Resumen de Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman (eds). Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. 496. £95. ISBN: 9780199646470. -- Roland Otto. Targeted Killings and International Law. Heidelberg: Springer, 2012. Pp. 661. �117,65. ISBN: 9783642248570. -- William H. Boothby. The Law of Targeting. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. 603. £95. ISBN: 9780199696611.
The debate about targeted killings has persisted for quite some time now. And it is not likely to go away anytime soon. Despite much opposition - mostly from scholars and NGOs but conspicuously much less from other states - the Obama administration has employed the controversial practice with growing frequency in combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also and more controversially in counterterrorism operations in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
Moreover, it appears rather likely that in the future more governments will rely on targeted killing operations and the use of drones more often. With the proliferation of drone technology and the development of cheaper missiles - down from approximately US$115,000 for a Hellfire missile to only US$18,000 for the new APKWS II (Advanced Precision Kill Weapons Systems) - and in light of a general shift away from troop-intensive interventions to targeted, low-risk operations in response to transnational (asymmetric) security threats, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to execute such operations is particularly likely to grow.
