(Photo: Flickr/Debra Sweet)
President Obama's foreign-policy record has many strident critics, but all but the most partisan can agree that America's image in the world has markedly improved since he took office in January 2009. One particularly conspicuous black mark as he prepares to leave office, however, will be his administration's military drone policy, and the perilous precedent it has set.
In the seven years since he first laid out his vision for a "world without nuclear weapons," Obama has had some modest successes-such as the new START treaty and the Iran nuclear deal-but has ultimately made little progress toward his goal of a nuclear-free world. Looking to repair America's global status, Obama also signed an executive order on his first day in office to close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. Along the way, an obstructionist Republican-led Congress repeatedly stymied Obama's efforts, as the administration struggled with the logistics of transferring the detainees to their home or third countries.
Now, as his tenure winds down and he looks to cement his foreign-policy legacy, Obama is making a renewed push on both nuclear policy and closing Gitmo. But when it comes to military drones, the president has so far missed a key opportunity to work with the international community to help restore America's image and moral standing in the world. Military armed drone technology has been Obama's weapon of choice since he came into office, and it threatens to leave a salient stain on his legacy.
The Bush administration was often derided for its attempts to whitewash its most egregious policies with bureaucratic jargon; torture was famously rebranded as "enhanced interrogation." When it comes to drones, the Obama administration's rhetoric has been equally Orwellian. As Jeremy Scahill points at in The Intercept's important exposé "The Drone Papers," "Drones are a tool, not a policy. The policy is assassination."
Even though the United States has banned assassinations since the Ford administration, the Obama administration has used drones to assassinate thousands of purported terrorists, amid a rebranding campaign that casts drone strikes-which often kill many civilians-as "targeted killings."
Although the United States has used drones outside of war zones since at least 2002, the government released no official standards and procedures until 2013. In active war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, the use of drones presents a host of thorny ethical questions. But outside those wars, in places like Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and Libya, drone use sets a downright dangerous precedent.
So far at least, America has developed the world's most technologically sophisticated armed drones. But what happens when other countries catch up, five, ten, or 15 years from now? Imagine that Turkey possessed sophisticated drone technology today. Would the Turkish government have deployed a drone to assassinate a supporter of the Islamic Gülen movement outside its border following the July 15 coup attempt? What will the United States say when China uses an armed drone to kill a dissident in Taiwan? Or if Russia deploys armed drones in Ukraine? How will the United States have any moral standing to condemn such drone strikes? This is far from a distant reality; indeed, according to research from New America, 19 countries have armed drones or are acquiring the technology.
According to a scathing February 2016 report from the Stimson Center, the Obama administration has failed to provide adequate legal justification for drone strikes outside of war theaters, and has not lived up to its commitments to enhance the transparency of the drone program. The report authors also criticize the administration for its lack of leadership on the international stage when it comes to establishing rules for armed drone use outside traditional battlefields. This failure to explain who decides to kill potential targets, and under what criteria, demonstrates a clear failure to follow through on the president's 2013 pledge to increase the drone program's transparency.
Given the transnational nature of Obama's drone deployment, it's fair to say the administration is essentially waging a war against a certain class of people: military-aged males in conflict zones. According to The New York Times, based on interviews with three dozen current and former advisers, the president adopted a policy that "counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants … unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent. Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good."
In other words, all adult males killed by drone strikes are considered terrorists-unless proven otherwise, after they've already been killed.
There's no doubt that this catch-all methodology has helped justify the administration's claim that its drone strikes have inflicted remarkably low numbers of civilian casualties. In July, the administration released long-awaited figures on the number of civilians inadvertently killed in drone strikes in non-war zones, citing between 64 and 116 casualties. These figures elide civilian casualties in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, which the White House considers "areas of active hostilities." Several independent organizations have provided much higher numbers, including the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which estimated between 493 and 1,168 civilian casualties in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia alone.
Elected as an antiwar candidate, Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize more for the promise of what his presidency could be than for what it has become. But Obama still has time to lead a push for global standards on drone use, and he should start by implementing those standards at home. He could continue on his current course, setting a precedent that could lead the nation and the world into a permanent state of low-level, global drone warfare. Or he could use his final months in office to set strict conditions on the use of armed drones, to enhance military transparency, and to lead the way internationally toward an agreed-upon global framework for weaponized drone deployment.
Step one should be for Obama to ensure that clandestine agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency, do not deploy drones, leaving their use to the military. Obama should also negotiate with NATO allies to establish shared principles for drone use outside war zones, using the restrictions he sets on the American drone program as a baseline. Additionally, the president can build on a 2013 executive order that committed the administration to annually report civilian casualties, taking further steps to limit casualties and enhance transparency.
In Drone: Remote Control Warfare, Hugh Gusterson sums up the key issue at stake: "If targeted killing outside the law has been so attractive to a president who was a constitutional law professor, who opposed the war in Iraq from the very beginning, who ended the Central Intelligence Agency's torture program, and who announced his intention to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp on assuming office, it is unlikely that any successor to his office will easily renounce the seductions of the drone." If Obama wants to leave office with the nation's international image and moral standing on the upswing, he must begin a course correction that helps ensure that the next president does not fall prey, as he has, to the drone's lure.
