The costs and consequences of drone warfare

International Affairs

Volumn 89, Issue 1, 2013, Pages 1-29

  Boyle, Michael J ^a  

^a LA SALLE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84872460844     PISSN: 00205850     EISSN: 14682346     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2346.12002     Document Type: Article

References (159)

1. Scott Shifrel, Alison Gendar and Jose Martinez, 'Remorseless Times Square car bomber Faisal Shahzad warns "We will be attacking the US"', New York Daily News, 22 June 2010, http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-06-22/news/27067807_1_drone-strikes-muslim-soldier-bomb, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
2. Chris Dolmetsch, 'Times Square bomber vows revenge in Al-Arabiya video', Washington Post, 14 July 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/14/AR2010071404860.html, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
3. It is important to stress that this has been rumoured, but not confirmed. Bruce Golding, John Doyle and Dan Mangan, 'Taliban lackey's twisted mission', New York Post, 5 May 2010, http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/taliban_lackey_Su3wybDRpAYfahVx03zskI, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
4. Jesse Lee, 'President on Times Square: "But as Americans, and as a nation, we will not be terrorized"', White House Blog, 4 May 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/05/04/president-times-square-americans-and-a-nation-we-will-not-be-terrorized, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
5. See esp. Jack Goldsmith, Power and constraint: the accountable presidency after 9/11 (New York: Norton, 2012).
6. This approach has been defended by the administration as 'leading from behind', a phrase that has attracted ridicule from Republicans. The original defence was in Ryan Lizza, 'The consequentialist: how the Arab Spring remade Obama's foreign policy', New Yorker, 2 May 2011, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/02/110502fa_fact_lizza, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
7. According to data collected by the New America Foundation, the Obama administration launched 284 drone strikes between 2009 and September 2012. By comparison, the Bush administration launched 46 strikes between 2004 and 2008. For data, see http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones, accessed 16 Sept. 2012.
8. There is significant evidence that drones have been used in these cases, and unconfirmed rumours that they have been used in other countries, including Libya and Mali.
9. Ari Melber, 'Exposing Obama's not-so-secret war', Politico, 12 June 2012.
10. On the legality of drones, see the official administration position in transcript of remarks by John O. Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, 'The efficacy and ethics of US counterterrorism strategy', Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington DC, 30 April 2012. For critiques, see UN Human Rights Council, 'Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Philip Alston', 28 May 2010, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/14session/A.HRC.14.24.Add6.pdf, accessed 16 Dec. 2012; Mary Ellen O'Connell, 'Unlawful killing with combat drones: the case of Pakistan 2004-2009', in Simon Bronitt, ed., Shooting to kill: the law governing lethal force in context, Legal Studies Research Paper 09-43 (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Law School, July 2010), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1501144, accessed 16 Dec. 2012. On the moral use of drones, see Bradley Jay Strawser, 'Moral predators: the duty to employ uninhabited aerial vehicles', Journal of Military Ethics 9: 4, 2010, pp. 342-68.
11. This article makes a distinction between the CIA-run programme that is 'kept off the books' and strikes targets in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, and the Pentagon-run programme which operates in tandem with normal military operations in Afghanistan and is subject to the existing rules for targeting and oversight that other military operations employ. There is an argument that the Pentagon drone programmes operating in Afghanistan may also be strategically unwise, but for the sake of clarity the focus here is on the CIA-run programmes in countries where the US is not engaged in active armed conflict.
12. This was not always the consensus position. In 2002, CIA director George Tenet was quoted as saying that it would be a 'terrible mistake' to allow anyone in his position to fire a weapon like this (cited in Jane Mayer, 'The predator war', New Yorker, 29 Oct. 2009). According to the 9/11 Commission report, Tenet believed that the CIA had no authority to pull the trigger (cited in Tom Junod, 'The lethal presidency of Barack Obama', Esquire, Aug. 2012).
13. Quoted in 'US airstrikes called "very effective"', CNN.com, 18 May 2009, http://articles.cnn.com/2009-05-18/politics/cia.pakistan.airstrikes_1_qaeda-pakistani-airstrikes?_s=PM:POLITICS, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
14. Quoted in CNN.com, 'US airstrikes called "very effective"'.
15. Quoted in Mayer, 'The predator war'.
16. Brennan, 'The efficacy and ethics of US counterterrorism strategy'.
17. It is possible to track the correlation between the onset or escalation of drone strikes and a reduction of the tempo of enemy attacks, but this does not prove causation. Many factors, not just drone strikes, will determine the tempo of enemy operations. Moreover, it is impossible to know how many attacks were prevented by drone strikes because this is measuring a non-event.
18. It has provided some details for the drone strikes in Afghanistan, though the number of casualties produced by these strikes has never been publicly reported. Between 2009 and October 2012, the US engaged in 1, 160 'weapons releases' from remotely targeted aircraft. See Noah Shachtman, 'Military stats reveal epicenter of US drone war', Wired, 9 Nov. 2012, http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/drones-afghan-air-war/, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
19. See New America Foundation, 'The year of the drone', http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
20. TBIJ, 'September 2012 update: US covert actions in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia', http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/10/01/september-2012-update-us-covert-actions-in-pakistan-yemen-and-somalia/, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
21. One of the complicating aspects in relation to Yemen is that TBIJ reports that there have been between 117 and 133 additional US operations (such as special forces operations) which may increase the casualty total. TBIJ, 'September 2012 update'.
22. This analysis is current as of 1 Oct. 2012. See New America Foundation, 'The year of the drone'.
23. The New America Foundation estimated that between 2004 and 2007 civilians accounted for 54-61% of all casualties from drone strikes. See New America Foundation, 'The year of the drone'.
24. Quoted in Brian Bennett and David S. Cloud, 'Obama's counterterrorism advisor defends drone strikes', Los Angeles Times, 30 April 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/30/world/la-fg-brennan-drones-20120501, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
25. These numbers are calculated by comparing the high and low civilian casualty totals with the high and low total casualty numbers. TBIJ, 'September 2012 update'.
26. Shane, 'The moral case for drones'; Matthew Fricker, Avery Plaw and Brian Glyn Williams, 'New light on the accuracy of the CIA's predator drone campaign in Pakistan', Terrorism Monitor 8: 41, 11 Nov. 2010, pp. 8-13.
27. One recent attempt by the Human Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School to examine the underlying sources for drone strikes, considering only drone strikes in Pakistan in 2011, illustrates these difficulties. It found that it could confirm that between 456 and 661 people were killed, of whom 330-575 were identified as 'militants' and 72-155 as 'civilians'. These ranges indicate the degree of uncertainty in casualty estimates for drone strikes. It is also worth noting that the authors concluded that their estimates were most consistent with those produced by TBIJ. See Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic, 'Counting drone strike deaths', Oct. 2012, http://web.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/microsites/human-rights-institute/COLUMBIACountingDronesFinalNotEmbargo.pdf, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
28. Micah Zenko, 'Raising the curtain on US drone strikes', Council on Foreign Relations, Washington DC, 2 June 2010.
29. International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic (Stanford Law School) and Global Justice Clinic (NYU School of Law), Living under drones: death, injury and trauma to civilians from US drone practices in Pakistan, Sept. 2012, p. 31.
30. Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, 'Washington's phantom war: the effects of the US drone program in Pakistan', Foreign Affairs 90: 4, JulyAug. 2011, pp. 12-18.
31. Cited in Fricker et al., 'New light on the accuracy of the CIA's predator drone campaign in Pakistan', p. 60. The authors note that none of the major databases for drone strikes, including their own UMass DRONE (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Research on Operational Neutralization Events) data, substantiates Brennan's claim.
32. Reported in Jo Becker and Scott Shane, 'Secret "kill list" proves a test of Obama's principles and will', New York Times, 29 May 2012.
33. The Stanford Law School and NYU School of Law Living under drones report argues that the TBIJ database is the most reliable because it cross-checks numbers from multiple sources, adjusts casualty totals when conflicts occur, and uses more local sources. See pp. 29-54.
34. Reported in Becker and Shane, 'Secret "kill list"'.
35. TBIJ, 'September 2012 update'.
36. The Obama administration portrays itself as discriminate in its target selection for drone strikes and claims that it goes to significant lengths to avoid civilian casualties, but has been opaque about what standards it uses for selecting targets. It is therefore difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether its prior identification of a person as a combatant or non-combatant and its assessments of proportionality in authorizing strikes would meet the thresholds normally employed in just war theory.
37. Scott Shane, 'US said to target rescuers at drone strike sites', New York Times, 5 Feb. 2012.
38. Scott Shane, 'Report cites high civilian toll in Pakistan drone strikes', New York Times, 25 Sept. 2012.
39. Shane, 'US said to target rescuers at drone strike sites'.
40. Pir Zubair Shah and Salman Masood, 'US drone said to kill 60 in Pakistan', New York Times, 23 June 2009.
41. Greg Miller, 'CIA seeks new authority to expand Yemen drone campaign', Washington Post, 18 April 2012.
42. See the discussion in Becker and Shane, 'Secret "kill list"'. The term 'patterns of life' comes from David S. Cloud, 'CIA drones have broader list of targets', Los Angeles Times, 5 May 2010. See also Stanford Law School and NYU School of Law, Living under drones, p. 12.
43. Quoted in Becker and Shane, 'Secret "kill list"'.
44. On the campaign trail in 2007-2008, the then Senator Obama maintained he would not hesitate to strike within Pakistan if an HVT such as Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri or another top Al-Qaeda commander were identified. At that time, he did not argue that the definition of an HVT would be expanded downwards to include lower-ranking operatives, or sideways to include indigenous militant networks.
45. Peter Bergen, 'Drone is Obama's weapon of choice', CNN.com, 19 Sept. 2012, http://europe.cnn.com/2012/09/05/opinion/bergen-obama-drone/index.html?iid=article_sidebar, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
46. Rosa Brooks, 'Take two drones and call me in the morning', Foreign Policy, 12 Sept. 2012.
47. Greg Miller, 'Increased US drone strikes in Pakistan killing few high value militants', Washington Post, 21 Feb. 2011.
48. Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah, 'Drones batter Al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan', New York Times, 4 April 2010.
49. This is an important point because much of the existing literature on targeted killing has focused on attacks against high-ranking leaders, rather than the rank and file, and even this literature has suggested very mixed results from a policy of targeted killing. The Israeli targeted killing programme most closely mirrors what the Obama administration is doing, but Israel's programme was more limited and focused on high-level individuals in organizations like Hamas. There are also a number of reasons to suspect that Israel is a sui generis case and that inferences from its targeted killing programme cannot be extrapolated elsewhere. Among these reasons are the fact that Israel uses drone strikes in the West Bank and Gaza, where it has high levels of effective military control and dense networks of informers to allow it to identify its targets. On this point, see the helpful review in Stephanie Carvin, 'The trouble with targeted killings', Security Studies 21: 3, 2012, pp. 529-55.
50. David Kilcullen and Andrew McDonald Exum, 'Death from above, outrage down below', New York Times, 16 May 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17exum.html?pagewanted=all, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
51. For an account of the reaction of Pakistani officials to Mehsud's death, see Mayer, 'The predator war'. The quotation is from Miller, 'Increased US drone strikes in Pakistan'.
52. Palash R. Ghosh, 'I would order the air force to shoot down US drones: Pakistani opposition leader Imran Khan', International Business Times, 5 Oct. 2012.
53. Sudarsan Raghavan, 'In Yemen, US air strikes breed anger, and sympathy for al-Qaeda', Washington Post, 29 May 2012.
54. Perlez and Shah, 'Drones batter Al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan'.
55. Quoted in Brian Glyn Williams, 'The CIA's covert predator drone war in Pakistan 2004-2010: the history of an assassination campaign', Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 33: 10, 2010, p. 879.
56. Pam Benson, 'Bin Laden documents: fear of drones', CNN.com, 3 May 2012, http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/03/bin-laden-documents-fear-of-drones/, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
57. Greg Miller, 'US officials believe Al Qaeda on the brink of collapse', Washington Post, 21 July 2011.
58. Micah Zenko, 'The seven deadly sins of John Brennan', Foreign Policy, 18 Sept. 2012.
59. The obvious precedent is the mujahideen in Afghanistan, many of whom scattered to different wars in places such as Algeria and Bosnia after the Soviet occupation ended. In some cases their presence was negligible, but in others these 'veterans' of the Afghan jihad joined forces with local insurgent groups and made conflict longer and bloodier than it might otherwise have been.
60. Bruce Riedel, 'Al Qaeda 3.0: terrorism's emergent new power bases', Daily Beast, 3 Dec. 2012, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/03/al-qaeda-3-0-terrorism-s-emergent-new-power-bases.html, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
61. Zenko, 'The seven deadly sins of John Brennan'. Christopher Swift has argued that these fears of blowback from drone strikes in Yemen are overstated and that much of the recruitment to militant networks is due to poverty and lack of job opportunities. See Christopher Swift, 'The drone blowback fallacy', Foreign Affairs, 1 July 2012, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137760/christopher-swift/the-drone-blowback-fallacy, accessed 20 Dec. 2012.
62. The Pakistani Taliban is not a single or monolithic organization, but rather is shorthand for an array of groups with disparate interests and relationships with the Pakistani government. For a helpful overview, see C. Christine Fair, 'The militant challenge in Pakistan', Asia Policy 11, Jan. 2011, pp. 121-32.
63. The Long War Journal has produced a helpful summary of the targets of drone strikes in Pakistan: see http://www.longwarjournal.org/pakistan-strikes.php, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
64. I have discussed this dynamic previously in Michael J. Boyle, 'Do counterterrorism and counterinsurgency go together?', International Affairs 86: 2, March 2010, pp. 333-53.
65. Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, 'Evidence mounts for Taliban role in bomb plot', New York Times, 5 May 2010.
66. 'Pakistani Taliban say they carried out CIA attack', Associated Press, 1 Jan. 2010.
67. The 'morally required' case is made in Strawser, 'Moral predators'. See also Shane, 'The moral case for drones'.
68. Quoted in Shane, 'The moral case for drones'.
69. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for this point.
70. A similar argument about the ratio of civilian casualties relative to ground operations by the Pakistani army and other non-drone operations by the United States is made in Fricker et al., 'New light on the accuracy of the CIA's predator drone campaign in Pakistan'. This version of the argument-which compares Pakistani (as opposed to US) military operations with drone strikes in areas where they are in active conflict-avoids the logical fallacy specified elsewhere.
71. There is an argument, explored by Sparrow, among others, that the fact that one cannot identify the individual responsible for a drone strike renders these strikes unacceptable according to jus ad bellum laws. See Sparrow, 'Killer robots'.
72. Originally reported in Becker and Shane, 'Secret "kill list"'. Cited in Stanford Law School and NYU School of Law, Living under drones, p. 135.
73. The White House, 'National Strategy for Counterterrorism', Washington DC, June 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/counterterrorism_strategy.pdf, accessed 16 Dec. 2012, pp. 9-10. I have described these elsewhere as 'linchpin states': see Michael J. Boyle, 'The war on terror in American grand strategy', International Affairs 84: 2, March 2008, pp. 191-209.
74. The White House, 'National Strategy for Counterterrorism', p. 9.
75. Quoted in Glyn Williams, 'The CIA's covert predator drone war in Pakistan 2004-2010', p. 881.
76. Quoted in Chris Woods, 'CIA drone strikes violate Pakistan's sovereignty', Guardian, 2 Aug. 2012.
77. Pew Research Center, 'Pakistani public opinion ever more critical of the US', 27 June 2012. The obvious danger is of a coup, which is possible given how unpopular the Zardari government is (14% support) compared to the relative popularity of the Pakistani military.
78. The celebrations over the death of Mehsud are described in Mayer, 'The predator war'.
79. See Glyn Williams, 'The CIA's covert predator drone war in Pakistan 2004-2010', pp. 882-3.
80. Glyn Williams, 'The CIA's covert predator drone war in Pakistan 2004-2010', pp. 882-3.
81. It is important to note that the direction of causality is difficult to determine here. The drone strikes are probably undermining stability in Pakistan, while the decreasing stability is arguably motivating more drone strikes. The evidence for the increasing instability of Pakistan is manifest, but is particularly evident in the increase in terrorist attacks in the country, from fewer than 100 in 2009 to over 700 by 2010. For details, see the Global Terrorism Database, http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
82. Pew Research Center, 'Pakistani public opinion ever more critical of the US'.
83. Pew Research Center, 'Pakistani public opinion ever more critical of the US'.
84. Pew Research Center, 'Pakistani public opinion ever more critical of the US'.
85. Salman Masood, 'In Pakistan, drone protest takes detour for safety', New York Times, 7 Oct. 2012.
86. Sumaira Khan, 'Zardari to US: call off drone campaign', Express Tribune, 16 Sept. 2012. On the ambivalence and hypocrisy of Zardari's position, see Joshua Foust's comments in Jeanne Park, 'Interview: drone politics in Pakistan', Council on Foreign Relations, 12 Oct. 2012, http://www.cfr.org/pakistan/drone-politics-pakistan/p29259, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
87. In a Wikileaks release, Gilani was quoted on drones as saying: 'I don't care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We'll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.' See Tim Lister, 'Wikileaks: Pakistan quietly approved drone strikes, US special units', CNN.com, 1 Dec. 2010. On the 'illegal and counterproductive argument', see '"Drone attacks" adding to insurgency: PM', The News (Pakistan), http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-32961-Drone-attacks-adding-to-insurgency:-PM, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
88. Declan Walsh, 'Pakistani parliament demands end to US drone strikes', New York Times, 20 March 2012.
89. Susan B. Epstein and K. Alan Kronstadt, 'Pakistan: US foreign assistance', Congressional Research Service, 4 Oct. 2012, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41856.pdf, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
90. Epstein and Kronstadt, 'Pakistan: US foreign assistance', p. 16.
91. Glyn Williams, 'The CIA's covert predator drone war in Pakistan 2004-2010', p. 881.
92. Quoted in Asia Society, 'Watch: Pakistani FM calls drone strikes "illegal", says "this has to be our war"', 27 Sept. 2012, http://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/watch-pakistan-fm-calls-drone-strikes-illegal-says-has-be-our-war, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
93. Hassan Abbas, Militancy in Pakistan's borderlands: implications for the nation and Afghan policy (New York: Century Foundation, 2010), http://tcf.org/publications/2010/10/militancy-in-pakistan2019s-borderlands-implications-for-the-nation-and-for-afghan-policy/pdf, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
94. Zahid Hussain, 'Pakistan's most dangerous place', Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2012, http://www.wilsonquarterly.com/article.cfm?AID=2097, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
95. In a perceptive recent article, Pervez Hoodboy has argued that the suicide bombers for these networks, trained in the madrassas and training camps in Waziristan, are the 'drones' that these local groups employ, to the shameful silence of much of the Pakistani political class that condemns US policy. See Pervez Hoodboy, 'Drones: theirs and ours', OpenDemocracy, 3 Nov. 2012, http://www.opendemocracy.net/pervez-hoodbhoy/drones-theirs-and-ours, accessed 20 Dec. 2012.
96. Stanford Law School and NYU School of Law, Living under drones, pp. 133-4. It is important to stress that the claim here is not that drones are the only mobilizing factor for recruitment networks, but that they are an increasingly important one as the tempo of strikes has increased.
97. See also Leila Hudson, Colin S. Owens and Matt Flannes, 'Drone warfare: blowback from the American way of war', Middle East Policy 18: 3, Fall 2011, p. 126.
98. This figure is taken from the South Asia Terrorism Portal's profile of the TTP: see http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/pakistan/terroristoutfits/ttp.htm, accessed 16 Dec. 2012. It is important to stress that not all of these new recruits are driven by drones, only an unknown percentage.
99. Jeremy M. Sharp, 'Yemen: background and US relations', Congressional Research Service, 1 Nov. 2012, p. 9, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL34170.pdf, accessed 20 Dec. 2012.
100. Zenko, 'The seven deadly sins of John Brennan'.
101. Greg Miller, 'CIA seeking more drones', Washington Post, 19 Oct. 2012.
102. Greg Miller, 'US drone targets in Yemen raise questions', Washington Post, 2 June 2012.
103. Quoted in Scott Shane, 'Election spurred move to codify US drone policy', New York Times, 24 Nov. 2012.
104. Cited in Peter Bergen and Jennifer Rowland, 'Obama ramps up covert war in Yemen', CNN.com, 12 June 2012.
105. Ty McCormick, 'Yemeni president: I love drones', Foreign Policy, 28 Sept. 2012, http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/09/28/yemens_president_warns_iran_endorses_us_drone_policy_0, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
106. Leila Hudson, Colin S. Owens and David J. Callen, 'Drone warfare in Yemen: fostering Emirates through counterterrorism', Middle East Policy Council, 2012, http://www.mepc.org/journal/middle-east-policy-archives/drone-warfare-yemen-fostering-emirates-through-counterterrorism, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
107. The quotation is from Anssaf Ali Mayo, head of a leading Islamic party, reported in Sudarasan Raghavan, 'In Yemen, US airstrikes breed anger, and sympathy for al Qaeda', Washington Post, 29 May 2012.
108. Ibrahim Mothana, 'How drones help al Qaeda', New York Times, 13 June 2012.
109. Zenko, 'The seven deadly sins of John Brennan'.
110. As noted above, Christopher Swift argues that economic factors are also relevant for militant recruitment in Yemen, though he also notes that drones are considered by many Yemenis to be an affront to national pride. See his 'The drone blowback fallacy'.
111. Raghavan, 'In Yemen, US airstrikes breed anger, and sympathy for al-Qaeda'.
112. Hudson et al., 'Drone warfare in Yemen'.
113. Quoted in Hudson et al., 'Drone warfare in Yemen'.
114. Glyn Williams, 'The CIA's covert predator drone war in Pakistan 2004-2010', p. 879.
115. Stanford Law School and NYU School of Law, Living under drones, p. 81.
116. David Rohde, 'The Obama doctrine: how the President's secret wars are backfiring', Foreign Policy 192, MarchApril 2012, p. 66.
117. Stanford Law School and NYU School of Law, Living under drones, pp. 73-99.
118. Stanford Law School and NYU School of Law, Living under drones, p. 99.
119. Stanford Law School and NYU School of Law, Living under drones, p. 100.
120. Stanford Law School and NYU School of Law, Living under drones, p. 141.
121. Micah Zenko, '10 things you didn't know about drones', Foreign Policy 192, MarchApril 2012,.
122. Zenko, '10 things you didn't know about drones'.
123. Stanford Law School and NYU School of Law, Living under drones, p. 141. The Iranian regime has noted that the message of its drone programme is 'peace and friendship': see Zenko, '10 things you didn't know about drones'.
124. Stanford Law School and NYU School of Law, Living under drones, p. 141.
125. Gili Cohen, 'Parts of intercepted drone left behind at crash site', Haaretz, 15 Oct. 2012.
126. Scott Shane, 'Coming soon: the drones arms race', New York Times, 8 Oct. 2011.
127. William Wan and Peter Finn, 'Global race to match US drone capabilities', Washington Post, 4 July 2011.
128. Wan and Finn, 'Global race to match US drone capabilities'.
129. Stanford Law School and NYU School of Law, Living under drones, pp. 142-3.
130. 'Drones finally make it onto the global arms sales market for sale', Reuters, 13 July 2012.
131. Teal Group Corporation, 'Teal Group predicts that worldwide UAV market will total $89 billion in its 2012 UAV market profile and forecast', 11 April 2012, http://tealgroup.com/index.php/about-teal/teal-group-in-the-media/3/79-teal-group-predicts-worldwide-uav-market-will-total-89-billion-in-its-2012-uav-market-profile-and-forecast, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
132. Spencer Ackerman, 'Will Israel sell Russia its prized monster drone?', Wired, 18 Jan. 2011.
133. Wan and Finn, 'Global race to match US drone capabilities'.
134. 'China to use drones on islands in dispute with Japan', Associated Press, 24 Sept. 2012.
135. On this point, I am borrowing much from Kenneth Waltz's argument about the effects of nuclear weapons. See Scott Sagan and Kenneth Waltz, The spread of nuclear weapons: a debate renewed (New York: Norton, 2003).
136. See esp. Thomas Schelling, Arms and influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966).
137. On these strategies, see Alexander L. George and William E. Simons, The limits of coercive diplomacy, 2nd edn (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994).
138. Sheera Frankel, 'Hezbollah drone may have been sent to monitor Israel's nuclear activity at Dimona', McClatchy, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/10/12/171390/hezbollah-drone-may-have-been.html, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
139. 'Iran: Hezbollah drone proves our military capabilities', Associated Press and Haaretz, 14 Oct. 2012, http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/iran-hezbollah-drone-proves-our-military-capabilities-1.469916, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
140. Zenko, '10 things you didn't know about drones'.
141. Craig Whitlock, 'Drone crashes mount at civilian airports', Washington Post, 30 Nov. 2012.
142. Scott Shane and David E. Sanger, 'Drone crash in Iran reveals secret US surveillance effort', New York Times, 7 Dec. 2011. See also Ali Akbar Dareini, 'Iran says it can make copy of captured CIA drone', Associated Press, 12 Dec. 2012.
143. It is worth noting that drones can be hacked, which can result in an accident or an international incident. A University of Texas Austin research team recently hacked into, and hijacked, a drone in midair controlled by the Department of Homeland Security. See Colin Lecher, 'Texas students hijack a US government drone in midair', Popular Science, 28 June 2012, http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-06/researchers-hack-government-drone-1000-parts, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
144. Nick Fielding, 'US draws up plans for nuclear drones', Guardian, 2 April 2012.
145. Brennan, 'The efficacy and ethics of US counterterrorism strategy'.
146. The term 'murder' is used deliberately here. The drone literature is replete with euphemisms for killing people-targeted killings, assassinations, collateral damage-that are designed to obscure the basic fact that a drone strike is an intentional act designed to end a human life. As George Orwell observed in his essay 'Politics and the English language', such vague, antiseptic language is typically used to make murder 'respectable'.
147. Senator Saxby Chambliss has argued that the Obama administration is deliberately killing, not capturing, to avoid the difficulties of trying terrorist suspects. See Stanford Law School and NYU School of Law, Living under drones, p. 143.
148. Drone Wars UK, 'Gaza under drones', Global Research, 29 Nov. 2012, http://www.globalresearch.ca/gaza-under-drones/5313437, accessed 16 Dec. 2012. The Israeli official's quote is from Arie Egozi, 'Israeli sources hail UAV contribution to Gaza operation', Flightglobal, 23 Nov. 2012, http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/israeli-sources-hail-uav-contribution-to-gaza-operation-379396/, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
149. Paul Lewis, 'CCTV in the sky: police plan to use military-style spy drones', Guardian, 23 Jan. 2010. The term 'fly-tipping' refers to the illegal disposal of garbage or waste.
150. Jim Gold, 'Poll: Americans OK with some domestic drones-but not to catch speeders', NBC News, 13 June 2012, http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/06/13/12205763-poll-americans-ok-with-some-domestic-drones-but-not-to-catch-speeders?lite, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
151. Gold, 'Poll: Americans OK with some domestic drones'.
152. Nick Craven, 'Spy in the sky drones to patrol Britain's shores for terrorists, smugglers, and illegal immigrants', Daily Mail, 11 Aug. 2012.
153. Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, 'Report: Russia is stockpiling drones to spy on street protests', CNN.com, 25 June 2012, http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/25/tech/innovation/russia-stockpiling-drones-wired/index.html, accessed 16 Dec. 2012.
154. David Cole, 'It's time to stop killing in secret', New York Review of Books, 28 Nov. 2012.
155. Charlie Savage, 'Secret US memo made a legal case to kill a citizen', New York Times, 8 Oct. 2011.
156. For an interesting way to do this, see Omar S. Bashir, 'Who watches the drones? The case for independent oversight', Foreign Affairs, 24 Sept. 2012, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138141/omar-s-bashir/who-watches-the-drone, accessed 20 Dec. 2012.
157. Shane, 'Election spurred move to codify US drones policy'.
158. This treaty entered into force in 1983, and currently 114 states are signatories. For more information, see the documents at the UN Office in Geneva's website: http://www.unog.ch/80256EE600585943/(httpPages)/4F0DEF093B4860B4C1257180004B1B30?OpenDocument, accessed 20 Dec. 2012.
159. A number of experts, including UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counterterrorism Ben Emmerson QC, have called for such a body to be established. See Owen Bowcott, 'Drone strikes threaten 50 years of international law, says UN rapporteur', Guardian, 21 June 2012.