--- On Wed, 7/15/09, ken hanly <northsunm at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Air raids are typically on the territory of a
> country you are at war with or are occupying and fighting a
> resistance as in Afghanistan. But drone attacks such as that
> in Yemen or Pakistan do not fit that model.
[WS:] The US was not at war with Syria when it carried its air raid in 1986. Israel was not at war with Iraq, when it bombed its nuclear reactor in 1981, nor was it at war with Syria when it carried an air raid against its nuclear facility in 2007. I do not think bombing of Yugoslavia was accompanied by a formal declaration of war, albeit it received UN sanctions.
All these were acts of war and they were reciprocated by covert action, as the attacked countries lacked the capacity to carry air raids against the US or Israel, or even to shoot down the enemy aircraft. However, the situation would have been drastically different in case of an attempted raid against, say Russia - but I doubt that Russia would go to a full blown war beyond downing the invading aircraft and making political stink in the UN.
The bottom line is that these are acts of war, although they typically do not escalate to a formal declaration of war.
Wojtek