Technology has a very convoluted relationship with Human Rights. On one hand while technology allowed industrial scale slaughter, the advent of the digital and information ages starting in the 1970s had sharply reduced collateral damage in most wars fought by first world countries since the 1990s. This curve where the largely developed west is able to fight wars avoiding large scale civilian casualties has pushed the boundaries of human rights law like never before.
To be clear much of what we consider human rights though aspirational and desirable in theory, tends to become high politics in practice. These laws are still an evolving field; when you hear “activists” yell “human rights violation” you had better take it with a large pinch of salt. At best these can be described as ideas that gain normative power because of their acceptance by developed countries that have great economic salience and tend to project power overseas with an irritating regularity. In these foreign jaunts – they have largely succeeded in reducing civilian casualties, but this is something that only a first world country can do. It requires enormously expensive equipment, insanely expensive training, and a high value addition industrial and educational infrastructure. This is an industrial and societal advantage that translates into a military advantage – essentially changing in the last decades the economics of war that had held true for the last 10,000 years. Consequently what is economically feasible for the developed world becomes enforced as law for the underdeveloped and developing world, which cannot absorb that economic or human burden.
As a simple example take the recent UN investigation of Israel’s Gaza campaign in summer 2014. One classic tactic that came in for heavy criticism, used by the Israelis to reduce civilian casualties is to call people in the building (usually a pre-identified Hamas weapons storage depot, though mistakes clearly do happen) on their mobile phones and tell them to leave in 2 minutes before blowing up the building from the air. Invariably they do leave and split seconds later the building is bombed by an Israeli plane. Sounds simple doesn’t it? In fact the logistics and cost of it are mind boggling – not just the direct costs but the hidden, indirect costs.
The simple process of identifying every family in the building and getting their mobile phone numbers in hostile territory requires an enormous intelligence gathering infrastructure – both human and electronic. A normal high rise in Gaza would easily hold about 20 families. Within 2 minutes each of these 20 families have to be called individually and simultaneously, while a drone overhead monitors their evacuation from the building. Operators who watch these evacuations real time on drone cameras would ensure that Hamas operatives do not take advantage of the warning and salvage stored weapons – targeting them with low yield bombs – almost guided grenades in a sense. When the go ahead is given, a nearby combat aircraft will bomb the building. Forgetting the hideously expensive intelligence apparatus required to collect the data and the equipment costs of the operation, success depends on real time monitoring and decision making by highly trained individuals – competent not just in operations, but also with high cognitive skills and a deep understanding of the laws of war, individuals who could easily get six figure salaries in the private sector but choose to remain in the military. It is for this reason that during the initial monitoring phases of the military conscription that every able bodied Israeli male and female has to go through, the highest intelligence individuals are recruited into unit 8200 specialising in collecting and processing signals and electronic intelligence. They are given intensive training of between 3 to 5 years after military service and thrown back into civilian life. These “veterans” constitute the highest number of successful new technology start-ups in Silicon Valley.
Now imagine the opportunity costs of just the human element of this operation. Can a third world country like India ever manage to get such highly skilled individuals into its army? Moreover can it every really afford to provide them with such hyper-expensive, hyper-sensitive, hyper-specialised training knowing fully well that they will leave in 5 to 8 years? Clearly not.
Now sit back and think. Do you consider this Israeli operation of bombing a Gaza building to be more or less humane? Clearly in India we would tend to think so, but the UN investigators have a very different view – that the phone calls made to get civilians out, for all intents and purposes were acts of psychological terror. Israel then is stuck in a situation of do and you’re damned, and don’t do and you’re damned.
Which Indian hasn’t thought about blowing up Hafiz Saeed in his Lahore house – situated so conveniently close to a school and a mosque? Which Indian general hasn’t thought about blowing up those Lashkar-e-Taiba Jihadis located in the basements of girls’ schools? Now compare our problems to what the Israelis do, the costs they bear and what the UN thinks – and think long and hard if we can realistically follow through our desires.
Abhijit Iyer-Mitra works as programme coordinator at the National Security Initiative of the Observer Research Foundation. His work focusses on military and nuclear dynamics in South Asia as well as the impact and of technology on militaries, bureaucracies, doctrines, production and supply chains. He has been visiting fellow at Sandia National Laboratories and the Stimson Centre and holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from Monash University Melbourne.
This is his first post on his blog, Tarkash, a part of Business Standard's platform, Punditry.
Abhijit tweets as @abhijit_iyer
Abhijit Iyer-Mitra works as programme coordinator at the National Security Initiative of the Observer Research Foundation. His work focusses on military and nuclear dynamics in South Asia as well as the impact and of technology on militaries, bureaucracies, doctrines, production and supply chains. He has been visiting fellow at Sandia National Laboratories and the Stimson Centre and holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from Monash University Melbourne.
This is his first post on his blog, Tarkash, a part of Business Standard's platform, Punditry.
Abhijit tweets as @abhijit_iyer
