Search: drones

...“to control access to its airspace,” Deeks and Anderson argue that “there is no black letter law on the question” of whether states may shoot down drones or other aircraft that enter their airspace without consent. Instead, they base their conclusion on examples of state practice that confirm that it is “lawful for a territorial state to shoot down a drone that enters its airspace.” In an equally insightful piece on Just Security, Michael Schmitt discussed the legality of both Iran’s actions and the possible American responses. Schmitt argued that...

Not surprisingly, drone strikes that kill American citizens have received the most attention in the press. So it’s important to emphasize that the US kills citizens of its allies, as well, such as the two Australians recently vaporized in Yemen: TWO Australian citizens have been killed in a US airstrike in Yemen in what is the first known example of Australian extremists dying as a result of Washington’s highly controversial use of predator drones. The Australian has been told the two men, believed to be in their 20s, were killed...

...peace talks with the FARC rebels, set to take place in Norway next month, and then in Cuba. With all the criticism surrounding the use of drones these days, Foreign Policy presents a piece discussing what’s not wrong with drones. In an interview, Russian President Putin has indicated that his stance on Syria remains unchanged. He was also critical of Mitt Romney’s foreign policy, but hopes that a re-election of Barack Obama could bring an end to the missile defence dispute. For the second day in a row, Israeli forces...

...uncontested information demonstrates that drone strikes in Pakistan are now launched exclusively from either Jalalabad Air Base and/or Kandahar Airbase in Afghanistan, which has been a State Party to the Rome Statute since 10 February 2003 . Until 2011, the drones carrying out the strikes in Pakistan were launched from both Jalalabad Air Base in Afghanistan and Shamsi Air Base in Pakistan. US Air Force and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) personnel on the ground in both of these locations would handle the launch and recovery phase of the drone’s flight...

...in the role of our justice system in the fight against terrorism, I have long known the extraordinarily small chance of bin Ladin being found, captured, subdued, transported, and tried in a court of law. But it was America’s obligation to attempt this—something that could not be accomplished with drones. Pakistani leaders have praised the operation. We can conclude that they have waived any objection to the fact the U.S. conducted the operation without their knowledge. Having shown that we can pursue wanted terrorists through law enforcement rules, it is...

...international law, means that there is less ability to speak as between traditions and communities. It’s not completely incoherent, of course. Still, when it comes to large, contested and yet specific issues in my own work in international law these days – the law governing targeted killing and drones, for example, or the legality of covert uses of force as such – I find that the legal answers turn fundamentally on one’s starting points, the really deep fundamentals, the church at which one worships among the sects of the law...

...questions assert — and assume — that drone strikes in Pakistan target “leaders of extremist groups.” But that is almost certainly not the case. Here, for example, is what the Stanford/NYU “Living Under Drones” report says: National security analysts—and the White House itself— have found that the vast majority of those killed in drone strikes in Pakistan have been low-level alleged militants. Based on conversations with unnamed US officials, a Reuters journalist reported in 2010 that of the 500 “militants” the CIA believed it had killed since 2008, only 14...

...conflict – energy by people like you and me, if you like human rights lawyers or IHL lawyers, could be more effectively deployed in challenging the resort to war in the first place. In other words human rights lawyers should have spent more time challenging the US presence in Afghanistan and Iraq and the resort to drones there and elsewhere, and he’s making that point quite forcefully and he’s obviously had a reaction to it. And there is a second thing he’s doing with this argument, he is saying that...

The European Parliament has just overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the use of armed drones. I’ll leave it to others to do the hard work of analyzing the resolution, but I couldn’t let this paragraph pass without a mention (emphasis mine): E. whereas drone strikes outside a declared war by a state on the territory of another state without the consent of the latter or of the UN Security Council constitute a violation of international law and of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of that country. The last time a...

...program would destabilize the Pakistani government itself. Some people questioned whether, given the killing of Bin Laden, whether the whole program could be scaled back or even ended. These concerns resulted in a high level review of the two drone programs conducted by the CIA in Pakistan. Notably, the administration remains as firmly and strongly committed to drones and targeted killing as key elements in national counterterrorism policy as it has ever been, if not more so — in Pakistan and elsewhere. Moreover, although greater mechanisms of consultation have been...

...Guantanamo has and will continue to result in the need to send detainees to countries with far less humane facilities. Critics from the right, like Jack Goldsmith, suggest that the need to use prisons in Somalia and other countries to detain suspected terrorists means there probably is a policy tradeoff between using drones (Obama’s preferred approach) vs. detentions (Bush). This is likely to eventually evolve into a Romney talking point, even though it will likely be small one and unimportant one. As Jamie Kirchick points out here, the real political...

In various posts on OJ about Predator drones, targeted killing, and such topics, I’ve made reference to a book chapter I’ve been drafting for Benjamin Wittes’s forthcoming edited volume of policy essays, Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform (Brookings Institution Press 2009). I’m pleased to say that my chapter, Targeted Killing in US Counterterrorism Strategy and Law, has been posted up at the Brookings site, as a working paper along with the other working papers that come out in the book. Shameless self promotion; apologies – but...