Drone strikes started out as spy planes and grew into assassination weapons. They have been central to Washington’s 15 year-long war on terror. They’ve hoovered up information, fulfilled the military’s insatiable demand for battlefield intelligence, and found and killed terrorists and insurgents. Their use exploded under President Obama, who ordered ten times more drone strikes than his predecessor. The drone war has now entered its second phase under the Trump administration, which is expanding CIA drone strikes outside of declared combat zones.
While American officials characterize these strikes as legitimate, they’re often indiscriminate and cause immense harm to civilians. They’re also a powerful tool that non-state actors are using to attack their opponents in both states and war zones.
This study examines how Americans and French citizens perceive different patterns of drone warfare as more or less legitimate. We find that Americans’ perceptions of legitimacy are shaped by how the strike is used, with multilateral constraint being preferred over unilateral constraint and invariant of whether a civilian is killed.
While scholars and policymakers debate the efficacy and appropriateness of drone strikes, we rarely take into account on-the-ground consequences of these attacks. This is a serious shortcoming of the current discussion that needs to be addressed if we are going to evaluate the merits of this tactic from a value-neutral perspective. The use of drones by both states and non-state actors is set to increase in the coming years, and it’s crucial that we understand its effects before deciding how best to respond.
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