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.
