Targeting Civilian Infrastructure with Smart Bombs: The New Permissiveness

Abstract

Common sense would suggest that the acquisition of precision-guided munitions should make it easier to avoid collateral damage in war. But U.S. military theorists have drawn the opposite conclusion: namely, that the more precise the weapon, the more permissive the standard for targeting should be. Henry Shue explains why this has happenedand why it is factually mistaken and morally misguided.