On Nov. 3, 2002, America began its campaign of targeted killings in nonbattlefield settings. After a year-long manhunt, a fusion of human intelligence assets and signals intercepts pinpointed Abu Ali al-Harithi, an operational planner in the al-Qaida cell that had bombed the USS Cole in 2002, driving in a Toyota SUV in Yemen, near the border with Saudi Arabia. A CIA-controlled Predator drone climbed into position, maneuvered its nose downward and fired a single Hellfire missile, which destroyed the SUV and killed al-Harithi, along with four other Yemenis and Ahmed Hijazi, a naturalized U.S. citizen and ringleader of an alleged terrorist sleeper cell in Lackawanna, New York. In the after-action video taken by the Predator, the only identifiable item was the SUV’s oil pan.
The strike against al-Harithi was intended to be a covert operation, defined by U.S. law as one where “the role of the United States government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.” Then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage later conceded, “The deniability was an important component of the mission.” In the immediate aftermath, Yemeni security officials floated semi-plausible cover stories: an accidental explosion or a careless smoker who dropped a burning cigarette near a propane tank. However, in the words of then-Ambassador to Yemen Edmund Hull, “Washington could not be discreet.” As vague leaks initially emerged, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, to appear on CNN, where Wolfowitz boasted of U.S. involvement in “a very successful tactical operation.”
Since America’s drone wars began 10 years ago, the Bush and Obama administrations have struggled to stage-manage public knowledge of such operations, maintaining the myth that the strikes are “covert,” while fighting off reasonable Freedom of Information Act requests and refusing to brief relevant congressional committees on the legal authority to kill U.S. citizens. At the same time, favored journalists have received off-the-record leaks by anonymous senior officials about the “precise” and “effective” nature of drone strikes. Despite both administrations’ best efforts, however, a great deal of information is available that describes U.S. policies on drone strikes — and much of it is troubling.
From September 2001 to April 2012, the U.S. drone arsenal exponentially increased from 50 unmanned aircraft to at least 6,300 (.pdf). Although fewer than 5 percent of the existing arsenal is equipped to drop bombs, the contrast with when the United States went to war in Afghanistan in December 2001 is striking: Back then, according to former CIA senior official Henry Crumpton, there were a total of two Predators, one armed and one unarmed. Of the nearly 400 nonbattlefield targeted killing attempts the U.S. has carried out since the attacks of Sept. 11, some have been conducted via AC-130 gunships, offshore sea- or air-launched cruise missiles and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) raids. But the primary weapons platform used for such operations has been drones.
The reason is not hard to understand. Armed drones have proved particularly effective at achieving the objective for which they were initially intended: killing suspected “high-value” al-Qaida leaders. In May 2009, then-Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta observed, “Very frankly, it’s the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al-Qaida leadership.” Panetta’s words neatly summarize the position of the Obama administration today. When President Barack Obama boasted in December 2011 that 22 out of al-Qaida’s 30 top leaders had been “taken off the battlefield,” he neglected to mention that all but one of the strikes were carried out via drone strikes. And in one of Osama bin Laden’s final letters to his followers before Navy SEALs descended on Abbottabad, he emphasized “the importance of the exit from Waziristan of the brother leaders . . . and that you choose distant locations to which to move them, away from aircraft photography and bombardment.” The cumulative effect of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen has significantly degraded al-Qaida’s capability to plan or conduct acts of international terrorism.
At the same time, of the estimated 3,000 individuals killed by drones, the vast majority were not leaders of al-Qaida or the Taliban, even if U.S. officials obviously promote the drone strikes that do kill members of “core” al-Qaida or people purported to have an operational role in active terrorist plots. The cause of the disparity is the practice of “signature strikes,” which President George W. Bush authorized in 2008. As first reported, “Instead of having to confirm the identity of a suspected militant leader before attacking, this shift allowed American operators to strike convoys of vehicles that bear the characteristics of al-Qaida or Taliban leaders on the run.” Obama reportedly lowered the signature strikes threshold further still, in effect counting “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials.”
Many aspects of the drone campaign remain invisible to U.S. diplomats, who in some cases oppose them. In countries where drone strikes occur, some State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development officials believe that the attacks overshadow and diminish the effectiveness of civilian assistance programs. In Pakistan, successive U.S. ambassadors objected to the intensity and timing of certain CIA drone strikes. Meanwhile, drone strikes often contradict stated nonmilitary foreign policy objectives. For example, at the international contact group for Somalia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated, “I know enough to say airstrikes would not be a good idea. And we have absolutely no reason to believe anyone, certainly not the United States, is considering that.” Within hours of her speech, however, a U.S. drone attacked a convoy in the Lower Shabelle region of Somalia, killing between four and seven suspected Islamic militants. An anonymous U.S. official later confirmed that the strike was carried out by a JSOC drone.
While they have killed known high-level al-Qaida officials, drone strikes may have also helped to create more lower-level militants or terrorists. Some Pakistanis and Yemenis have said that they joined al-Qaida-associated groups because of U.S. counterterrorism operations in their country. And both Faisal Shahzad, the failed Times Square bomber, and Najibullah Zazi, who pleaded guilty in a plot to bomb New York City subways, claimed to have been motivated in part by CIA drone strikes in Pakistan. Even the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter, admitted, “I certainly will not try to argue that some of our actions have not led to some people being radicalized. I think that’s a given.” Moreover, U.S. officials acknowledge that targeted killings do nothing to address the underlying factors associated with an increased risk that certain populations will join with insurgent or externally directed terrorist organizations.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, drone strikes are widely opposed by the citizens of important allies, emerging powers and the local populations in countries where strikes occur. For example, a recent survey polling countries around the world revealed overwhelming opposition in Greece (90 percent), Egypt (89 percent), Turkey (81 percent), Spain (76 percent), Brazil (76 percent), Japan (75 percent) and Pakistan (83 percent). The only country in which a majority approved of U.S. drone strikes is the United States (62 percent), although support had declined from a February poll, which found that 83 percent of Americans supported the use of drones “against terrorist suspects overseas.”
The nearly ubiquitous unpopularity of U.S. drone strikes stems, at least in part, from the fact that the United States is the only country, other than perhaps Israel, to use drones to attack the sovereign territory of other countries. And the status quo is unlikely to change in the near future. The United States remains the unrivaled leader in developing drone technology, projected to account for 62 percent of drone research (.pdf) and development spending and 55 percent of all procurement over the next decade.
Nevertheless, this near-monopoly will inevitably erode, as the advantages and effectiveness of drones in attacking hard-to-reach and time-sensitive targets are compelling many countries to explore purchasing or indigenously developing their own fleet. Estimates of countries with active drone programs range from 44 to 70, and roughly 680 drone development projects are currently being pursued around the world, a significant jump from 195 such programs in 2005.
The vast majority of all drones developed by other countries are used for government or civilian intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. And despite worst-case theories about the future of drone operations, few countries will have the complete system architecture — such as host-nation permission to base drones and associated launch and recovery personnel, nearby search-and-rescue forces and satellite bandwidth to transmit data — required to conduct distant drone strikes in the American style. The most likely candidates for drone strikes will be the countries that have a combination of three factors: the requisite industrial base to develop or purchase the technology; the military command-and-control capabilities needed to deploy armed drones; and crossborder adversaries who are currently targeted with attacks or the threat of attack by manned aircraft. In other words, don’t expect China to bomb Tibetan dissidents in Brooklyn, but don’t be surprised to eventually see headlines reporting drone strikes by Israel into Lebanon, Egypt or Syria; Russia into Georgia or Azerbaijan; Turkey into Iraq; Saudi Arabia into Yemen; North Korea into South Korea; Kenya into Somalia; or Sudan into South Sudan.
In the meantime, other countries will be keeping a close eye on how the U.S. chooses to use and defend drone strikes, something that the Obama administration is aware of. In a speech outlining the limits and principles for U.S. targeted killings, White House senior counterterrorism adviser John Brennan conceded, “We are establishing precedents that other nations may follow.” And despite efforts by successive administrations to hide the uglier aspects of such precedents — such as potentially targeting children, individuals attempting to rescue drone strike victims and the funeral processions of deceased militants — we know enough to be concerned about how others might eventually employ drones to target their adversaries. But the most dangerous precedent is the mistaken belief that the low-cost, targeted and ultimately impressive tactic of drone strikes is the long-term solution to any enduring political or security challenge.
Micah Zenko (@MicahZenko) is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He writes the blog Politics, Power, and Preventive Action, and is the author of “Between Threats and War: U.S. Discrete Military Operations in the Post-Cold War World.”
Photo: XM156 Class I UAV of the US Army (U.S. Army photo).