Page 28 - Airpower in 20th Century - Doctrines and Employment

28 airpower in 20 Century doCtrines and employment - national experienCes
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S. aircrews compared with that of engaged ground forces. By reducing force vulner-
ability, reliance on air power can help sustain robust domestic support by lowering
the likelihood of U. S. casualties. At the same time, air power’s ability to conduct
precision operations can reduce concerns about adversary civilian suffering (though
efforts to keep air forces relatively safe may create moral and legal concerns if doing
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so places civilians at much greater risk)» .
The employment of aviation allows reducing one’s own casualties and techno-
logical progress (aiming systems, “intelligent” bombs, and drones) should also allow
avoiding as much as possible striking civilian targets and provoking victims among
the population. Yet the attainment of the former objective may be inversely propor-
tional to the achievement of the latter: a higher flight altitude makes the crews safer,
but increases the risk of mistakes (the “collateral damages”).
The reduction of casualties among one’s own military meets the requirements of
what Edward Luttwak labelled «post-heroic warfare», which nowadays is typical
of all post-industrial societies, with a low rate of demographic growth, which are
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«actually demilitarized or almost» . However civilian victims may generate politi-
cally dangerous reactions among public opinions. During the Kosovo War, former
secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted that for the rest of the world «the
American way of war has the flavour of high tech racism. Its hidden presupposition
if that the life of a single soldier of ours has more value than that of thousands of
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Kosovars» and a French scholars remarked «an intolerable asymmetry between the
Alliance’s protected soldiers and the extremely vulnerable civilians that the military
12
had come to rescue» .
th
During XX century the proportion between civilian and military casualties in
armed conflicts was gradually upset. At the beginning of the century one civilian
died every eight soldiers; already during the Second World War casualties were
equal; today we have eight civilian casualties for every military fallen. These figures
must be compared to the datum that during the XX century 119 millions victims
th
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were provoked by conflicts within States and 36 by wars among States . The lat-
ter are decreasing and involve almost little and medium States outside the Western

9 d. l. Byman-M. C. Waxman, Kosovo and the Great Air Power Debate, International Security, vol.
24, n° 4, Spring 2000, p. 35.
10
See E. N. Luttwak, Where Are the Great Powers? At Home with the Kids, and Id., Toward Post-
Heroic Warfare, in Foreign Affairs, July/August 1994, pp. 23-28, May/June 1995, pp. 109-22.
11
Quoted in Corriere della Sera, 16-6-99, p. 2.
12
Alan Finkielkraut, interviewed in Corriere della Sera, 29-5-99.
13
See J.-J. Roche, Le relazioni internazionali. Teorie a confronto, Bologna, 2000, p. 140. According to
other calculations, civilian victims amounted to 10% in the First World War, to 52% in the Second,
to 90% in the conflicts after 1945 (R. Toscano, Il volto del nemico. La sfida dell’etica nelle relazioni
internazionali, Milano, 2000, p. 150, n. 49). On this subject see Aa. Vv., Military conflicts and civil
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populations. Total wars, limited wars, asymmetric wars, Acta of the XXXIV Congress of the Inter-
national Commission of Military History, Roma, 2009, vols. I-II.