Drone Strikes Decline

Drone Strikes on the decline?

It is becoming increasingly clear that president Hamid Karzai will not sign the US Afghan Bilateral Security agreement before presidential elections in April. This poses a major dilemma for the White House, which must decide whether to make contingency plans for a small residual force should afghan approval be forthcoming at a later date or plan a full withdrawal. But the implications run much deeper as to both the US ‘s legal rationale for its war on alQaeda and the US ‘s ability to carry out drone operation in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

If the White House is forced to commit to a total with drawl by the end of 2014, the US will  lose its last remaining zone of active hostilities in the war with alQaeda. In this way the legal rationale for drone strikes in Pakistan. Yemen and Somalia will be completely untethered from any traditional war theater. This bodes ill for the continued ability of the Obama administration to wage drone warfare without incurring massive reputational damage to the United States. Without good options elsewhere, US drone operations in the tribal areas will be seriously circumscribed, if not altogether curtailed.

The United States will use lethal force only against a target that poses a continuing imminent threat to US persons. In the absence of such a threat, the US will forgo the use of lethal force. However a leading human rights. Intended or not the switch in the operative language is cause for concern as US interests could be stretched indefinitely to render a much wider swath of individuals targetable for drone strikes. What is important, however is whether the administration adopts an expansive or narrow interpretation of its own policy guidelines. With such elastic concepts as imminence and US interests determining who is targetable, White House can opt to keep the US on permanent war footing long past the Iraq and Afghan Wars if it so chooses.

The legal advice included the striking conclusion that should a UK person share intelligence with the US with the knowledge that such intelligence could be used for a drone strike, that person might be criminally liable as an access story to murder under UK law. What effect it will have on intelligence cooperation is nuclear but the implications of business as usual have been rendered transparent. The White House can put forth dubious legal justifications for its drone operations, but that will  not prevent close allies from risking criminal liability should they continue to cooperate with United State.  

However US allies especially in Europe have long castigated the US for its global war on terror and parted ways with successive White Houses over the applicable legal framework.