because The Loss Is Acceptable, Daring Became Greater. The Book Documents How American Drone Sorties Over China Doubled From 20 Sorties In 1964 To More Than 200 Sorties In 1968, While Manned Aircraft Sorties Dropped To Almost Zero. Military Commanders, Who Previously Refused To Send A Pilot To A Danger Zone Because They Did Not Want To Write Condolence Letters To His Family, Now Immediately Agreed To Send A Drone. The Inevitable Result Is What He Calls “Increased Incidents.” The Sky Of The Cold War Became More Crowded With Falling Machines, But Less Crowded With Coffins.

If The Cold War Was The Archive In Which Erik Lin-Greenberg Discovered The Origin Of The Idea, Then Israel Is The Living Laboratory In Which The Idea Was Tested To Its Logical End. There Is No Country In The World, As The Book Argues In Its Fourth Chapter, Which Is The Most Field-Intensive Chapter, That Understood The Logic Of “The Remote Revolution” And Applied It Like Israel. And For Good Reason: Israel Is A Small State, Suffering From Chronic Demographic Shortage, And Waging A Long Multi-Front Conflict, And Cannot Bear The Cost Of One Pilot Falling Over Damascus Or Over The Southern Suburb Of Beirut, And At The Same Time Does Not Want To Stop Military Action.

Lin-Greenberg Begins His Story From Where The Ordinary Reader Does Not Expect. Not From Gaza In 2023, But From 1969. Israel Was Then The First Country In The Middle East To Use Primitive Drones, Of The American “Firebee” Type, For Photography Over The Egyptian And Syrian Front. The Experiment Was Modest, And Often Those Aircraft Fell Due To Technical Failures. But The First Lesson Was Entrenched Early In The Mind Of The Israeli Security Establishment: The Aircraft That Falls And No One Cries For It Is A Strategic Asset.

The Turning Point, As The Book Documents In Detail Based On Interviews With Israeli Air Force Officers And Documents Of The Israeli Ministry Of Defense That He Was Allowed To Access Parts Of, Was The Lebanon War In 1982, Specifically The Bekaa Valley Battle. In That Battle, Israel For The First Time In History Used A Tactic That Has Become Today A Global Doctrine: It Sent A Squadron Of Small And Cheap Drones Of The “Scout” And “Mastiff” Type That Were Made By The Israeli Aerospace Industries Company, To Fly Over Syrian SAM Missile Batteries. Its Mission Was Not To Bomb, But To Provoke. To Make Syrian Radars Light Up, To Make Missile Batteries Fire, To Reveal Their Locations. And When Syria Fired Its Precious Missiles At These Almost Paper Aircraft, The Manned Israeli Aircraft Of The F-15 And F-16 Type Were Waiting Over The Sea, To Pounce And Destroy The Batteries In Minutes. In One Day, Israel Destroyed 19 Syrian Missile Batteries Without Losing A Single Pilot. It Was The First Real Victory For The Doctrine Of “The Drone As Bait.”

Since That Day, Israel Turned Into A Drone Superpower. But More Important Than The Technical Development, As Lin-Greenberg Explains, Is The Doctrinal Development. Israel Discovered That Drones Allow It To Practice What Israeli Strategists Call “Mowing The Grass” Or “Mowing The Grass.” And It Is A Harsh Term But Accurate. The Idea Is That The Threats Surrounding Israel, Whether From Hezbollah Or Hamas Or Islamic Jihad Or The Iranian Revolutionary Guard In Syria, Are Like Grass, Growing Continuously And Cannot Be Uprooted From Its Roots With One Strike Without Paying A High Price. The Solution Is To Mow It Periodically, With Limited, Continuous, And Low Political Cost Operations.

Drones Are The Ideal Scissors For This Task. A Drone Of The Heron Or Hermes Type Can Fly Over Gaza For 30 Continuous Hours, Monitor Every Movement, And When A Target Appears, Strike It With A Small Missile, Then Return. If It Falls By Anti-Aircraft Fire, Then The Loss Is Only Material. No Prisoners, No Exchange Negotiations, No Military Funerals On The Screen Of Israeli Channel 12 That Topple The Government.

The Book Presents Here A Comparison. It Takes Two Incidents Similar In Terms Of Military Context. The First In 2018, When Syrian Air Defenses Shot Down A Manned Israeli F-16 Aircraft Over Galilee, After An Israeli Raid On An Iranian Base. What Happened? Israel Exploded With Anger. It Launched On The Same Day The Largest Wave Of Bombing On Syrian Territory Since 1973, Targeting More Than 12 Sites Of The Syrian Army And The Syrian And Iranian Air Defense, And Almost Ignited A Regional War. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Cut His Visit, And Held An Emergency Meeting Of The Security Cabinet, And Talked About A “Red Line.”

The Second Incident, Less Than A Year Later, In 2019, Hezbollah Shot Down An Advanced Israeli Drone Of The Hermes 450 Type Over Southern Lebanon. Hezbollah Celebrated, And Displayed The Wreckage, And Broadcast A Video Of The Shoot Down. What Did Israel Do? The Spokesman For The Israeli Army Issued A Statement Of One Line Saying That “A Drone Fell During Routine Activity,” And Did Not Respond Militarily At All. Why? The Book Answers: Because Political Calculations Changed. The Shooting Down Of The F-16 Created An Israeli Internal “Audience Cost,” And Pressure For Revenge In Order To Restore Deterrence And The Dignity Of The Injured Pilot Who Jumped With A Parachute. The Shooting Down Of The Hermes Did Not Create Any Audience Cost. No One In Tel Aviv Went Out To The Street Demanding Revenge For A Plastic Aircraft.

This Is The Essence Of “Restrained Retaliation” In Its Israeli Version. And What Is Exciting Is That Opponents Learned The Same Rule. Hezbollah And Hamas And Iran Became Aware That Shooting Down An Israeli Drone Is A Heroic Act That They Can Celebrate Mediatically Without Fear Of A Devastating Response, While Shooting Down A Manned Aircraft Or Killing An Israeli Soldier Is Crossing A Red Line That May Cost Them A War. Therefore, As The Book Documents With Statistics, Attempts To Shoot Down Israeli Drones Increased Hugely. Between 2006 And 2023, More Than 15 Israeli Drones Were Shot Down Over Lebanon And Syria And Gaza, Without Any Of Them Leading To A Major Escalation, While Every Case Of Capture Or Killing Of An Israeli Soldier, Even One, Led To Extensive Military Operations.

But Lin-Greenberg Does Not Fall Into The Trap Of Glorifying Israeli Technology. He Allocates An Important Part Of The Chapter To Criticizing This Model. For The Logic Of “Increased Incidents” Applies Here Too. Because Israel Has Become Almost Completely Dependent On Drones For Surveillance And Assassination, It Has Become More Daring In Violating The Sovereignty Of Others. Israeli Drones Do Not Leave The Sky Of Beirut And Damascus And Tehran. And This Permanent Presence, Although Low Risk For Israel, Creates Permanent Friction, And Normalizes The Idea That The Sky Is Not Safe. As Also, And This Is A Point The Book Hints At, It Creates An Illusion Of Control. The Belief That You Can Manage A Complex And Chronic Conflict That Is 75 Years Old Through A Screen In An Air Base In The Negev, May Make You Postpone Real Political Solutions, Because The Daily Cost Seems Bearable.

Until 2010, The Book “The Remote Revolution” Seemed Like An American-Israeli Story Par Excellence. Two States Possessing Technology, And Possessing The Air Force Capable Of Protecting It, And Possessing The Doctrine That Allows Them Calculated Risk-Taking. But The Fifth Chapter Of The Book, Which Is The Chapter Written By Erik Lin-Greenberg After The Outbreak Of The War In Ukraine, And Perhaps Rewritten More Than Once, Completely Flips The Table. The Real Revolution, As He Says, Did Not Happen When America Owned The Drone, But When It Lost Its Monopoly On It.

The Book Reviews With Shocking Numbers This Transformation. In 2005, The Number Of Countries Possessing Armed Drones Did Not Exceed Three Countries. In 2023, Which Is The Year In Which The Author Finished Collecting His Data, The Number Became 35 Countries, In Addition To More Than 15 Non-Governmental Armed Groups. Turkey, Which Was Begging Washington To Sell It One Predator Aircraft In 2008, Became In 2022 Exporting Its Bayraktar TB2 Aircraft To More Than Twenty Countries, And Becoming A Star On TikTok With A Praise Song For The Aircraft. Iran, Which Began By Copying A Fallen American Aircraft, The RQ-170 Sentinel Aircraft That Fell Over Its Territory In 2011, Began Producing The Shahed Family, Specifically Shahed 136, Which Changed The Shape Of War In Ukraine And In The Red Sea. China, Which Was Silently Watching, Came To Possess A Fleet Of Wing Loong And Cai Hong Aircraft, Selling It Without Political Conditions To Any Buyer In Africa And The Middle East.

What Does This Proliferation Mean For The Theory Of The Book? Lin-Greenberg Argues That The Logic Of The Remote Revolution Does Not Weaken With Proliferation, But Becomes More Dangerous And More Complex. When America Alone Owned The Drone, It Controlled The Rules Of The Game: It Is The One That Sends, And It Is The One That Decides That Restrained Response Is Acceptable. But Today, Every Party Sends, And Every Party Shoots Down, And Every Party Learns The Same Lesson: Shooting Down The Enemy’s Drone Is Not Worth A War.

The Largest Laboratory For This Idea Is Ukraine, To Which The Book Allocates A Large Part Of The Penultimate Chapter, Describing It As “The First Real Drone War In History.” The Numbers Provided By The Book, Even Though They Go Back To The End Of 2023, Are Amazing: More Than 10 Thousand Small Drones Lost Monthly On Both Sides, And Hundreds Of Medium Aircraft Such As Bayraktar And Russian Orion And Iranian Shahed. The Sky Of Ukraine Became, In The Expression Of One Ukrainian Officer Quoted By The Author, “A Meat Grinder For Machines.” Every Day Dozens Of Drones Are Shot Down, And Their Wreckage Is Photographed, And Published On Telegram, Without That Leading To Any Escalation Outside The Front Lines.

Here The Hypothesis Of “Increased Incidents” Manifests In Its Clearest Form. Were It Not For Drones, Russia And Ukraine Would Not Have Dared To Carry Out This Huge Number Of Reconnaissance Operations And Deep Strikes Behind Enemy Lines. The Human Pilot Cannot Be Sent Daily Over Donetsk Where Thousands Of Stinger Missiles Are Deployed, Because His Loss Would Be A Media And Political Catastrophe. But The Small Chinese Aircraft Of The DJI Mavic Type, Which Costs Two Thousand Dollars And Soldiers Buy With Their Own Money, Can Be Sent Ten Times A Day. The Result Is A Front Burning With Continuous Friction, But It Is Mostly Machine-To-Machine Friction.

And In Contrast, The Hypothesis Of “Restrained Retaliation” Manifests In The Incident With Which We Opened This Review: The Shooting Down By The Russian Fighter Of The American MQ-9 Drone Over The Black Sea In March 2023. Lin-Greenberg Allocates A Detailed Analysis To This Incident, Based On Statements Of The American And Russian Ministry Of Defense, And On Interviews With American Officials. The Russians Shot Down The Drone In An Aggressive And Dangerous Way, By Pouring Fuel On It And Colliding With Its Propeller. In The Time Of The Cold War, If This Aircraft Had Been Manned, We Could Have Been Facing A Second Cuban Missile Crisis. What Did Washington Do? It Summoned The Russian Ambassador, Published A Video Of The Incident, And Imposed Additional Sanctions, But Did Not Respond Militarily. And The Reason, As A Senior American Official Told The Author: “If There Had Been An American Pilot On Board, The President Would Have Had To Respond Forcefully Within Hours. But It Was Just A Drone. We Can Buy Another One.”

This Logic, Which Was Previously An American Advantage, Has Today Also Worked Against America. Iran Shoots Down American Drones Over The Gulf, And Turkey Shoots Down Russian Drones Over Syria, And Russia Shoots Down American Drones Over The Black Sea, And Everyone Adheres To Unwritten Rules: Do Not Touch Humans.

But The Book Warns That These Rules Are Extremely Fragile. And It Reaches Here The Most Dangerous Of Its Chapters, Where It Discusses What It Calls “The Discrimination Problem.” Modern Drones, Especially Stealthy Ones, Have Become Difficult To Distinguish From Manned Aircraft On Radar. Also Drones Have Become Used As Escorts For Manned Aircraft In One Combat Mission. What Happens If Air Defenses Shoot Down A Drone That Was Flying Near A Manned Aircraft, And The Other State Believed That The Attack Was Targeting Its Manned Aircraft? What Happens If The Drone Was Armed With Missiles, And Was Shot Down Over A City, And Its Debris Killed Civilians? Will The Response Remain Restrained?

Lin-Greenberg Cites Here An Incident That Is Almost A Prophecy. In January 2020, After The Assassination Of Qassem Soleimani By An American Drone, Iran Responded By Bombing The American Ain Al-Asad Base With Ballistic Missiles. The Iranian Response Was Carefully Studied To Avoid Killing American Soldiers, So As Not To Force Trump To Respond With A Comprehensive War. Iran Wanted To Say: We Respond Machine For Machine, Assassination By Drone With Bombing Of A Base. But The Missiles Hit, And More Than A Hundred American Soldiers Were Injured With Brain Concussion. The Miscalculation Almost Ignited A War. The Remote Revolution, As The Book Says, Reduces The Possibility Of Deliberate Escalation, But It Increases The Possibility Of Unintended Escalation, Because Of The Huge Number Of Incidents.

In The South China Sea, Which Is The Scenario With Which The Chapter Concludes, The Matter Becomes More Clear. China And The United States Send Daily Drones Over The Disputed Islands. Every Day Is A Test Of The Rules Of The Game. So Far, Drones Have Fallen, And No War Has Occurred. But The Book Asks: What If The Next Chinese Drone Was Flying Over Taiwan, And Taiwan Shot It Down, And Beijing Considered That An Insult That Cannot Be Silenced Because It Came From Taiwan And Not From America? The Technical Logic Is One, But The Political Context Changes Everything.

And Thus, The Proliferation Of Drones Did Not Cancel The Theory Of The Book, But Generalized It And Turned It From A Privilege For The Strong Into A Rule For Everyone, A Rule That Says: Kill Each Other’s Machines As Much As You Want, But Beware Of Humans. And It Is A Rule That Seems Stable, But In Reality Walks On A Tightrope Over An Abyss.

But The Book, Despite Its Methodological Strength, Leaves Gaps That The Reader Picks Up, And Gaps That The Author Himself Acknowledges In His Conclusion. The First Of These Gaps Is The Excessive American Focus. All Experiments That Were Conducted, Whether On The General Public Or On The Military Elite, Were Conducted On Americans. Does The Same Logic Of “Restrained Retaliation” Apply To The Russian Public That Was Raised On A Culture Of Sacrifice And National Dignity, Or To The Iranian Public That Sees In The American Drone A Symbol Of Hegemony, Or To The Chinese Public? The Book Hints That The Logic Is General Human, But It Does Not Prove It. And Its Interviews With Israeli Officers, Despite Their Importance, Remain Within The Framework Of A Close Ally Of The United States.

The Second Gap, Which Is The Most Dangerous From An Ethical Point Of View, Is That The Book Deals With Drones As Neutral Tools For Reconnaissance And Engagement Between Regular Armies, And Almost Completely Ignores Its Darkest Side: Assassinations Outside Battlefields, And Targeted Killing, And Civilian Losses. Lin-Greenberg Mentions In A Quick Margin That Drones Reduce Losses Among Soldiers Of The State That Uses Them, But He Does Not Discuss In Depth That They May Increase Losses Among Civilians Of The Targeted State, Because The Ease Of Use Makes The Decision To Kill Easier. When You Do Not Risk The Life Of Your Pilot, You May Become More Lenient In Pressing The Launch Button, Even If There Is Doubt About The Identity Of The Target. This Point, Which Other Writers Such As Peter Singer And Christian Enemark Discussed, Is Almost Absent From This Book Which Focuses On Relations Between States, Not On The Relationship Between The State And The Individual Under Its Aircraft.

The Third Gap Is The Future That Goes Beyond The Book. All The Aircraft That The Book Talks About, From Predator To Heron To Shahed, Are “Remote” Aircraft In The Sense That There Is A Human Somewhere, In Some Place, Controlling It Or At Least Approving The Firing. What Happens When The Aircraft Becomes Capable Of Making The Decision To Kill By Itself, Without Human Intervention? Will The Logic Of “Restrained Retaliation” Remain Valid When The Killer Is An Algorithm? Will The Public Be Angry If An Algorithm Shoots Down Another Algorithm’s Aircraft? The Book Opens The Door To These Questions But Does Not Enter Them.

The Conclusion Left By Lin-Greenberg, And It Is A Conclusion Worth Writing On The Cover Of The Book, Is That Drones Did Not Make War More Humane, But Made It More Likely To Continue. It Stripped It Of That Element That Made It A Terrifying Exception In The Life Of Nations, Which Is Visible Blood. It Transformed It From A Big Event That Shakes Parliaments And Peoples, Into A Daily Routine Managed By Air-Conditioned Control Rooms, And Followed By The Public As If It Were A Video Game.

And Here Lies The Greatest Danger That The Book Warns Of Without Shouting. When Peoples Get Used To The Falling Of Machines, They May Forget That Behind Every Falling Machine, There Is A Human Decision To Send It, And That Behind Every Decision To Send It, There Is A Political Intention That May Be Dangerous. The Remote Revolution May Prevent A Third World War, But It May Make Us Live In A Permanent Small World War, A War That Never Ends, Because No One Dies In It Enough To Stop It.

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