Laura A. Dickinson discusses the challenges and limitations of applying domestic and international legal frameworks, including jus ad bellum and international human rights law, as the US conducts over the horizon, unmanned aerial vehicle operations, while US officials provide conflicting statements on whether the US remains at war.
Dickinson examines Mitt Regan’s book Drone Strike: Analyzing the Impacts of Targeted Killing [see also Regan’s article in this volume] and discusses the book’s significance in gathering important data to understand the actual effectiveness of drones strikes in combating al Qaeda and associated groups and the impact of these drone strikes on civilians.
Dickinson then discusses why the national security community might go beyond that data and reconsider the international and domestic legal paradigms under which drone strikes occur. She argues that we need to do more than simply change our understanding of how drones and their impacts fit within the law of armed conflict but rather consider a broader paradigm shift.
By allowing the executive branch to skirt legal rules that might limit such extraterritorial uses of force, drones contribute to ongoing declarations of wars with no geographical loci and no temporal endpoints. Thus, Dickinson concludes that from the perspectives of international and domestic law, the ongoing use of drone strikes must be studied not only for its effects on the ground but also for its effects on the rule of law more generally.