Life In The Age Of Drone Warfare

This volume's contributors offer a new critical language through which to explore and assess the historical, juridical, geopolitical, and cultural dimensions of drone technology and warfare. They show how drones generate particular ways of visualizing the spaces and targets of war while acting as tools to exercise state power. Essays include discussions of the legal justifications of extrajudicial killings and how US drone strikes in the Horn of Africa impact life on the ground, as well as a personal narrative of a former drone operator. The contributors also explore drone warfare in relation to sovereignty, governance, and social difference; provide accounts of the relationships between drone technologies and modes of perception and mediation; and theorize drones’ relation to biopolitics, robotics, automation, and art. Interdisciplinary and timely, Life in the Age of Drone Warfare extends the critical study of drones while expanding the public discussion of one of our era's most ubiquitous instruments of war. Contributors. Peter Asaro, Brandon Wayne Bryant, Katherine Chandler, Jordan Crandall, Ricardo Dominguez, Derek Gregory, Inderpal Grewal, Lisa Hajjar, Caren Kaplan, Andrea Miller, Anjali Nath, Jeremy Packer, Lisa Parks, Joshua Reeves, Thomas Stubblefield, Madiha Tahir

"What impact will drone technology have on the patterns of war and peace in the next century? Will drones produce a more peaceful world because they reduce risk to pilots, or will the prospect of clean, remote warfare lead governments to engage in more conflicts? Will drones begin to replace humans on the battlefield or will they empower soldiers and peacekeepers to act more precisely and humanely in crisis zones? How will terrorist organizations turn this technology back on the governments that fight them? How will drones change surveillance at war - and at home? As drones come into the hands of new actors - foreign governments, law enforcement, terrorist organizations, humanitarian organizations and even UN peacekeepers, it is even more important to understand what kind of world they might produce. This book explores how the unique features of drone technology alter the strategic choices of governments and non-state actors alike by transforming their risk calculations and expanding their goals on and off the battlefield. By changing what these actors are willing and capable of doing, drones are quietly altering the dynamics of wars, humanitarian crises and peacekeeping missions while generating new risks to security and to privacy. An essential guide to a potentially disruptive force in modern world politics, The Drone Age argues that the mastery of drone technology will become central to the ways that governments and non-state actors seek power and influence in the coming decades."--

Drone Warfare is the first comprehensive analysis of one of the fastest growing—and most secretive—fronts in global conflict: the rise of robot warfare. In 2000, the Pentagon had fewer than fifty aerial drones; ten years later, it had a fleet of nearly 7,500, and the US Air Force now trains more drone “pilots” than bomber and fighter pilots combined. Drones are already a $5 billion business in the US alone. The human cost? Drone strikes have killed more than 200 children alone in Pakistan and Yemen. CODEPINK and Global Exchange cofounder Medea Benjamin provides the first extensive analysis of who is producing the drones, where they are being used, who controls these unmanned planes, and what are the legal and moral implications of their use. In vivid, readable style, this book also looks at what activists, lawyers, and scientists across the globe are doing to ground these weapons. Benjamin argues that the assassinations we are carrying out from the air will come back to haunt us when others start doing the same thing—to us.

Combat drones are transforming attitudes about the use of military force. Military casualties and the costs of conflict sap public support for war and for political and military leaders. Combat drones offer an unprecedented ability to reduce these costs by increasing accuracy, reducing the risks to civilians, and protecting military personnel from harm. These advantages should make drone strikes more popular than operations involving ground troops. Yet many critics believe drone warfare will make political leaders too willing to authorize wars, weakening constraints on the use of force. Because combat drones are relatively new, these arguments have been based on anecdotes, a handful of public opinion polls, or theoretical speculation. Drones and Support for the Use of Force uses experimental research to analyze the effects of combat drones on Americans’ support for the use of force. The authors’ findings—that drones have had important but nuanced effects on support for the use of force—have implications for democratic control of military action and civil-military relations and provide insight into how the proliferation of military technologies influences foreign policy.

Considers how people have confronted, challenged, and resisted remote warfare Drone warfare is now a routine, if not predominant, aspect of military engagement. Although this method of delivering violence at a distance has been a part of military arsenals for two decades, scholarly debate on remote warfare writ large has remained stuck in tired debates about practicality, efficacy, and ethics. Remote Warfare broadens the conversation, interrogating the cultural and political dimensions of distant warfare and examining how various stakeholders have responded to the reality of state-sponsored remote violence. The essays here represent a panoply of viewpoints, revealing overlooked histories of remoteness, novel methodologies, and new intellectual challenges. From the story arc of Homeland to redefining the idea of a “warrior,” these thirteen pieces consider the new nature of surveillance, similarities between killing with drones and gaming, literature written by veterans, and much more. Timely and provocative, Remote Warfare makes significant and lasting contributions to our understanding of drones and the cultural forces that shape and sustain them. Contributors: Syed Irfan Ashraf, U of Peshawar, Pakistan; Jens Borrebye Bjering, U of Southern Denmark; Annika Brunck, U of Tübingen; David A. Buchanan, U.S. Air Force Academy; Owen Coggins, Open U; Andreas Immanuel Graae, U of Southern Denmark; Brittany Hirth, Dickinson State U; Tim Jelfs, U of Groningen; Ann-Katrine S. Nielsen, Aarhus U; Nike Nivar Ortiz, U of Southern California; Michael Richardson, U of New South Wales; Kristin Shamas, U of Oklahoma; Sajdeep Soomal; Michael Zeitlin, U of British Columbia.

With Obama's election to the presidency in 2008, many believed the United States had entered a new era: Obama came into office with high expectations that he would end the war in Iraq and initiate a new foreign policy that would reestablish American values and the United States' leadership role in the world. In this shattering new assessment, historian Lloyd C. Gardner argues that, despite cosmetic changes, Obama has simply built on the expanding power base of presidential power that reaches back across decades and through multiple administrations. The new president ended the “enhanced interrogation” policy of the Bush administration but did not abandon the concept of preemption. Obama withdrew from Iraq but has institutionalized drone warfare—including the White House's central role in selecting targets. What has come into view, Gardner argues, is the new face of American presidential power: high–tech, secretive, global, and lethal. Killing Machine skillfully narrates the drawdown in Iraq, the counterinsurgency warfare in Afghanistan, the rise of the use of drones, and targeted assassinations from al-Awlaki to Bin Laden—drawing from the words of key players in these actions as well as their major public critics. With unparalleled historical perspective, Gardner's book is the new touchstone for understanding not only the Obama administration but the American presidency itself.

This book documents the political ecosystem that legitimized violent military action against military-age males in US military operations after September 11, 2001. It first introduces the military-age male as a category used to identify insurgent combatants who have blended into civilian environments. Though US officials maintained that military-age males were not automatically assumed to be combatants, defense and intelligence professionals nevertheless used biases related to gender, age, religion and race to interpret the battlespace. Based on an analysis of the Obama administration’s decision to exclude adolescent boys and men from drone warfare’s collateral damage count, and an examination of similar problems with combatant identification under the Bush administration, the author argues that the military-age male category contributed to the deterioration of civilian protection. The concluding chapters discusses the link between counterinsurgency, drone warfare, and emerging trends in artificial intelligence and autonomy in weapons systems, highlighting the relation between algorithmic discrimination and the misidentification of civilians as combatants.

Drone Warfare and Lawfare in a Post-Heroic Age posits a framework for the scholarly community, policy makers, and lay readers for understanding the legal and military aspects of drone warfare.