Drones: Short-Term Gains, Long-Term Consequences

Posted: November 13th, 2016

By Sarah Kreps

Sarah Kreps is an Associate Professor in Cornell University's Department of Government. Her research focuses on issues of international security, particularly questions of conflict and cooperation, alliance politics, political economy, and nuclear proliferation. She is the author of three books, including, most recently, Drones: What Everyone Needs to Know. Before that, she published Drone Warfare (with John Kaag) and Coalitions of Convenience: United States Military Interventions after the Cold War. She served as an acquisitions and foreign area officer in the United States Air Force.

In October 2016, New York magazine published an exit interview with President Barack Obama who “chose five moments that, he believes, will have outsized historical impact.” One of those five “moments” was a drone strike carried out on September 30, 2011, which killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an al Qaeda terrorist who was also an American citizen. That he would include drones is not surprising given that they have already had an outsized impact even before he has left office.

Within his first year as President, President Obama had carried out as many counterterrorism strikes as President George W. Bush during his entire eight years in office. By the last year of his administration, President Obama had authorized north of 500 drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen despite having almost lamented three years earlier in a major speech at National Defense University that drones had become a “cure-all for counterterrorism.”

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