Reliance on drones for “targeted killing” has allowed the CIA and Pentagon to obscure exactly whom we are fighting. About the only thing the Obama administration has said on the subject is that it has aimed the drone program at “Al Qaeda and associated forces.” But, as the report notes, while U.S. targeters may exercise great care in their decisions, the drone attacks still look perilously like “a secret war, governed by secret law.”
Our drone policy could come back to haunt us once the U.S. loses its current near-monopoly in drone technology. China and Iran are already working on military drones, and Russia is unlikely to be far behind. If Vladimir Putin decided to use drones against anti-Russian militants in Ukraine, the report notes, “Russia could simply repeat the words used by U.S. officials defending U.S. targeted killings, asserting that it could not provide any evidence without disclosing sources and methods.”
The ease of using drones makes them seductively tempting to deploy. “The increasing use of lethal drones may create a slippery slope leading to continual or wider wars,” the panel warned. “[Drones] may lower the bar to enter a conflict, without increasing the likelihood of a satisfactory outcome.” Obama has assiduously avoided one slippery slope, the one that leads to putting U.S. troops on the ground, but he’s presided over the creation of another.
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