1,721,117 research outputs found
Jocelyn Wills. Tug of War: Surveillance Capitalism, Military Contracting, and the Rise of the Security State (Carleton Library Series, no. 242.)
No full textThe eagle comes home to roost: the historical origins of the CIA's lethal drone programme
No full textSince 2004, the CIA has been engaged in a covert campaign using remotely-operated drones to conduct targeted killings of suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region. The rapid escalation of this programme under the Obama administration has attracted the close attention of the media and of academic experts working in the foreign policy, defence and legal fields. However, while such attention has enhanced our understanding of the scale, effectiveness and legality of drone warfare, there has been little attempt to explain the origins of the programme and place it within wider US counterterrorism practice. This dissertation meets that need, making an original contribution to the study of American counterterrorism by tracing the historical origins of the programme back to a small but influential group of policy makers within the Reagan administration. The thesis reveals how a shared hardline vision of how best to deal with terrorists set in motion legal and technological developments which eventually culminated in the CIA’s drone programme three decades later.By identifying the parallels between the drone campaign and the demands of the hardliners within Reagan’s government, the thesis challenges the commonly held notion that the CIA’s entry into drone warfare marks an unprecedented escalation of US counterterrorism practices resulting from a post-9/11 mind-set. Instead it presents evidence that current US counterterrorism practice is the result of a gradual evolution over the past three decades. Rather than placing the focus upon the drones themselves, this historical review reveals that the CIA’s unmanned aircraft are simply the current tool which enables the United States to pursue the counterterrorism goal it has held for decades – the ability to unilaterally neutralize anti-American terrorists in safe havens around the world. The thesis reveals that the drone campaign should not be regarded as a product of post-9/11 policy, nor the result of the seductive nature of remote control warfare. Instead, the use of drones should be seen as the embodiment of America’s long-term counterterrorism goal
"A new departure": Britain's lethal drone policy and the range of justice
No full textIn Chapter 6 (Britain’s Lethal Drone Policy and the Range of Justice), Christopher Fuller follows Enemark in problematizing the assignment of drone violence to the war paradigm, shifting the discussion toward UK experience. The chapter specifically assesses Prime Minister David Cameron’s 2015 authorisation of the drone-based targeted killing of Reyaad Khan, a British citizen and member of Islamic State. This attack, in Syria, was the first known instance of a British drone being used lethally inside a country in which the UK is not involved in a war. Accordingly, Cameron described the strike as “a new departure” for the UK when revealing the government’s new drone policy and its adoption of the US government’s controversial interpretation of international law for ‘war on terror’ purposes. While never openly opposing the US decision to regard acts of terrorism and counterterrorism responses through a war paradigm, the British government had, until this strike, treated terrorism as a criminal activity, with responsibility for countering the threat falling to civilian security services. Fuller’s chapter provides an ethical assessment of the way in which the UK government has remained vague about the purpose of its post-2015 drone policy, the legal basis which underwrites it, the associated decision-making process, and the accountability mechanisms which exist for strikes. In the absence of a detailed memorandum on the UK government’s formal policy position, he explores the evolution of the UK’s armed drone fleet, ministers’ statements, and government policy documents in an effort to reveal the ethos which has driven the government’s adoption of lethal drones for counterterrorism. In doing so, Fuller argues that Britain’s drone policy is the product of a particular and morally problematic attitude toward sovereignty, borders, national security, and concepts of justice
War on Leakers: National Security and American Democracy, from Eugene V. Debs to Edward Snowden
No full textThe CIA drone program
No full textThis chapter challenges the common belief that lethal drones and the legalarchitecture which underwrites them emerged as a response to the September 11 attacks, instead tracing their origins back to covert CIA activities in the early 1980s. It reveals how legal restraints, technological challenges, and Cold War policies combined to enable a small group of counterterrorism hardliners within the Reagan administration and intelligence community to collaborate with private industry tocreate the technology and policies which would eventually come to fruition post-9/11
See It/Shoot It: The Secret History of the CIA's Lethal Drone Program
No full textThis eye-opening study uncovers the history of the most important instrument of U.S. counterterrorism today: the armed drone. It reveals that, contrary to popular belief, the CIA’s covert drone program is not a product of 9/11. Rather, it is the result of U.S. counterterrorism practices extending back to an influential group of policy makers in the Reagan administration. Tracing the evolution of counterterrorism policy and drone technology from the fallout of Iran-Contra and the CIA’s “Eagle Program” prototype in the mid-1980s to the emergence of al-Qaeda, Fuller shows how George W. Bush and Obama built upon or discarded strategies from the Reagan and Clinton eras as they responded to changes in the partisan environment, the perceived level of threat, and technological advances. Examining a range of counterterrorism strategies, he reveals why the CIA’s drones became the United States’ preferred tool for pursuing the decades-old goal of preemptively targeting anti-American terrorists around the world
The eagle comes home to roost: the historical origins of the CIA's lethal drone programme
No full textThe rapid escalation of the CIA's drone program under the Obama administration has attracted the close attention of the media and academic experts. While such attention has helped shine a light on the scale, effectiveness and legality of drone warfare, there has been little attempt to explain the origins of the program and place it within wider US counterterrorism practice. This article meets that need. Drawing upon executive orders, national security directives, documents from the CIA's archive, memoirs of key individuals and technical specifications of drones themselves, the article demonstrates how the current drone campaign has its origins in America's first clash with international terrorism, fought against state sponsors such as the late Colonel Gaddafi. As such, the article concludes that the Obama administration's approach, whilst unique in scale, actually marks a return to, rather than a departure from, counterterrorism methods developed in the decades preceding 9/11
Assassin in chief: Obama's drone legacy
No full textThis chapter considers how Barack Obama came to adopt drone warfare as the centrepiece if his counterterrorism policy, and discusses the legacy it leaves for both his presidency and that of his successors. It does this through the examination of three distinct aspects of America’s drone campaign: first, the counterterrorism legacy left by two terms of unmanned warfare. Second, the broad infrastructural legacy, specifically the physical network of bases and the costs associated with their maintenance. Third, the legal architecture which underwrites the drone programme, deliberating the constitutional implications this has for the presidency going forward. The chapter concludes by arguing that in the short term Obama’s legacy is the establishment of an Executive dangerously empowered with the seductive ability to undertake lethal actions in a seemingly cost-free manner across the globe, whilst in the longer term his tenure has dramatically lowered the political, legal and moral threshold for the United States to employ autonomous weapons in the future
- …
