The “Surgical” Legitimacy of Drone Strikes? Issues of Sovereignty and Human Rights in the Use of Unmanned Aerial Systems in Pakistan

The Revolution in Military Affairs had an important role in providing the United States Armed Forces the technical instruments necessary to conduct high-risky operations in the context of Irregular Warfare. The development of these instruments, such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), allowed the emergence of a discourse of surgical and lean wars by the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, whose legitimacy of the interventions were related to the accuracy and technical superiority of the UAVs. Focusing in the case of the U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, this article seeks to debate the legal limits of the employment of these instruments. Despite the supposed accuracy and visual capacity of the UAVs, we argue that there are several information on the deaths of civilians, and legal limitations in the International Humanitarian Law, that constrain the employment of this instrument, and illegitimate the argument of surgical war