A "revolução militar" dos drones (2001 a 2018): da "caçada humana" no Afeganistão às várias frentes de batalha no Oriente Médio e ao aumento da escala da guerra entre as "grandes potências"

Abstract

This paper analyzes the role played by the military use of drones in International Relations from 2001 to 2018. It is intended to show that the use of military drones in a lethal manner, initially by the United States of America during the War on Afghanistan in 2001, would have triggered a series of events that have culminated, so far, in the expansion of drone use and in the indirect confrontation between two great powers: the United States and Russia, which raises the possibility of indirect and prolonged wars facilitated by the use of drones, whose wear or confrontation could lead to changes in the International Order both by the horizontal expansion with the dissemination of drones in a legal (and visible) and "dark" (secret and dirty) way, as by the expansion vertical, with wars of greater proportion. The use of drones by the United States could have been initially a military way of gaining gradual and geostrategic power, eliminating the regional partners of the only Great Powers that opposed their global hegemony: first Russia and then China. The use of drones made possible this escalation of power in the Middle East and is now moving forward (2018) even further into Africa. It is argued that this historical construction from the perspective of the drones is a Military Revolution because of the similarity in the consequences of its use with the consequences of what Michael Roberts defended as a Military Revolution between 1560 and 1660. Faced with a historical structure that is shown in rapid transformation since 2001, the major IR theories within the US, Mearsheimer Realism and Joseph Nye's Liberalism, would be limited and partial in explaining broadly all this phenomenon of transformation in international relations, referred to here as the Drones Military Revolution . Although it is an unfinished Revolution in the period in which this work ends (2018), it presents the tendency to expand military tensions on a global scale. Thus, the comparison with the Roberts Military Revolution is timely. According to Roberts it would have occurred in Europe between 1560 and 1660, where changes in military tactics would have been the trigger for subsequent transformations leading to broader social changes that would have culminated in the end of the Medieval States and the beginning of the Modern States, in a change of the International Order. The Drones Military Revolution advocated here would be the composition of several steps that somehow coincide with Roberts's model: there would be a "tactical change" in the use of drones when they went on to perform lethal attacks in the form of a "human hunt" ; Such a move would represent a more effective way of reducing the presence of soldiers on foreign soil in conflicts, facilitating their use on "multiple fronts" virtually simultaneously, further encouraging the US to use this kind of power projection, which would become limited only by the opposition of the great powers, such as China and Russia, culminating so far at the beginning of what could be seen as the "escalation of the war", where conflicts would tend on a world scale with the use of expanding drones for Africa (Niger); with the emergence of the Arab Spring and the Islamic State group; and retaliation by Russia. Therefore, the Military Revolution would not only be a story of the consequences of drone use and the pursuit of US hegemony, but also of the consequences of that search, leading to unpredictable reactions, especially as US interests begin to approach areas of interest of Russia, visible in the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine. Thus, even though it is not a theory of IR itself, the scenario of "Drones Military Revolution" would be a historical structure that would show the power revolution in international relations from elements of lesser magnitude and perception, which could lead, as well as in Michael Roberts' Theory of Military Revolution, to a broader social change.