Are Drone Strikes an Effective Counter-terrorism tool? (Essay Sample)

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Are Drone Strikes an Effective Counter-terrorism tool? Course: Intervention and Fragile State Name Institutional Affiliations Instructor Date Are drone strikes an effective counter-terrorism tool​‌‌‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‌‍‌‌‌‍‌​? According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Drones are categorized as part of the ‘Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’ –UAVs employed in military as objects which conduct strikes in targeted war areas. Drones are argued and touted to be the world’s best humane and precise weapons of war which informs the entire history of warfare (Drones: Moral and legal, 2017). Drone strikes probably inform the best the world has ever had in the technological advancement of launching accurate attacks. The use of the predator drones informed the intelligence of the aerial vehicles having showed the ability to spy, survey and relay accurate information of marked ground units and reveal the whereabouts of terrorists. The use of drones to reveal whereabouts of terrorists combatants has proven highly beneficial in that they help to cut off health risks, collection and relay of highly-detailed ground data, fast deployment, flexibility, collection of highly distributed data as well as little downtime. However history and literature shows that undercover drone strikes have an history of causing serious costs in the lives of local communities and civilians in areas where drone strikes have been before used for warfare. Following from a number of legal, ethical and strategic grounds, drone strikes have been challenged due to the fact that they have caused excessive civilian casualties. However the law which governs conduct of war requires military operations to comply to given standards where it has been a hard thing to determine whether given operations are in violations of those standards due to availability of inadequate information as pertaining to covert drone strikes (Plaw, Fricker & Williams, 2011). Such controversies bring in the validity of the current discussion as to whether drone-strikes offer a sense of effectiveness as counter terrorism tools. Therefore this paper argues out that drone-strikes are effective counter-terrorism tools in light of present literature. Much of the literature revealed in this discussion is converging to the centrality and the need for governments especially the U.S which heavily employs the technology of drone strikes to facilitate a means which ensures civilian protection whenever deploying the combatant vehicles. Figure: Predator drone As a way of bringing this discussion to perspective, it is important to look at the relationship between terrorism and fragile states. First according to Ines (2016) and Brock, et al. (2012), the fragility of states has been informed by the failure of that state to explore effectiveness in fostering a conducive environment of equitable economic growth, inability to establish and maintain political institutions which reflect legitimacy, accountability and transparency, lack of confidence in securing the state’s own populations from violent conflict while taking control of their own territory as well as failure to meet the known basic human demands for the entire population (Ines, 2016 & Brock et.al, 2012).While assuming this definition and for the sake of this discussion it is also in order to hypothesize that fragile states are in the likelihood of experiencing attacks from other states as homes of terrorists. According to (Plaw, Fricker & Williams, 2011), fragile states which have got a relatively strong human development and economic performance are in the higher index of likelihood of hosting the major terrorist groups as compared to even weaker states and thus the justification that there are quantifiable connections between the state of fragility of a given state and the existence of terrorism. Having said that therefore, it is important to note that, the informed development of modern warfare technology whose best are the drone strikes is a way of escalating combatants of the terrorists whose hideouts are such fragile states. For instance, the deployment of drone strikes in Pakistan by the U.S military could be reasonably argued in this discussion that Pakistan is among the world’s best fragile states with many unknown ailing issues inclusive of social inclusion. Now narrowing down to the theme of the paper, drone aircrafts are nice fit into the military strategy despite the having created what Leila, Colin & Matt (2011) refers to as the overlapping blowback. According to Leila, Colin & Matt (2011), drone warfare especially in the U.S has led to the creation of some blowbacks such as purposeful retaliations against the states where drone strikes attack, creation of insurgents known as the ‘accidental guerilla syndrome’, complication of U.S strategic interests and coordination in the Pakistan/Afghanistan theatre, more Pakistani destabilization and deteriorated Pakistani-U.S relation. Further in aggravation of the matter, history of drone strikes shows that the CIA has been responsible for the increased casualties among the civilians which are known to have resulted from the strikes of Reaper drone and Predator drone in combat of the Taliban terrorists in Pakistan (Stigler, n.d). However the argument of Plaw, Fricker & Williams (2011) shows that CIA is now in the verge of mitigating and putting the whole subject matter of civilian deaths and injuries under control bringing the numbers to almost insignificant. The legal concern from Pakistani government about the suffering of innocent civilians has been dismissed due to limited information concerning the violation of legal principles. It has further been argued out that the civilians who have been attacked by drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere should have reasonably foreseen planners of terrorist attacks and unleashed the information at their disposal. Information is now available regarding the sharpened accuracy of drones through impact tracking of CIA drone strikes. American database on drone strikes indicates that there is particularly a sharp drop in the approximated numbers of civilian casualties as between 2009 and 2010 (Aslam, 2011). The sharp drops in the fatalities regarding civilians by drone strikes indicates an enhanced way of drone surveillance and attacking accuracy a tenet which informs that drones can be effective in handling terrorism. Moreover, the major claims which inform the illegality and lethal use of drone strikes have been demystified through enhanced accuracy which has been informed by a number of justifications. First the U.S claims to manufacture drone crafts which are highly intelligent enhanced by further increasing the number of spies which U.S deploys in Pakistani tribal areas to get better information-on target. Besides, some reports acknowledge that U.S may have better combatting information obtained from bin Laden area which contributes to the enhanced accuracy of their drone strikes (Ceccoli & Bing, 2014). In addition, U.S is in deployment of new technology whose introduction is an improvement to how precise and accurate the drone strikes are able to launch accurate attacks on targeted enemy. Such technology has been informed by the use of what is known as the ‘Pathrai’ homing beacons- they are transmitter microchips used by the Pashtun tribesmen to spy the Taliban group. Finally, CIA is more careful on the deployment of any drone attacks which are likely to endanger the lives of civilians. The adoption of a more informed generation of drones known as the reaper drones now facilitates an effectual way to combat terrorists without harming civilians. The reaper drones are able to inform on life pattern movements and by intelligence separate innocent civilians from guilty terrorisms who are involved in such activities as training on the use of weapons within the terrorist camps, driving in bands and also transporting weapons and ammunitions (Drone strikes, 2018). These are inventions, discoveries and mechanisms by which the use of drone strikes can be verified to be quite an important tool in launching terrorists’ combatants. Having demystified the illegality of the use of drone strikes in the earlier discussion, I note that the air force in U.S and in other states of the world are in the process of evaluating the manner in which best to employ the drone strike technology into their war combating arsenals something which postulates that drone strikes are the way to go if nations have to be thorough in targeting counter-terrorist attacks. As an effective instrument of war, the drone is known to be highly adaptive and elusive which is also aggressive and pervasive in the way it launches effective attacks. In order for nations to be able to identify and eliminate terrorist threats, the drone offers excellence in the counter-terrorism mission through aggressively and intelligently striking targets (Ceccoli & Bing, 2014). Thus the capabilities of drone strikes are able to hinder the progression of terrorist plans by rescinding communication, eliciting fear and further destroying control and command. Since Counter-terrorism is one particulate area of foreign policy, air force should be able to use drone strikes to counter terrorism within terrorism stricken zones. The use of drone strikes as a strategy of warfare against terrorism could be justified further by the argument that counterterrorism is very different from counterinsurgency. Counterterrorism which is the focus of this analysis study is more focused on combating and dealing with the enemy while counterinsurgency deals with unifying hearts and minds so as to build solid institutions with a great focus on the populations but not the target enemy. Saying this I mean that in order to be effective in counterterrorism, a nation must employ intelligence in order to seek ou...