Abstract
Introduction
Given that western liberal democracies are typically advocates of human rights, Bruce Cronin’s monograph, Bugsplat: The Politics of Collateral Damage in Western Armed Conflict, makes for uncomfortable reading.1 As Bugsplat, whose title is derived from the informal name given to the software programme used by the US military to model collateral damage, shows, Western democratic states, most notably the United States of America, other NATO member states, as well as Israel, conduct military campaigns that result in high levels of collateral damage. Worse still, these levels are, according to Cronin, directly related to the tactics, strategies, and weapons technologies utilized by western states. The high levels of collateral damage in western wars give rise to an interesting research puzzle. Since western state slargely comply with international humanitarian law (IHL) and have sophisticated precision weaponry at their disposal, one would expect there to be less collateral damage. Indeed, this is the research puzzle driving Bugsplat’s analysis. Here, I do not take issue with Cronin’s solution to this puzzle. Instead, I use this opportunity to discuss the ethical issues arising from Bugsplat, which Cronin largely sidesteps. An engage-ment with ethics is important, not least because Bugsplat’s argumentative core, what I term here as the concept of legal recklessness, relies on an implicit ethical judgement. I outline what I mean by legal recklessness in the second part of the paper. In the third part, I investigate the implications of legal recklessness for the distinction between legitimate acts of war and acts of terrorism. In the fourth part, I look at some of the wider implications of legal recklessness forjust war theory and vice versa.