Note: This piece originally appeared at Lawfare.

Many analysts, practitioners, and scholars are skeptical of the efficacy of drone strikes for counterterrorism, suggesting that they provide short-term gains at best and are counterproductive at worst. However, despite how widespread these views are, reliable evidence on the consequences of drone strikes remains limited. My research on drone warfare and U.S. counterterrorism—some of which was recently published in International Security—addresses this issue by examining the U.S. drone war in Pakistan from 2004 to 2014. Contrary to the skeptics, I find that drone strikes in Pakistan were effective in degrading the targeted armed groups. And, troublingly, they succeeded in doing so even though they harmed civilians.

Three Key Findings

I have conducted research in Pakistan and the United States over the last few years, gathering new qualitative data on the politics of the war and its effects on the two main targets, al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban. I have also evaluated detailed quantitative data on drone strikes and violence by al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban. This research offers three important findings.

First, the U.S. drone war was damaging for the organizational trajectories of al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban. I found that after the United States surged its surveillance and targeting capabilities in 2008, both groups suffered increasing setbacks; they lost bases, their operational capabilities were reduced, their ranks were checked by growing numbers of desertions, and the organizations fractured politically. These effects appear to have persisted until 2014. In a related paper, my University of Michigan colleague Dylan Moore and I show that during the drone program in the Waziristan region, violence by the two groups fell substantially.

Second, the U.S. drone war disrupted al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban not just by killing their leaders and specialized rank-and-file members, but also by heightening the perceived risk of being targeted. Across a variety of empirical materials, including some collected through fieldwork, I found that both groups were direly constrained by the fear—a constant sense of anticipation—of drone strikes, which crippled routine movement and communication. In addition, leaders and rank-and-file jihadis regularly viewed each other with the suspicion of being spies for the drone program, which contributed to their organizational fragmentation.

Third, the notion of increased recruitment for al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban due to civilian harm in drone strikes is questionable. In the local battlefield, I did not find evidence of any tangible increase in recruitment. Interviews with some surviving mid-level members of al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban negated the impression that the groups benefited from a stream of angry recruits. Instead, a recurring theme was that they experienced desertions and manpower shortages because of the stress of operating under drones. To the extent that new recruits were available, both groups struggled to integrate them in their organizations because of the fear that they might be spies for the drone program.

Beyond Pakistan?

The U.S. drone war in Pakistan is a crucial case of U.S. counterterrorism policy, but it is one of many other campaigns. The U.S. government is waging such campaigns in Yemen and Somalia, and considering an expansion in the Sahara. In my work, I identify two factors which are important for the dynamics evident in Pakistan to hold generally.

First, the United States must have extensive knowledge of the civilian population where the armed group is based. The counterterrorism force needs such knowledge to generate intelligence leads on their targets, who are often hiding within the civilian population. This comes from detailed population data sharing by local partners, large-scale communication interception, and pattern-of-life analysis of target regions from sophisticated drones.

Second, the United States must be able to exploit available intelligence leads in a timely manner. As members of targeted armed groups consistently try to escape detection, most intelligence has a limited shelf life. The capability to act quickly depends on the bureaucratic capacity to process intelligence, decentralized decision-making for targeting, and rapid-strike capabilities like armed drones.

In Pakistan, the United States met these criteria with an abundance of technology and high-quality local partner cooperation. Starting in 2008, the United States mobilized a large fleet of drones and surveillance technologies to develop granular knowledge of the civilian population in the targeted regions. Despite deep political rifts on the conflict in Afghanistan, the Central Intelligence Agency obtained extensive covert support from Pakistani intelligence against al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban, which enabled it to regularly locate targets. With ample targeting authority and armed drones operating from nearby bases, U.S. forces were able to exploit available leads.

In Yemen, however, the United States has struggled to develop knowledge of the civilian population and act on available intelligence. My interviews with U.S. officials and a leaked government document suggest that, until 2013, U.S. forces did not sustain aerial surveillance of targeted regions, the Yemeni state’s capacity in support of operations remained poor, and the targeting rules were stringent.

Implications for U.S. Counterterrorism Policy

The U.S. government’s preference for drone strikes is motivated by the desire to prevent attacks against the American homeland. My research suggests that the drone program has the potential to inflict enough damage on the targeted armed groups to upset their ability to plot and organize attacks in the United States.

The United States also deploys drone strikes to manage jihadi threats to allied regimes. In such cases, the political value of strikes depends, in part, on the capability of the local partner. An effective drone deployment can go a long way in providing a necessary condition for restoring order. But the local partner must ultimately step up to consolidate state control.

For example, President Obama’s drone policy degraded al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban, securing the American homeland and substantially reducing the threat to the nuclear-armed Pakistani state. The Obama administration’s policy was sufficient because the Pakistani state was relatively capable and could build on the gains made by U.S. counterterrorism strikes. Indeed, Pakistan’s ground operations, although contentiously timed, consolidated those gains.

In contrast, in today’s Afghanistan, the U.S. government cannot rely on instruments of counterterrorism alone. U.S. officials realize that just degrading the Afghan Taliban and the Islamic State is unlikely to stabilize the country. The Afghan government remains so weak that it will struggle to consolidate territorial control even after substantial degradation of its armed foes.

Finally, a key limitation of counterterrorism strikes is that they cannot alleviate the ideological appeal of jihadi actors like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Strikes cannot substitute for efforts at countering online jihadi propaganda and de-radicalization. Thus, they should not be seen as a silver bullet that can defeat armed groups operating from safe havens and weak states.

Civilian Protection and Drone Strikes

Civilian harm in U.S. counterterrorism remains a vital challenge. While moral objections to civilian casualties are a powerful reason to reconsider drone operations, my research suggests that strategic concerns, like a surge in local violence or increased recruitment of targeted organizations, are not. In Pakistan, for example, drone strikes harmed civilians while also undermining al-Qaeda and Pakistan Taliban. Similarly, the U.S.-led counter-ISIL campaign in Iraq and Syria was very difficult for the civilian population, and yet also inflicted losses on the Islamic State.

If civilian casualties do not affect the strategic outcomes of counterterrorism campaigns, then the U.S. government must be convinced to protect civilians for purely moral reasons. How responsive might the U.S. government be to such appeals? It is unclear. The Obama administration was not transparent about the use of drone strikes. Under President Trump, the lack of transparency has worsened. Concerned policymakers and human rights activists must continue to push the U.S. government to be more transparent and to protect civilians caught up in counterterrorism campaigns.

Donald Trump did not have to withdraw from the INF Treaty. But now that he has set the wheels in motion, what does that mean for America's national security? Steven Pifer, William  J. Perry Fellow at CISAC, explores this question in this piece, which originally appeared in The National Interest.

President Donald Trump announced at a campaign rally on October 20 that the United States would withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. During his October 22–23 visit to Moscow, National Security Advisor John Bolton confirmed that the president intended to withdraw from the treaty.

Keeping the treaty in place presumably would require that Trump change his mind, which at a minimum would require that the Kremlin agree to take corrective action to come back into compliance. That’s not going to happen.

The treaty was already on life support. Trump is pulling the plug, and the United States will exit the agreement six months after it gives formal notification. Russia bears primary responsibility for the treaty’s demise, but both Europe and the United States could have done more to try to save it.

The INF Treaty

Soviet deployment of SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the mid-1970s gave rise to concern in Europe about a gap between U.S. and Soviet INF capabilities. In 1979, NATO adopted the “dual-track” decision: the Alliance agreed to deploy U.S. intermediate-range missiles in Europe while the United States sought to negotiate limits on such missiles with the Soviets.

Early rounds of the INF negotiations yielded little progress. The Soviets walked out in 1983 after the first U.S. missiles arrived in Britain and West Germany. The talks resumed in 1985. This time, they produced agreement. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the INF Treaty in December 1987.

The INF Treaty banned all U.S. and Soviet land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. It entered into force in summer 1988. Three years later, the United States and Soviet Union had destroyed almost 2,700 missiles as well as their launchers, all under the most intrusive verification measures ever agreed, including on-site inspections. It was rightly called a landmark agreement.

Moscow’s Responsibility

Moscow appeared satisfied with the treaty’s performance up until the early 2000s. Senior Russian officials then began to express concern that, while the United States and Russia could not have intermediate-range missiles, third countries could. (The exceptions were Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, which, like Russia, remained party to the INF Treaty after the Soviet Union’s collapse.)

Third countries such as South Korea, North Korea, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel have developed and deployed intermediate-range missiles, with China producing hundreds. Each of these countries is geographically much closer to Russia than it is to the United States.

So one can understand the Russian concern . . . up to a point. Moscow today has a large and improving military in addition to fifteen times as many nuclear weapons as any country other than the United States. It does not need to match third countries in intermediate-range missiles.

Even if the Kremlin leadership found the situation intolerable, it had an honest way forward. It could have invoked Article XV of the INF Treaty, which allows a party to withdraw with six months notice.

Moscow, however, choose a different path. It developed and deployed a land-based cruise missile of intermediate-range, identified in 2017 as the 9M729 (NATO designator: SSC-8). That violated the treaty’s central provision. When the U.S. government charged that Russia had committed a violation, the Russians stubbornly denied those allegation and accused the United States of three treaty violations (one Russian charge, involving the Aegis Ashore missile defense site in Romania may have some merit, but the other two have no basis).

Moscow professed fidelity to the treaty, in effect laying a trap into which Trump has now clumsily stumbled. By announcing the U.S. intention to withdraw, he has set in motion a train that will leave Washington and be seen as responsible for killing the treaty. In addition, withdrawal from the treaty will allow the Russians to deploy land-based intermediate-range missiles without constraint, missiles for which the U.S. military currently has no land-based counterpart. It will be a win-win for Moscow.

Europe’s Silence

Russia thus bears the major blame for the treaty’s demise: it cheated. But U.S. allies in Europe and Washington itself could have taken more robust measures to steer Moscow back toward compliance and perhaps save the agreement.

U.S. officials first briefed their NATO counterparts about the Russian violation in 2014. From the public evidence, however, the leaders of NATO European members had little concern about that violation. None of them publicly complained about the treaty violation during or after their exchanges with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Nothing suggests that European leaders raised the violation in private either. In spring 2017, after Russia had begun deploying the 9M729, I asked a senior official of a major European ally if his leader would raise the violation when meeting with Putin a week later. He said no with a shrug.

That silence sent a message—unintended, but a message nevertheless—to the Russians: Europeans didn’t worry much about the treaty violation or the 9M729.

Some analysts point to the concern expressed in NATO communiqués. That does not absolve European leaders from not speaking out individually about the Russian violation. Moreover, take take a look at the communiqué language.

In the September 2014 summit communiqué, two months after the U.S. government charged Russia with violating the treaty, NATO leaders said that “it is of paramount importance that disarmament and non-proliferation commitments under existing treaties are honored, including the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which is a crucial element of Euro- Atlantic security. In that regard, Allies call on Russia to preserve the viability of the INF Treaty through ensuring full and verifiable compliance.”

The communiqué from the last NATO summit in July 2018 had tougher language: “Full compliance with the INF Treaty is essential. . . . Allies have identified a Russian missile system, the 9M729, which raises serious concerns. . . . A pattern of behavior and information over many years has led to widespread doubts about Russian compliance. Allies believe that,

in the absence of any credible answer from Russia on this new missile, the most plausible assessment would be that Russia is in violation of the treaty. NATO urges Russia to address these concerns in a substantial and transparent way, and actively engage in a technical dialogue with the United States.”

That language was better, but it hardly amounted to a robust denunciation, and it was buried in paragraph forty-six of a seventy-nine-paragraph communiqué.

Although the INF Treaty applied limits globally, it focused on Europe. European leaders should have pressed Putin hard on the violation, publicly condemned it, and raised political heat on the Kremlin. Their silence contrasts oddly with the public criticism of Trump’s decision voiced in Berlin, Rome and Paris and undermines the credibility of pleas for Washington to remain in the treaty. To put it bluntly, if they didn’t care enough to call out the Russian violation, then why care so much if the United States leaves the treaty?

An Ineffective U.S. Response

The U.S. response to the Russian violation could—and should—have been more forceful. The Obama administration sought to bring Moscow back into compliance, a worthy goal, but it applied little real pressure. Washington convened a meeting of the Special Verification Commission, the body established by the INF Treaty to address, among other things, compliance, only in November 2016—two years after charging a violation.

Pentagon officials described a range of military responses, including efforts to develop better defenses against cruise missiles, the European Reassurance Initiative to boost the U.S. military presence in Central Europe and the Baltics, and investments in new technologies to offset the Russian violation. These measures, however, were largely actions that the Pentagon would take in any case and which would continue even if Moscow corrected its violation. They did not create much incentive for a change in Russian policy.

The Trump administration stated on December 8, 2017—the thirtieth anniversary of the signing of the INF Treaty—that it also wanted to bring Russia back into compliance. It announced a three-pronged “integrated strategy” to do so: diplomatic steps, including

convening the Special Verification Commission, creating a military research and development program for a U.S. land-based intermediate-range missile, and enforcing economic sanctions on Russian entities that had been involved in development and production of the 9M729.

This strategy showed no success. The Special Verification Commission met, but by his own admission, Trump has never discussed the violation directly with Putin. The U.S. government either made no effort to stoke up approaches by Allied leaders to the Kremlin or, if it did, then that effort fizzled. Why didn’t U.S. officials use the threat of withdrawal with Allies to persuade them to engage Moscow more earnestly and at the highest level?

As for military steps, research and development on a U.S. intermediate-range missile likely caused little concern for the Russians. Fielding a missile would take years and cost a lot of money, money that the Pentagon does not have. The Russians, moreover, surely understand that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for NATO to reach a consensus on deploying new missiles in Europe. Recalling the huge anti-nuclear protests in Germany, the Netherlands and other countries in the early 1980s, some in the Kremlin might well welcome the intra-Alliance turmoil if NATO were to consider new deployments.

Pentagon officials suggested that the plan to build a new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM) could be suspended if Russia came back into compliance. That probably did not have much effect on Moscow’s calculations, especially if Russian officials read the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, which laid down additional conditions: “If Russia returns to compliance with its arms control obligations, reduces its non-strategic nuclear arsenal, and corrects other [unspecified] destabilizing behaviors, the United States may reconsider the pursuit of a SLCM.”

Washington could have adopted a more robust military response. The U.S. military could have moved conventionally-armed Joint Air-to-Surface Strike Missiles (JASSMs) to Europe along with B-1 bombers to serve as delivery platforms. It could have increased the number of conventionally-armed SLCMs in European waters, for example, by sending the USS Florida, a converted ballistic missile submarine that can now carry up to 154 SLCMs, on a cruise in the North and Norwegian Seas, with port calls to let everyone know it was there. Such steps could

have been done quickly with existing capabilities, would have fully complied with U.S. treaty obligations, and would have caught the attention of the Russian military.

The U.S. government also could have treated with greater seriousness the Russian charge that the Aegis Ashore deployment in Romania of an Mk-41 launcher system for SM-3 missile interceptors was inconsistent with the treaty. An Mk-41 launcher on a U.S. warship can carry lots of other weapons, including cruise missiles; Russian officials contended that it was a prohibited launcher of land-based intermediate-range missiles. U.S. officials should have made clear to their counterparts that, if they would seriously address U.S. concern about the 9M729, then the U.S. side would deal with the Russian concern about the Mk-41.

Would these political and military steps have succeeded? We will not know, because Washington did not try. If Trump administration officials had a serious game plan for implementing the December “integrated strategy” to bring Russia back into compliance, then that plan was not apparent. That may be explained by John Bolton becoming National Security Advisor in April. A long-time critic of arms control in general, and of the INF Treaty in particular, Bolton probably was just as happy abandoning the treaty.

One other issue has arisen: Chinese intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The need to balance against those missiles has been cited as a reason for why the United States is leaving the treaty, but it is unclear if the Pentagon has even decided that it has a requirement for land-based intermediate-range missiles in Asia. In 2017, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told a Senate panel that the United States could counter China with air- and sea-based weapons.

R.I.P. INF Treaty

To be sure, Russia committed an egregious violation. The United States could not be expected to remain in the treaty indefinitely under those circumstances. Those who support withdrawal are correct on that point.

However, Trump did not have to withdraw from the treaty at this time, especially when there were political and military measures to apply pressure on Moscow—measures that might have persuaded Russia to come back into compliance. Unfortunately, now we will not know if that tactic would have worked. Instead, the president has delivered a gift to the Russians, who will soon be able to deploy, without constraint, intermediate-range missiles for which the U.S. military has no land-based counterpart. As a bonus for Moscow, Washington will catch the international political flack for the treaty’s demise.

Steven Pifer, a William J. Perry fellow at Stanford and nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, worked extensively on intermediate-range nuclear forces issues in the 1980s in Washington, Geneva and Moscow.

In this session from DARPA’s 60th anniversary symposium, D60, Dr. Valerie Browning, director of the agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO); keynote speaker Dr. Vincent Tang, program manager for DSO; and a panel of notable experts, including CISAC's Siegfried Hecker, explore the challenges and opportunities for combatting WMD use and preventing proliferation in the emerging global landscape.

Moderator Dr. Valerie Browning – DARPA, DSO
Keynote Dr. Vincent Tang – DARPA, DSO
Panelists Mr. Peter Bergen – Journalist, Dr. Siegfried Hecker – Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University The Honorable Andrew “Andy” Weber – Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs

On May 23, Stanford students enrolled in Technology and Security (MS&E 193/293) met with General James M. Holmes. General Holmes delivered delivered gave a talk, "Applying Technology--the Military Perspective," and engaged students in a Q&A session afterwards. The interisciplinary course explores the relation between technology, war, and national security policy from early history to modern day, focusing on current U.S. national security challenges and the role that technology plays in shaping our understanding and response to these challenges.

General James M. Holmes

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Evolving drone technology will enable countries to make low-cost but highly credible threats against states and groups that do not possess drones, Stanford political scientist Amy Zegart found in new research.

Could the mere threat of using an armed drone ever coerce an enemy to change their behavior – without attacking them?

Yes, says Stanford political scientist Amy Zegart, who argues in a new research paper that countries that simply possess deadly, armed drones could change an adversary’s behavior without even striking them. Zegart is the Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and co-director of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

“Armed drones are likely to offer coercion ‘windows of opportunity’ in at least one important circumstance: states that have armed drones confronting states that do not,” she said. “As wars grow longer and less conclusive, armed drones enable states to sustain combat operations, making threats to ‘stay the course’ more believable.”

Zegart believes that drone technology is becoming a more effective instrument to change a state’s behavior than yesteryear’s more costly option of using ground troops or large-scale military movements in war or conflict.

“Drones may be turning deterrence theory on its head,” said Zegart, referring to the cost-benefit calculation a potential aggressor makes when assessing an attack.

Zegart’s focus is on next-generation drones, which are essentially unmanned fighter jets and are currently in development. She is not examining the use of existing drones like quadcopters and Reaper and Predator unmanned aerial vehicles.

Foreign military officers surveyed

Zegart’s research is based on surveys of 259 foreign military officers conducted between 2015 and 2017. Participants were highly experienced foreign military officers who were attending classes at the National Defense University and Naval War College.

A drone is an unmanned aircraft that can be piloted remotely to deliver a lethal payload to a specific target.

Today, Zegart said, many scholars are studying whether drone proliferation across the world could change the future of warfare.

“But even here the focus has been the implications for the use of force, not the threat of force,” she said.

New drones are more lethal than ever, offering greater speeds, ranges, stealth and agility, according to Zegart. The U.S. is ahead, but not alone, in using drones. Nine countries have already used armed drones in combat, and at least 20 more are developing lethal drone programs – including Russia and China.

“It is time for a rethink” about drones, Zegart said. Technological advances will soon enable drones to function in hostile environments better than ever before.

“Drones offer three unique coercion advantages that theorists did not foresee: sustainability in long duration conflicts; certainty of precision punishment, which can change the psychology of adversaries; and changes in the relative costs of war,” she said.

Threats involving a high cost may be actually less credible than assumed, said Zegart. Her findings challenge the belief of “cost signals,” a military strategy where a country threatens another with a high-cost option, such as ground troops, which is intended to show resolve.

Drones may actually signal a nation’s resolve more effectively because – as a low-cost option – they can be part of an enduring offensive campaign against an enemy.

“The advent of armed drones suggests that costly signals may no longer be the best or only path to threat credibility,” she said. As wars grow longer and less conclusive, a particular country’s test of resolve becomes “more about sustaining than initiating action.”

“In situations where a coercing state has armed drones but a target state does not, drones make it possible to implement threats in ways that impose vanishingly low costs on the coercer but disproportionately high costs on the target,” Zegart said.

Combat, coercion

Zegart said that throughout history, whenever a new military technology emerges, adversaries have basically faced two choices – either concede or innovate to overcome the other side’s advantage.

“There is no reason to expect drones will be any different. The more that drones are used for combat and coercion, the more likely it will be that others will develop drone countermeasures,” she said.

New weapons often evolve technologically before “game-changing ideas” occur about how to use them, Zegart added. This was true of submarines before World War I, tanks after World War I, airplanes (which originally replaced surveillance balloons and were not used to drop bombs until 1911), and nuclear weapons during the Cold War.

“While physicists in the Manhattan Project developed the first atom bomb in just three years, it took much longer to develop the conceptual underpinnings of deterrence that kept the Cold War cold,” she said.

Drones raise important questions about the role of machines in decision-making during conflict, Zegart said. For example, much has been debated and written about the ethical and legal issues raised by U.S. drone strikes, the usefulness of drone operations against terrorist groups and whether the Pentagon or CIA should control and operate the drones.

Such questions are likely to grow more “numerous and knotty” as drones and other technologies evolve, she said.

Media Contacts

Amy Zegart, Hoover Institution and Center for International Security and Cooperation: zegart@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Hoover Institution: (650) 498-5205, cbparker@stanford.edu