The US drone strikes in Pakistan and the idea of great power responsibility

Keyword(s):  
The Us ◽  
Author(s):  
Asfandyar Mir ◽  
Dylan Moore

Abstract We investigate the impact of the US drone program in Pakistan on insurgent violence. Using details about US-Pakistan counterterrorism cooperation and geocoded violence data, we show that the program was associated with monthly reductions of around nine to thirteen insurgent attacks and fifty-one to eighty-six casualties in the area affected by the program. This change was sizable, as in the year before the program, the affected area experienced around twenty-one attacks and one hundred casualties per month. Additional quantitative and qualitative evidence suggests that this drop is attributable to the drone program. However, the damage caused in strikes during the program cannot fully account for the reduction. Instead, anticipatory effects induced by the program played a prominent role in subduing violence. These effects stemmed from the insurgents’ perception of the risk of being targeted in drone strikes; their efforts to avoid targeting severely compromised their movement and communication abilities, in addition to eroding within-group trust. These findings contrast with prominent perspectives on air-power, counterinsurgency, and US counterterrorism, suggesting select drone deployments can be an effective tool of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Biba

Abstract As the Sino-American Great Power competition continues to intensify, newly-elected US President Joe Biden's administration now seeks to enlist the support of its allies and partners around the world. As Europe's largest economy and a, if not the, leading voice within the European Union, Germany represents an important puzzle-piece for Biden. But Germany, at least under outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel, has been reluctant to take sides. It is against this backdrop that this article looks into Germany's past and present trilateral relationships with the US and China through the theoretical lens of the so-called strategic triangle approach. Applying this approach, the article seeks to trace and explain German behaviour, as well as to elucidate the opportunities and pitfalls that have come with it. The article demonstrates that Germany's recently gained position as a ‘pivot’ (two positive bilateral relationships) between the US and Chinese ‘wings’ (positive bilateral relations with Germany and negative bilateral relations with each other) is desirable from the perspective of the strategic triangle. At the same time, being pivot is also challenging and hard to maintain. Alternative options, such as entering a US–German ‘marriage’ directed against China, are also problematic. The article therefore concludes that Germany has tough decisions to take going forward.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 92-106
Author(s):  
Vitaly KOZYREV

The recent deterioration of US–China and US–Russia relations has stumbled the formation of a better world order in the 21st century. Washington’s concerns of the “great power realignment”, as well as its Manichean battle against China’s and Russia’s “illiberal regimes” have resulted in the activated alliance-building efforts between Beijing and Moscow, prompting the Biden administration to consider some wedging strategies. Despite their coordinated preparation to deter the US power, the Chinese and Russian leaderships seek to avert a conflict with Washington by diplomatic means, and the characteristic of their partnership is still leaving a “window of opportunity” for the United States to lever against the establishment of a formal Sino–Russian alliance.


Author(s):  
Jude Woodward

The Obama administration announced in 2010 that the US would make a strategic foreign policy turn towards Asia i.e. China. This chapter shows that the discussion on this policy in the US is framed by a shared perception that the rise of China presents an existential challenge to the US-led world order that has prevailed since 1945. Some see conflict as an inevitable consequence of Great Power politics; others allege conflict will be unavoidable because China has regional expansionist aspirations or because China is a revisionist power that does not accept the rules of the ‘pax Americana’. The Pentagon is developing military strategies in the case of conflict with China. This chapter demonstrates that wherever the argument, starts, whether from a neocon or liberal perspective, whether concerned about the US’s economic, military or strategic position, all arrive at the same conclusion: China must be brought into line.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Charlie Laderman

This introductory chapter outlines why the American response to the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians offers such critical insights into the US rise to world power, its evolving relationship with Britain, and the development of ideas on humanitarian intervention and global order at the turn of the twentieth century. It introduces the Armenian question, setting it within the larger Eastern question, and explains why the Ottoman Empire became a target for outside intervention by the European great powers in the nineteenth century. It explains why the United States, which had traditionally avoided political entanglement in the Near East even while its missionaries established an exceptional role there, began to take a greater interest in the region as its emergence as a great power coincided with the first large-scale Armenian massacres.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-139
Author(s):  
Akber Ali

Scholars in the arena of media and communication have paid attention to the news framing of the controversial US drone policy in the post 9/11 mainly from the Western media perspectives. Scant scholarly heed has been given to examine the media framing of the US drone strikes from the national media perspectives of the targeted countries. The current study attempts to build on the existing scholarship on US drone policy by exploring the news media framing in two elite national newspapers of Pakistan. Using inductive framing as methodological approach and qualitative analysis as methodology, the study analyzed the editorial discourse in the selected dailies on the US drones. The findings reveal that both the newspapers covered the drones using strikingly different frames. The Daily Times constructed the discourse on US drones using the efficacy frame predominantly- that the drones are effective and doing ‘good job’ against the militants. The Express Tribune framed the drones as violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and counterproductive. The discussion elaborates the possible factors for the differential framing of US drones in the two national dailies of Pakistan.


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