U.S. Presidents’ use of drone warfare

ABSTRACT

Scholars often reduce America's use of drones to a bureaucratic process. While this enables them to recognise shifts in America's use of strikes since 2002, they cannot adequately explain such change over time. Rather, I argue that America's use of strikes is a function of presidents' decisions. Presidents adopt strategic and legal-normative cognitive frames that shape their decisions to use strikes. I use this typology to study crucial and pathway cases during the Obama and Trump administrations. I show that presidents' decisions to use drones are made to achieve state and social goals. The balance between these aims is informed by, and constitutive of, presidents' strategic and legal-normative frames. Understanding America's use of drones as a leader-driven practice suggests that the legitimacy of strikes may relate more to their impact on the relationship between norms and interests, and not the military or political nature of targets, as some ethicists claim.

KEYWORDS:

• Drones
• frames
• interests
• legitimacy
• norms
• presidents

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Amelia C. Arsenault, John Bolton, Matthew Evangelista, Doyle Hodges, Sarah Kreps, Richard Ned Lebow, Tom Pepinsky, Nathan Trimble, Aleksandar Vladicic, J.C. Williams, Thomas-Durell Young, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the United States Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or Government.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

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124 ‘Remarks by President Trump on the Killing of Qasem Soleimani’.

125 Ibid.

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Notes on contributors

Paul Lushenko

Paul Lushenko is a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and General Andrew Jackson Goodpaster Scholar at Cornell University.