War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.
-Carl von Clausewitz, On War
This weekend, I finally watched Eye in the Sky. I was quite impressed with it and so would like to tell the world, that is my humble audience of readers, about it. To provide a sentence-long synopsis for those who know nothing about the movie, Eye in the Sky deals with the questions about rules of engagement posed up by a British drone operation when a high-value civilian becomes possible collateral damage.
All media, whether a textbook or a movie, have two fundamental purposes: To educate and to entertain. Eye in the Sky successfully does both by posing a question about drone-warfare and then exploring how the characters react to that question and to the reactions of other characters. The plot unfolds in the cascade of events that follow and how the characters react to those cascading. There are no stunts, little quipping and very few explosions. Instead, Eye in the Sky’s plot is driven forwards by dialogue and, thanks to a very tight script, conversation is enough to ratchet the tension up scene by scene. The leads, Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman, were both great in their roles, with both actors providing a sympathetic light to a program that many, such as myself, are very willing to condemn as immoral. Aaron Paul is also quite good and he also provides quite a sympathetic look at the role he plays within the drone program.
Then again, I am also intrigued by dialogues that bring dense issues to light. The dense issues that this movie brings to light are those involving rules of engagement. Indeed, Eye in the Sky can be seen more as a dialogue about the rules of engagement in an undeclared war than as a movie about drone-warfare per se. For those who like this kind of movie, I also recommend Conspiracy, a movie about the Wannsee Conference.
This concern brings me to my complaint about the movie: It has surprisingly little to do with the drone-warfare that is going on in the world around us. Perhaps the reason is that the movie is from a British point of view, but at least from an American point of view, many of the questions brought up in the movie have been become daily occurrences. One needn’t go farther than Jeremy Scahill’s Assassination Complex to know that American drone-warfare tactics have gone far beyond the questions about the rules of engagement Eye in the Sky inquires into.
Moreover, the movie does not deal with one of the most salient aspects of drone-warfare: That drones are used to prosecute undeclared wars. They can strike anywhere without warning, and therein lie their novelty to the rules of engagement. That novelty certainly offers advantages to the nations who use drones, but the ability to readily attain violent ends without having to go through proper diplomatic protocol is a powerful drug that can, and has, become addictive to those who use it.
There is a reason that just-war theory insists on a declaration of war. Even when that declaration is merely ceremonial, it still provides civilians with the knowledge that war is upon them. Even when they cannot vacate the place of hostilities, that declaration still allows them to inform their decisions with the knowledge that they can be killed straying into dangerous areas. Sometimes mere rituals can serve a valuable role in communicating intentions across society. This aspect of war is central to Eye in the Sky and yet never it is addressed.
Despite those qualms, I do hope that everyone decides to watch Eye in the Sky, even if it provides too romantic a view of drone-warfare, because it still brings up one of the most salient issues that governments must cope with, and one does hope resolve to constrain. Because it is undeclared and because it produces very few casualties for the nation using the drones, the costs of this secretive warfare can easily be buried in the headlines. Last October, an American destroyer launched a missile that killed over a hundred people—and yet all people could talk about that week was whether Donald Trump grabbed a secretary’s genitals. With the war distant and out of voters’ minds, the American military wields an uncomfortably vast amount of power in that region. It can kill both innocent civilians and American citizens alike without having to ever be accountable for those decisions.
It has been said that the first casualty in war is the truth. Certainly the second must be due process.