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ABSTRACT
This article analyzes the political utility of US drone strikes theoretically and deductively. Placing strikes within the context of the theorized political functions of force and considering how they fit into two grand strategies, restraint and selective engagement, I argue that these strikes buy the United States relatively little in the way of political effects assuring its own security because the terrorism threat they are intended to combat is a limited one within the skein of US global interests. Furthermore, their contribution to counter-terrorism efforts is likely to diminish with the adoption of armed drones by non-state actors. Drone strikes can, however, provide leverage over recalcitrant US client states while reassuring liberal partners and giving them some leverage over US choices. In addition, within the counter-terrorism sphere, drone strikes are less likely to inflame popular opinion than are alternative uses of force. This analysis contributes to an increasingly rigorous examination of the strikes’ role in US foreign and security policy.
Acknowledgements
I thank Antulio Echevarria II, Emily Meierding, Aaron Rapport, Joshua Rovner, Karthika Sasikumar, Paul Schulte, Chris Mark Wyatt, Ketian Zhang and the panelists and audience at APSA 2015, and three anonymous reviewers for their help.
Notes
1 The views expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any government entity. Jacqueline L. Hazelton is an assistant professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College.
2 For example, Dave Blair, in ‘A Categorical Error: Rethinking “Drones” as an Analytical Category for Security Policy,‘ Lawfare blog, 24 April 2016. https://lawfareblog.com/categorical-error-rethinking-drones-analytical-category-security-policy, outlines important similarities and differences among different types of platforms and mission sets yet brackets consideration of any possible political effects of execution of those mission sets.
3 Audrey Kurth Cronin is one of the few to have focused on the dearth of research on the strategic uses of drone strikes. See ‘The War on Terrorism: What Does it Mean to Win?,‘ Journal of Strategic Studies 37/2 (February 2014), 174–97, and on the negative effects of drone strikes, ‘Why Drones Fail: When Tactics Drive Strategy,‘ Foreign Affairs (July-August 2013). Also see Audrey Kurth Cronin, ‘U.S. Grand Strategy and Counterterrorism,‘ Orbis (Spring 2012), 1–23, Micah Zenko, Between Threats and War: U.S. Discrete Military Operations in the Post-Cold War World (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2010), considers drone strikes as a type of discrete military operation, ‘a single or serial physical use of kinetic military force to achieve a defined military and political goal by inflicting casualties or causing destruction, without seeking to conquer an opposing army or capture or control territory,’ 2.
4 Much of the public debate takes place with little evidence of rigor. Former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair criticizes the Obama administration for its use of drone strikes on grounds that the strikes drive anti-Americanism and undermine reforms in states where the strikes are made, but the piece presents no evidence. Josh Gerstein, ‘Ex-DNI Rips Obama White House,‘ Politico, 29 July 2011 http://www.politico.com/story/2011/07/ex-dni-rips-obama-white-house-060199. In ‘Drone Strikes and Anti-Americanism in Pakistan,‘ The Brookings Institution,7 February 2013, Madiha Afzal argues that the strikes antagonize not only those in the area but also drive anti-Americanism among the moderate, liberal Pakistanis whose support is necessary for US soft power to function, but also includes little evidence. http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2013/02/07-drones-anti-americanism-pakistan-afzal. The Stimson Center‘s ‘Recommendations and Report of the Task Force on U.S. Drone Policy,‘ second edition, April 2015, expresses concern that civilian casualties caused by drone strikes increases anti-Americanism and drives terrorist recruitment, 10–11, 29–30, but presents little systematic evidence. Yemeni activist Ibrahim Mothana makes a similar point in ‘How Drones Help al-Qaida,‘ The New York Times, 13 June 2012, but like others asserts rather than demonstrates. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/opinion/how-drones-help-al-qaeda.html. Taking the opposite view, Daniel Byman argues that the extent of local anger over drone strikes is overstated and alternatives are likely to produce greater anger. Daniel L. Byman, ‘Why Drones Work: The Case For Washington‘s Weapons of Choice,‘ Foreign Affairs (July-August 2013). Pakistani scholar Hussein Nadim argues that popular radicalization took place in the 1990s and drone strikes instill fear in radicals, reduce their attacks, and deter civilians from cooperating with them, but like the others cited here produces little evidence. See ‘How Drones Changed the Game in Pakistan,‘ The National Interest, 3 August 2012. http://nationalinterest.org/how-drones-changed-the-game-pakistan-7290. More rigorously, research by C. Christine Fair et al., ‘Pakistani Opposition to American Drone Strikes,‘ Political Science Quarterly 129:1 (Spring 2014), 1–33, finds that ‘nearly two thirds of Pakistanis have never even heard of the drone program, despite the media coverage it has received in Pakistan and beyond. Among the minority of respondents (35 per cent) who had heard of the program, nearly one third said that drone strikes are necessary to defend Pakistan from extremist groups. A slight majority (56 per cent) of the one third who were familiar with drones said that drone strikes are not necessary to protect Pakistan, and nearly one in two (49 per cent) Pakistanis who were familiar with the program believe that the strikes are being conducted without their government‘s approval. Yet this figure is not that much greater than the 33 per cent who believe that their government has given its approval for these strikes.‘
5 Scholarly findings on the effects of drone strikes are contradictory. Patrick B. Johnston and Anoop K. Sarbahi report ‘a small violence-reducing [emphasis in original] effect in areas near those that drones strike,‘ noting, however that their article ‘only studies short-term changes over a few weeks in terrorist violence, and our findings do not provide a basis to conclude that the effects of drone strikes on these measures of terrorist violence extend beyond the week during which they take place.‘ Johnston and Sarbahi, ‘The Impact of U.S. Drone Strikes on Terrorism in Pakistan,‘ International Studies Quarterly, published online 4 January 2016. http://isq.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/01/04/isq.sqv004. However, US drone strikes in Pakistan are not intended to reduce terrorism within Pakistan. They are intended to attack al-Qaida and Taliban elements sheltering in Pakistan and attacking US, allied, and Afghan forces inside Afghanistan. See, for example, Steve Coll, ‘The Unblinking Stare: The Drone War in Pakistan,‘ The New Yorker, 24 November 2013. Javier Jordan, looking at an outcome closer to the US goal in striking al-Qaida‘s central leadership in Pakistan through a theoretical prism of organizational capacity, and recognizing the empirical difficulties of such a study, finds that the strikes have been ‘diminishing the capacity of the terrorist organisation to carry out highly lethal attacks in distant lands.‘ See ‘The Effectiveness of the Drone Campaign against Al Qaeda Central: A Case Study,‘ Journal of Strategic Studies 37/1 (2014), 4–29.
6 See note 4 for claims about anti-Americanism.
7 There is work on the ethics of drone strikes that places the attacks within a larger political and empirical context and thus raises questions that remain important regardless of the degree to which a state relies on the strikes. See, for example, Janina Dill, ‘The Informal Regulation of Drones and the Formal Legal Regulation of War,‘ Ethics and International Affairs 29/1 (2015), 51–58; Sarah Kreps and John Kaag, ‘The Use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Contemporary Conflict: A Legal and Ethical Analysis,‘ Polity 44/2 (April 2012), 260–85; Room for Debate, ‘Do Drone Attacks Do More Harm Than Good?,‘ The New York Times online, 25 September 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/09/25/do-drone-attacks-do-more-harm-than-good/; Erik Voeten, ‘Is the Marginal Cost of a Drone Strike Too Low?,‘ The Monkey Cage blog, 27 September 2012 http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/09/27/is-the-marginal-costs-of-a-drone-strike-too-low/; Sarah Waheed, ‘Drones, U.S. Propaganda and Imperial Hubris,‘ Middle East Research and Information Project, 25 January 2013 http://www.merip.org/drones-us-propaganda-imperial-hubris; Benjamin H. Friedman, ‘Nobody Knows if Drone Strikes in Pakistan Work,‘ The National Interest, 17 August 2012 http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/nobody-knows-if-drone-strikes-pakistan-work-so-let%E2%80%99s-stop-5775. A piece assessing U.S. targeting protocols is Amitai Etzioni, ‘The Great Drones Debate,‘ Military Review (March-April 2013), 2-13. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KZasIbQT2i4J:usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20130430_art004.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us. Jo Becker and Scott Shane examine targeting choices in ‘Secret “Kill List” Proves Test of Obama‘s Principles and Will,‘ The New York Times, 29 May 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html.
8 Work discussing problems with empirical data and resultant analytical constraints includes Stephanie Carvin, identifying many problems with the larger literature on terrorist group decapitation in ‘The Trouble with Targeted Killing,‘ Security Studies 21/3 (2012), 529–55; C. Christine Fair, ‘The Problems with Studying Civilian Casualties from Drone Usage in Pakistan: What We Can’t Know,‘ The Monkey Cage blog, 17 August 2011 http://themonkeycage.org/2011/08/the-problems-with-studying-civilian-casualties-from-drone-usage-in-pakistan-what-we-can%E2%80%99t-know/, a response from Charli Carpenter, ‘Crunching Drone Death Numbers,‘ Duck of Minerva blog, 18 August 2011 http://www.whiteoliphaunt.com/duckofminerva/2011/08/crunching-drone-death-numbers.html; and Fair, ‘Ethical and methodological issues in assessing drones’ civilian impacts in Pakistan,‘ The Monkey Cage blog, 6 October 2014 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/10/06/ethical-and-methodological-issues-in-assessing-drones-civilian-impacts-in-pakistan/.
9 There is little consensus in the debate over decapitation, that is, the effectiveness of targeting the leadership of terrorist or insurgent groups. Jenna Jordan argues that targeting highly bureaucratized groups or those with high levels of popular support is not likely to break up such groups because leaders matter less to group survival under these conditions. Jenna Jordan, ‘Missing The Mark: Why Terrorist Groups Survive Decapitation Strikes,‘ International Security 38:4 (Spring 2014), 7–38. Also see Jordan, ‘When Heads Roll: Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation,‘ Security Studies 18/4 (2009), 719–55. Bryan Price argues, in contrast, that values-based clandestine groups such as terrorist organizations find it difficult to replace leaders. ‘Targeting Top Terrorists: How Leadership Decapitation Contributes to Terrorism,‘ International Security 36:4 (Spring 2012), 9–46. Taking another view, Patrick Johnston argues that decapitation decreases terrorist attacks and makes state success more likely. ‘Does Decapitation Work? Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Targeting in Counterinsurgency Campaigns,‘ International Security 36:4 (Spring 2012), 47-79. Also see the work cited in note 5. On radicalization, see, for example, Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press Citation2004), arguing for the strength of social ties; Peter R. Neumann, ‘The Trouble With Radicalization,‘ International Affairs 89/4 (2013), 873–93, arguing that the ambiguous concept of radicalization inhibits analysis; Donatella della Porta and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, ‘Patterns of Radicalization in Political Activism: An Introduction,‘ Social Science History 36/3 (Fall 2012), 311–20, identify problems with the concept of terrorism and its study.
10 Daniel Byman argues that even the counter-terrorism focus is too narrow. ‘The Limits of Counter-terrorism,‘ Lawfare blog, 2 August 2015. https://lawfareblog.com/limits-counterterrorism.
11 Stephen Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science (Cornell, NY: Cornell UP, 1997), 28n; Jason Seawright and David Collier, ‘Glossary,‘ in Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards (Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), Henry E. Brady and David Collier, eds., 324.
12 Robert O. Keohane, ‘The Demand for International Regimes,‘ International Organization 36/2 (Spring 1982), 325–55.
13 Christopher H. Achen and Duncan Snidal, ‘Rational Deterrence Theory and Comparative Case Studies,‘ World Politics 41/2 (January 1989), 143–69.
14 John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, ‘Leaving Theory Behind: Why Simplistic Hypothesis Testing Is Bad For International Relations,‘ European Journal of International Relations 19/3, (September 2013), 427–57.
15 Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 132; James Mahoney, ‘The Logic of Process Tracing Tests in the Social Sciences,‘ Sociological Methods & Research 41/4 (November 2012), 570–97.
16 Jack S. Levy, ‘Counterfactuals, Causal Inference, and Historical Analysis,‘ Security Studies, 24/3 (2015), 378–402.
17 Seawright and Collier, Glossary, 333.
18 Bruce M. Russett, ‘The Young Science Of International Politics,‘ World Politics 22/1 (October 1969), 87–94.
19 Mearsheimer and Walt, ‘Leaving Theory Behind,‘ 427–57.
20 David Blagden, ‘Induction and Deduction in International Relations: Squaring the Circle Between Theory and Evidence,‘ International Studies Review (2016), 1–19.
21 Barry Posen defines grand strategy as ‘a nation-state‘s theory about how to provide security for itself.‘ Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2014), 1.
22 Robert J. Art, A Grand Strategy for America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2003), 2.
23 Barry R. Posen and Andrew L. Ross, ‘Competing Visions for U.S. Grand Strategy,‘ International Security 21/3 (Winter 1996-1997), 5–53.
24 Though primacy cannot properly be considered a grand strategy, only a goal to attain as part of a grand strategy, Art, Grand Strategy, 90. On the importance of relative power in an anarchical system, see John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001). Work in the restraint camp includes, along with Posen, Christopher Layne, ‘The China Challenge to U.S. Hegemony,‘ Current History (January 2008), 13–18; Eugene Gholz, Daryl G. Press, and Harvey Sapolsky, ‘Come Home, America: The Case for Restraint in the Face of Temptation,‘ International Security 21:4 (Spring 1997), 5–48; and Christopher Preble, The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2009). Work in the selective or ‘deep’ engagement camp includes, along with Art, Stephen Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, ‘Don’t Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment,‘ International Security 37/3 (Winter 2012/13), 7–51, and Michele Flournoy and Janine Davidson, ‘The Logic of U.S. Foreign Deployments,‘ Foreign Affairs (July/August 2012). Jennifer Lind provides a useful look at literature examining the theoretical foundations of different grand strategic viewpoints in ‘H-Diplo | ISSF Article Article Review 52 on “The Myth of Entangling Alliances”‘ in International Security 39/4, 13 April 2016 https://issforum.org/articlereviews/52-entangling-alliances#_ftnref8. An example of a policy effort toward increased global cooperative security and its cousin, liberal internationalism, is the Responsibility to Protect campaign urging a united global response to human rights abuses within states. See, for example, Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun, ‘The Responsibility to Protect,‘ Foreign Affairs 81/6 (November-December 2002), 99–110. The George W. Bush administration‘s National Security Strategy of 2002 is an expression of primacy, in which the United States must remain an unrivaled military power and will use force preemptively to protect itself from rising threats, though it also includes a cooperative security focus in its attention to the threat that non-state terrorism poses to all states. The White House, ‘National Security Strategy of the United States,‘ September 2002 http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002/.
25 Posen, Restraint, 86, 72, 162, 166, 163.
26 Art, Grand Strategy, 46.
27 Art, Grand Strategy, 121.
28 Art, Grand Strategy, 122.
29 Art, Grand Strategy, 147.
30 Art, Grand Strategy, 168–69.
31 Art, Grand Strategy, 201.
32 Art, Grand Strategy, 122.
33 Robert J. Art, ‘American Foreign Policy and the Fungibility of Force,‘ Security Studies 5/4 (1996), 7–42, Jacqueline L. Hazelton, ‘Drones: What Are They Good For?‘ Parameters 42/4-43/1 (Winter-Spring 2013).
34 For example, Robert Pape, Bombing to Win (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1996), 55–86. John Brennan told the Senate Intelligence Committee in hearings on his nomination to head the CIA that the United States uses drone strikes to deter terrorist attacks, not to punish those who commit them. Kimberley Dozier, ‘CIA Chief Nominee: Drones Only a Deterrent,‘ The Associated Press, 7 February 2013, http://news.msn.com/politics/cia-chief-nominee-drones-only-a-deterrent.
35 Vikash Yadav suggests that the US military has used drones to try to compel a change of behavior by the Pakistani military rather than to change the behavior of the targeted groups directly, ‘North Waziristan: Drones and Compellence,‘ Duck of Minerva blog, 30 April 2011, http://www.whiteoliphaunt.com/duckofminerva/2011/04/north-waziristan-drones-and-compellence.html
36 For example, Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1966). Matthew Kroenig and Barry Pavel, ‘How to Deter Terrorism,‘ The Washington Quarterly 35/2 (Spring 2012), 21–36, discuss terrorism and deterrence more broadly; Job C. Henning, ‘Embracing the Drone,‘ The New York Times, 20 February 2012, urges US adoption of a more transparent doctrine of deterrence by drone.
37 Justin Elliot, ‘Have U.S. Drones Become a ‘Counterinsurgency Air Force‘ For Our Allies?‘ ProPublica, 27 November 2012. http://www.propublica.org/article/have-u.s.-drones-become-a-counterinsurgency-air-force-for-our-allies; Jackie Northam, ‘Pakistan Says U.S. Drone Strikes Violate Its Sovereignty,‘ NPR, 7 February 2013, notes that the Pakistani government is widely considered to support US drone strikes in private while using them as a tool to whip up public anti-American sentiment for its own political purposes. http://www.npr.org/2013/02/07/171413259/pakistan-says-u-s-drone-strikes-violate-its-sovereignty.
38 On concerns about drones generally, see, for example, Kris Osborn, ‘General: Air Force Must Rebalance ISR for ‘Contested Environments,‘‘ Defensetech, 17 September 2013. http://defensetech.org/2013/09/17/general-air-force-must-rebalance-isr-for-contested-environments/. On the spread of drones use to other actors, see, for example, Jeremy Bender, ‘Ian Bremmer: Here come the non-US Drones,‘ Business Insider, 4 May 2015. http://www.businessinsider.com/bremmer-here-come-the-non-us-drones-2015-5; Sarah Kreps and Micah Zenco, ‘The Next Drone Wars: Preparing for Proliferation,‘ Foreign Affairs (March-April 2014). Lynn E. Davis et al., ‘Armed and Dangerous? UAVs and U.S. Security,‘ RAND Corporation, 2014. http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR449.html.
39 Micah Zenko, ‘Reforming U.S. Drone Strike Policies,‘ Council on Foreign Relations Special Report No. 65, January 2013; Gen. David Deptula, ‘Drones Best Weapons We‘ve Got For Accuracy, Control, Oversight; Critics Don‘t Get It,‘ defense.AOL.com, 15 February 2013, http://defense.aol.com/2013/02/15/retired-gen-deputula-drones-best-weapons-weve-got-for-accurac/
40 Drone strikes rely on intelligence from humans on the ground for their accuracy. Intelligence is not always perfect and mistakes are inevitable. See, for example, Matt Schiavenza, ‘Drones and the Myth of Precision,‘ The Atlantic, 24 April 2015 http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/drones-and-the-myth-of-precision/391445/
41 The Pentagon hopes to develop drones able to operate in non-permissive environments. See, for example, Marina Malenic and Daniel Wasserbly, ‘Pentagon Budget 2016: Authorisation Bill Would Add USD350 Million For UCLASS,‘ IHS Jane‘s Defence Weekly, 30 September 2015. http://www.janes.com/article/54944/pentagon-budget-2016-authorisation-bill-would-add-usd350-million-for-uclass
42 Zenko, ‘Reforming,‘ 7.
43 Zenko, ‘How Many Bombs Did The United States Drop In 2015?,‘ Politics, Power, and Preventive Action blog, Council on Foreign Relations, 7 January 2016. It is not clear if this tally includes CIA drone strikes. http://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/2016/01/07/how-many-bombs-did-the-united-states-drop-in-2015/
44 Posen notes that concerns about anti-Americanism can be overblown except in the Middle East, particularly the Arab world, where the US presence and US policies have ‘produced markedly intense and sustained anti-Americanism‘ and can lead policies hurting some Arabs to be ‘viewed as an affront‘ by all Arabs. Posen, Restraint, 54. On anti-Americanism more broadly, see, for example, Giacomo Chiozza, Anti-Americanism and the American World Order (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 2009) and Peter J. Katzenstein and Robert O. Keohane, eds., Anti-Americanisms in World Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2006).
45 Posen, Restraint, 84–85.
46 Posen, Restraint, 131, for example.
47 Posen, Restraint, e.g., 131, 133, 143.
48 Posen, Restraint, 86; Scott Shane, ‘Elections Spur a Move to Codify U.S. Drone Policy,‘ The New York Times, 24 November 2012.
49 Posen, Restraint, 86.
50 Posen defines soft balancing as aiming to deprive the hegemon of that legitimacy which hegemons typically attempt to use to support their power position by showing that might is also right. Posen, Restraint, 29. Those who argue that there is insufficient evidence that soft balancing exists include Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, ‘Hard Times for Soft Balancing,‘ International Security 30/1 (Summer 2005), 72–108 and Keir Lieber and Gerard Alexander, ‘Waiting for Balancing: Why the World is Not Pushing Back,‘ International Security 30/1 (Summer 2005), 109–39. A proponent of the concept is Robert A. Pape, ‘Soft Balancing Against the United States,‘ International Security 30/1 (Summer 2005), 7–45.
51 Art, Grand Strategy, 224.
52 Art, Grand Strategy, 137.
53 Art, Grand Strategy, 239, on the short-sightedness of giving unsavory states a blank check.
54 This is one way to view the US drone strikes on behalf of NATO against ISIS mounted from Turkey. Corey Dickstein, ‘Armed U.S. Drones Begin Flying Out of Turkey Base,‘ Stars and Stripes, 3 August 2015. http://www.stripes.com/news/armed-us-drones-begin-flying-out-of-turkey-base-1.361142.
55 Art, Grand Strategy, 140, 147.
56 It is plausible to include ISIS, not in existence at the time of the book‘s publication, as a very important threat to US interests, initially as an indirect one that destabilizes the region and increases oil prices and more recently as one inspiring attacks on US interests and its homeland. On counter-terrorism tools, see, for example, Art, Grand Strategy, 201.
57 Robert J. Art, ‘Selective Engagement in the Era of Austerity,‘ in America‘s Path: Grand Strategy for the Next Administration, eds. Richard Fontaine and Kristin M. Lord (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, May 2012), 24.
58 Art, Grand Strategy, 146, on the need for preventive action, primarily non-kinetic.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jacqueline L. Hazelton
Jacqueline l. Hazelton is an assistant professor at the US Naval War College, Department of Strategy and Policy, USA. She received her Ph.D. in Politics from Brandeis University. Her research interests include compellence, asymmetric conflict, grand strategy, military intervention, counterinsurgency, terrorism, and U.S. foreign and military polilcy. Email: [email protected]