Institutionalization of Drone Warfare is Key to Maintaining Legitimacy
A keystone assumption of liberal theory is that individuals are the primary actors in the international system. The interests of states and institutions are derived from the aggregation of individual interests (Moravcsik) due to certain inalienable or natural rights outlined in Locke’s social contract such as the rights to life, liberty, and property (Locke). Because states are representative rather than unitary bodies, liberals stress the importance of individual accountability. For drone strikes in particular, individuals are forced to take accountability for the consequences of the strike, good or bad, from the level of politicians who order strikes and determine the targets down to the engineers and technicians who develop the drone technology.
Recent conversation surrounding drone strikes is the legality of the target selection process. Critics claim that the selection of targets is monopolized by heads of state. For example, “President Obama is directly overseeing a drones program that potentially violates a number of international legal norms” (Bachman). In this situation, the interests of the state are the direct interests of one individual or a specific group of experts rather than a representation of a larger subset within the state, leading to a lack of regulation within the target selection process because civilians do not have access to the decision making process. Liberals counteract this problem by classifying individuals rather than states as unitary actors (Russett) thereby removing the veil of state accountability behind which heads of states may hide. Instead, the head of state or individual experts must make decisions with the understanding that the consequences of their decisions will be directed at themselves rather than an institution.
The lack of transparency in drone warfare programs may lead to serious human rights issues in which individuals are denied their supposedly inalienable rights (Bachman). A common value within the United States is the right to a fair trial, however, drones immediately eliminate rather than capture targets, denying this basic right to life and trial. The United States does partake in the global institution of warfare in which killing occurs and trial is denied. Drone warfare, specifically with unmanned drones, creates more of a problem because of the lack of human interaction. The institution of warfare is changed from having men on the ground to impersonal strikes in which the offense does not have to look directly at another human face (Ross). In order to ensure accountability for the death of another human, individuals must be held responsible for the consequences of their actions, whether they are directly responsible for the strike, ordered a strike to occur, or developed the technology.
Additionally, even if drone strikes are justified in the elimination of direct terror threats, the lack of public information on the results of these strikes means that statistics including the number of civilians killed or otherwise harmed in the crossfire are not reported accurately or at all. Evidence for this claim is provided by the Pakistani government’s revision of their reported number of civilian casualties from a “covert C.I.A. campaign” (Walsh). Not only is the victim’s life taken away, but their identity is permanently altered as well because many victims are categorized as militants rather than civilians due to broad categorization and lack of careful investigation of targets.
Government transparency is key to the legitimate use of drones. Currently, information about how targets are selected and how strikes are carried out are classified as confidential, yet civilians of the world are aware that they occur. The lack of information being relayed to the public denies public scrutiny of these processes, both at the citizen level and at state-to-state levels. At the citizen level, the pre-political interests of individuals must be taken into account because states are ultimately representative of these interests (Moravcsik). At the state-to-state level, multilateral action is more effective than unilateral action, primarily because non-violent solutions and even cooperation may occur through institutional logic as a platform for communicative action and negotiations (Doyle). The United States is an example within the international community, and her use of drones without sufficient flow of information sets a precedent that justification is not necessary to carry out such violent strikes. This in turn will lead to the expansion of the use of drones or other impersonal killing methods by less stable states. That President Obama holds the roles of “judge, jury, and executioner” (Bachman) suggests that he functions more authoritatively than the promise of American democracy would intend, leading to authoritarian leaders in less stable states to follow the precedent he sets for unilateral action without necessary justification.
The American and international public requires more information from the officials who determine the use of drones. From where do these officials derive their legitimacy? Whose interests are being represented by these strikes? According to Moravscsik, government officials should derive their legitimacy from the aggregation of the interests of citizens because the state is a representative institution. In America, the promise of democracy suggests that these interests are of every citizen with the right to vote, however it seems that the interests in favor of drone warfare are derived more so from the firms selling drone technology and appointed “experts” on counterterrorism and impersonal tactics of war (Norton-Taylor). Slaughter argues, however, that the disaggregation of the state is a good and necessary process (Slaughter).
Through disaggregation of the state into its component parts, including these firms and supposed experts, decisions are made more expediently. Experts in the field of drone warfare, for example, may not be a representative group from which the interests of the state as a whole may be derived. However, these individuals have the most in depth education on the particular issues immediately at hand, namely drone usage, and are capable of making informed decisions more quickly and knowledgeably than if a state had to educate all citizens on an issue and then organize a general vote. It is still necessary, even with this efficiency, to provide information to the public about this process of decision making. The lack of transparency gives the appearance of illegitimacy, no matter the legitimacy and efficiency of the situation.
By maintaining the legitimacy of drone strikes, the United States will be able to utilize this perceived “know-how” to coerce other states into behaving in ways conducive to American policy. Liberals stress the importance of soft power– the use of diplomacy, legitimacy of policy, and careful negotiation– over the use of hard power, or force.
Liberals would argue that drone strikes should not be completed unilaterally but rather multilaterally through the use of international institutions with member states drawn to American policy by its legitimacy. This cooperation can be achieved by the use of persuasive authority and communicative action in which the American government presents trustworthy information and clearly reasoned arguments (Keohane and Martin) for the use of drones to other countries with the intent of persuading other states to adopt American policy over other options. A positive externality of this cooperation among states to use drones multilaterally may be either the legitimate use of drone warfare by many states as an institution or the elimination of the need for drones whatsoever. If states are able to come to mutually beneficial solutions to issues such as terrorist threats, diplomacy through iterated interactions in institutions may be used to overcome the issue instead of the need for force.
A major concern in the debate over drone warfare is whether states respect the institution of sovereignty when using such strikes. Sovereignty is a privilege allowed to any state so long as their citizens’ human rights are being respected (Friedan, Lake and Schultz). Drone attacks violate a state’s sovereignty by interfering in their ability to handle issues within their territorial boundaries. American justification for the use of drone strikes is humanitarian, claiming that the elimination of a target is intended to protect the safety and rights of American citizens and the citizens who may be at risk within the target country. Ironically, the very civilians supposedly being protected by a drone strike are often the very civilians who become victims to inaccurate target selection. Humanitarian intervention may simply be a façade for American strategic motivations aimed at eliminating threats to the dominance of American democratic and capitalist interests from states with alternative political, social, and economic make-ups.
Overall, institutionalization is the most effective solution to drone warfare, whose ethical and practical application is being questioned by the international system. By achieving the ultimate goal of creating a formal institution with the purpose of regulating drone usage, several key concerns of liberals would be ameliorated. An international organization would bolster increased communication and diplomacy among countries leading to multilateral or reduced use of drones; it would also increase the flow of credible information about the processes of selecting targets and carrying out attacks, increasing public confidence in the ethical nature of such impersonal attacks. The creation of an international institution would also create a network among technological experts from various countries, leading to more efficient determinations of the appropriate use and development of drones. The iterated interaction bolstered by such an organization would increase international confidence in drones and possibly lead to the end of the use of such military tactics.