Conference: War by Remote, the Battlefields of the Future
Since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan we have seen an explosion in the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – UAVs or drones – and today, the United States use armed drones to target and kill alleged militants and terrorists in countries like Pakistan and Yemen, far from the ‘hot’ battlefield in Afghanistan. At the same time, the world has witnessed an ever expanding array of targeted operations in cyberspace aimed at anything from government websites in Estonia to alleged uranium enhancing centrifuges in Iran.
The new drone and cyber technologies bring to the surface a lot of considerations and questions. What impact will the new technologies have on the way we think strategically about warfare and the use of force? Will they change how we perceive war in ethical terms? Or erode the legal principles that govern the conduct of hostilities? And what sort of questions do the new technologies raise for a country like Denmark?
The Centre for International Law and Justice (CILJ), Faculty of Law, and the Centre for Military Studies (CMS), Department of Political Science, Social Science Faculty would like to invite you to participate in a conference on “War by Remote, the Battlefields of the Future”, where prominent international and national experts, scholars and Danish politicians will debate some of the questions raised above. The topics will be subdivided into three panels covering, respectively, ‘Strategy and Law’; ‘Ethics’, and ‘Denmark’. Following the conference, the hosts would like to see you for a small reception at the faculty of law.
The conference will take place on Thursday, September 26, 2013, 09.00-15.00, at University of Copenhagen, Nørregade 10, Udvalgsværelse 3, and will be followed by a reception.
Registration is obligatory and must be sent by email to mbj@ifs.ku.dk no later than September 23.
Program:
09:00-09:15: Opening Remarks
09:15-10:45: Panel I: Strategy & Law
Chair Anders Henriksen, CILJ
Micah Zenko, Council on Foreign Relations, "Contemplating Future Wars”
Louis Maresca, ICRC, "Future Battlefields and IHL : The Case of Autonomous Weapons"
10:45-11:15: Coffee
11:15-12:30: Panel II: Ethics
Chair US-analyst Mads Fuglede, CMS
Christopher Coker, London School of Economics
Michael Gross, University of Haifa, “The Ethics of Non-Kinetic Warfare”
12:30-13:30: Lunch
13.30-14:15: Panel III: Denmark
Chair Professor Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, CMS
Rasmus Helveg Petersen, MP, “New possibilities, but an unchanged moderation”
Søren Pind, MP
John Dyrby Paulsen, MP, "News threats - but nothing new"
15:00-17:30: Reception at CILJ
