CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

the relative advantage it gives whoever has mastery of it, is presaged by General Jan
Smuts’s words of 1917:
As far as can at present be foreseen, there is absolutely no limit to the scale of its
future independent war use, and the day may not be far off when aerial
operations with their devastation of enemy lands and destruction of industrial
and populous centres on a vast scale may become one of the principal operations
of war, to which the older forms of military and naval operations may become
secondary and subservient. 77
Even in airpower’s infancy there were critics who pointed to moral issues related to its
potency and concerns over proportionality and discrimination. Particularly vehement
among them, Field Marshal Haig, commanding the British Expeditionary Force, was
concerned at the morality of strategic bombing and its potential impact on public
opinion. 78 More recently, Group Captain Andrew Lambert has drawn attention to the
asymmetry implicit in effective coercive use of air power: ‘Effective coercion is … not
about fair fight. To be successful, a coercer needs to demonstrate his asymmetry, both
of power and invulnerability, to force the perceptions that he has the initiative, and that
the opponent is utterly defenceless.’ 79 He cites Rommel’ s view that ‘ …anyone who
has to fight, even with the most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete control
of the air fights like a savage against modern European troops, under the same handicap,
and with the same chance of success.’ 80 If control of the air hands us such advantage –
an ability to strike without (unless the enemy has a matching air defence capability)
being struck – then little wonder it should be such an attractive proposition to politicians
and strategists alike. The 1991 Gulf War gave ample demonstration of just what could
be achieved by modern air forces against an enemy with inadequate air defences, and
how such use of air power could reduce risk to ground troops. Indeed, this was the
genesis of a belief amongst some policy makers that air power alone could win wars.
However, the inherent vulnerabilities of manned aircraft have to be negated if this
asymmetry is to be exploited, and the means of doing so – high altitude bombing or the
use of unmanned systems such as ballistic missiles, bring with them a price in terms of
discrimination and, possibly, proportionality. Just this concern was raised by the US
Conference of Catholic Bishops in its 1993 paper The Harvest of Justice is Sown in
Peace:
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