5 July 2014

Drone Debate Highlights Obsolescence Of U.S. Strategic Concepts

by Fortuna's Corner · 
July 3, 2014 ·
Drone Debate Highlights Obsolescence of U.S. Strategic Concepts 
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Last week, the Stimson Center, an important Washington think tank that studies global security, released a major report on U.S. drone policy. This was noteworthy both because the topic is such a hot one and because of the stellar cast involved. The task force that produced the report was led by retired Gen. John Abizaid, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, and Georgetown University law professor Rosa Brooks, who recently served as counselor to the undersecretary of defense for policy. The other task force members also brought deep and wide-ranging experience in the military, security policymaking, law enforcement and intelligence.

As could be expected from a group like this, the report was serious and thoughtful, capturing the current debate about the use of drones and the central role they play in American national security strategy. But years from now what may stand out is less what the report explicitly says than what it implicitly reveals: The United States continues to grapple with the 21st-century security environment using concepts and ideas from an earlier and long-gone time. The report reflects a body of ideas about security-an orthodoxy-with declining effectiveness and relevance.

This orthodoxy begins with the idea that sovereign nation-states are the central participants in security. This system operates on norms and rules made by nation-states, whether formal or informal. Formal rules, codified in international law and treaties, are particularly important. The orthodoxy assumes a clear distinction between war and peace, with different rules of acceptable behavior for the two conditions. Wars are won by destroying the armed forces and war-making capacity of enemy states. Because war became so terrible with industrialization and the invention of nuclear weapons, intense effort was devoted to deterring or preventing it. If prevention failed, wars should be limited if possible. And because war is so horrible, the American political system set the bar high for going to war by making sure that Congress agreed that it was necessary.

This orthodoxy imbues the Stimson Center’s drone report. “The availability of lethal UAV technologies,” its authors write, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles, “has enabled U.S. policies that likely would not have been adopted in the absence of UAVs. In particular, UAVs have enabled the United States to engage in the cross-border use of lethal force against targeted individuals in an unprecedented and expanding way.” This is in part because drones make the use of force politically easier and thus more likely.

“The increasing use of lethal UAVs may create a slippery slope leading to continual or wider wars,” the report adds. “The seemingly low-risk and low-cost missions enabled by UAV technologies may encourage the United States to fly such missions more often, pursuing targets with UAVs that would be deemed not worth pursuing if manned aircraft or special operations forces had to be put at risk.”

The report’s authors expressed concern that the U.S. government “takes the view that it has a legal right to use force in the territories of foreign sovereign states when those states are ‘unwilling or unable’ to take what the United States considers appropriate action to eliminate what it sees as imminent threats.” They worry that if the United States does this, other nations may as well. America, in other words, sets the norm for state behavior. The report warns that, “Because UAV strikes do not require placing U.S. troops into combat situations-and because such strikes may be sporadic-the administration has asserted that it is not required to notify the full Congress of targeted strikes or seek congressional authorization,” thus bypassing constitutional checks and balances on the use of military force.

Again, this way of thinking is certainly within the mainstream. But the question is whether traditional concepts should hold sway in the modern world. Is mainstream thinking adequate for the 21st-century security system?

As the report states, “Evidence suggests that the broader strategic struggle against terrorist entities is not succeeding.” That is true mostly because the United States approaches the struggle using old conceptualizations of war and victory. The main source of instability today is not states but nonstate groups that do not participate in making the rules of the global security system. Conflicts cannot be quarantined or limited, but have cascading effects across regions. Threats are fluid in form and location, fading out in one place and re-emerging elsewhere. There are no formal, lasting peace agreements. Since no state or combination of states can be strong and effective everywhere, there are always pockets of weakness that violent nonstate groups can exploit. And there are always dark networks and black markets they can exploit to gain needed resources, whether arms, money, information or something else. Threats like this are not defeated or eradicated through military campaigns or old-fashioned wars. They are only managed.

This leads directly back to the new drone report and, in the broader sense, to the orthodoxy that the report represents. In the old global security system there were distinct period of war and peace. Hence concepts like deterrence, sovereignty, law-based norms and checks and balances on the use of force made sense. But there is no indication that world will return. In the current environment, a strategy based on multitiered disruption of threats wherever they emerge and the building of resilient communities that can manage and adapt to threats is the only one that makes sense. The technology matters much less than the concepts.

The new Stimson Center drone report is important. In the short term, its recommendations merit serious consideration and adoption. But it also shows that Americans badly need to move beyond the orthodoxy and re-examine basic concepts related to security. Now is the time for big ideas and new thinking rather than simply tweaks.

Steven Metz is a defense analyst and the author of “Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy.” His weekly WPR column, Strategic Horizons, appears every Wednesday. You can follow him on Twitter @steven_metz.

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