Drones And Counterterrorism Strategy Of Obama Administration

As a new kind of aircraft,drones are now widely used in civil and military areas.Use of drones by the US in antiterrorism field has caused attention of the whole world.After the 911 incident,US has launched the antiterrorism war for more than 14 years.US antiterrorism strategy has undergone the large scale antiterrorism war in Bush administration to the overseas emergency action of Obama administration.Drones has been playing a more and more important role in antiterrorism strategy since drone was first used by Bush administration to attack the terrorists in 2004.Drones has been used in antiterrorism operations to detect,surveil and attack.It has had a significant effect on antiterrorism,but increasing drone use has caused a lot of controversies in politic,law,ethics and diplomacy.Therefore,it’s meaningful to study on drones in US antiterrorism strategy.The short-term effect of drones in antiterrorism is obvious,while as one of the most important antiterrorism tools,drones use should be assessed from the macro strategic perspective.Can it enhance the effect or bring the fruits of US antiterrorism.US drones can target kill some terrorists,but it also brings instability to a nation.So it is meaningful to assess that whether US drone strikes will have a contrary effect on US antiterrorism work in Pakistan,Afghanistan,Yemen,Somalia,Libya and so on,especially after Obama’s inauguration,US tried to withdraw its troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and is relying more and more on drone strikes.This dissertation thinks that from short-term technological perspective,drone strikes are very efficient,while from the strategic view,drone strikes harm the realization of US long-term antiterrorism strategy.But because US is now facing economic,political and law limitations,the location of terrorism organizations and US demand for strengthening its antiterrorism fruits,it’s unlikely that US abandon its drone strikes.What US need to do now is to make regulations of drone use more apparent and help nations that have been affected by drone strikes to build their nation.What’s more,it also needs to take advantage of democracy and human rights to demolish the terrorism breeding ground.Chapter 1 definite drone that is a aircraft that does not need a pilot to fly it,but there’s just no pilots inside,actually pilots control drones on the ground through the UAS.This chapter also tells the situation of drone in civil and commercial use,looking back at the drone technology advancement.And the two changes of drone development are that first drone use changed from detect to attack and from man control to automatic flying.Chapter 2 talks about the content and change of Obama’s antiterrorism strategy and analyzes the reasons that cause these changes.Then this chapter also analyzes the advantages of drone in antiterrorism.Chapter 3 takes Pakistan and Yemen as examples to introduce the practice of drone use in antiterrorism.Chapter 4,the last chapter talks about the issues that brought by drones in antiterrorism strategy.