Obama’s legacy stained by drone deaths

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This article was published 28/12/2016 (3232 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You could probably sum up U.S. President Barack Obama’s foreign policy doctrine in two words: act cautiously. But that was undoubtedly a function of two other key factors — namely, a unilateralist George W. Bush administration and the Great Recession of 2008-09.

Perhaps it is best summed up by noted U.S. political scientist Ian Bremmer: “Bush is a leader who didn’t like to think. Obama is a thinker who doesn’t like to lead.”

More importantly, Obama was much less convinced about the efficacy and effectiveness of exerting brute military force. And he certainly had qualms about “American exceptionalism” and imposing America’s model of democracy on other autocratic countries.

Instead, he was more inclined to opt for greater international responsibility and burden-sharing among U.S. allies. That led to the unhelpful characterization, emanating from the White House itself, of Obama ostensibly “leading from behind.”

As a result, the outgoing president will leave behind a mixed record in terms of international affairs. Even though Obama tried, he did not always succeed in following his own foreign policy motto: “Don’t do stupid stuff.”

The 2011 military intervention in Libya, aggressively pushed by then-U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton, was a case of not planning properly and thoughtfully for life after Moammar Gadhafi. Obama forgot protecting the people of Benghazi and deposing the dictator were the easy parts.

Eschewing the heavy lifting of “nation-building” — as Bush himself came to realize painfully — creates less stability and more chaos and factionalism on the ground. So Obama’s natural inclination toward caution essentially nullified his gifted intellect.

Moreover, his reluctance to expend political, diplomatic and military capital in Syria has contributed to a humanitarian disaster that shows no signs of relenting. And his ill-advised conduct in 2012 not to follow through on his “red line” (which would trigger substantial U.S. military intervention) of no chemical-weapons use by Syria’s vicious president, Bashar Assad, diminished U.S. credibility on the world stage.

Additionally, Obama’s rapprochement with the Muslim world, actions on the Middle East peace file, curbing nuclear proliferation and his vaunted “Asian pivot” were all tepid efforts at best. The touted “reset” with Russia, on life-support after Vladimir Putin’s aggressive Ukraine gambit and his unlawful annexation of Crimea, has now completely fallen off the rails.

Obama’s inability to close down the disgraceful Guantanamo Bay detention centre — albeit in the face of stiff congressional opposition — was a notable failure. His measures to actually combat climate change were on the minimalist side — and will most likely be kneecapped by president-elect Donald Trump.

There will also be those mostly on the left who will be hugely disappointed with Obama’s record on immigration. In their eyes, he was sadly regarded as the “deporter-in-chief.” By showing the border to more than 2.5 million unauthorized immigrants, he deported more undocumented migrants than any other president in U.S. history.

But there were successes, too. And one could make a persuasive case that those victories generally outweigh his failures.

Arguably his most significant foreign policy achievement — besides rebuilding U.S. standing in the world after the disastrous Bush presidency — was his controversial nuclear-weapons deal with nettlesome Iran. It opens the possibility of improving bilateral relations with a key regional player, gains better U.S. access to a sizable economic marketplace and stymies Chinese efforts at currying favour in Tehran.

Obama’s deft move to normalize relations with Cuba, after decades of a failed policy of isolation and hostility, should not be dismissed lightly as low-hanging fruit. Whether the process continues is an open question at the moment, but the initiative itself should be seen in the context of improving Washington’s prestige and position throughout the Americas.

He can also take some credit for strengthening ties with China, urging the removal of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and encouraging long-awaited political reforms and freedoms in Myanmar. In addition, he minimized the U.S. military footprint in Iraq and Afghanistan (wars that had cost over US$4.4 trillion and thousands of U.S. military casualties), made the use of torture illegal again and put Canada-U.S. relations on a stronger footing.

However, where Obama is most susceptible to harsh criticism is his preference to resort to unmanned aerial vehicles or drones as the centrepiece of his counterterrorism strategy. For some, his legacy has been substantially diminished and left him vulnerable to charges of being “the drone president” or, even worse, “the assassin-in-chief.” Others have been quick to label the president as nothing less than judge, jury and executioner.

U.K. scholar Christopher Fuller maintains Obama has launched roughly 500 deadly drone strikes and left in their wake over 5,000 civilian casualties. Astonishingly, that amounts to a lethal U.S. drone strike every five days or so. And it is common knowledge that his data-driven drone-warfare program has a “kill list” of thousands of names.

Furthermore, Obama has greatly expanded the requisite infrastructure — the airfields, the relay stations and the military compounds — needed to sustain such an elaborate and high-tech program. It has stunningly spread to almost every part of the world, including several countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, and it certainly has the capability to reach just about any remote location on the planet.

Simply put, Obama has effectively institutionalized a contentious drone program — seemingly accountable to no one — for targeted killing of suspected U.S. enemies.

Curiously, no one is really sure if the drone strikes, besides taking out the person at the top of the group, actually disrupt or deter terror attacks. What is known is drone warfare does not deal comprehensively with the root causes of global terrorism. It amounts to merely chopping off a portion of the multi-headed hydra.

Given the history of U.S. foreign policy, and especially the tremendous cost of various military interventions abroad in terms of blood and treasure, it’s not hard to figure out why the use of drone strikes is so attractive to a U.S. president. They are relatively cheap, extraordinarily lethal, highly accurate and can hit targets in extremely remote areas. More important, they avoid putting U.S. military men and women in harm’s way, and they are very popular among the U.S. public and Congress. A 2014 Pew Research Center poll put their favourability rating at 52 per cent — down, though, from a high of 68 per cent in a similar 2011 survey.

On the downside, countless innocent civilians have been killed in drone strikes, diplomatic relations with a host of countries have been damaged and NGOs, human rights groups and the United Nations itself have cast a negative light on drone use. Furthermore, local populations in Pakistan have complained regularly about the whirring sound of the unrelenting drones in the sky and the psychological damage the constant noise (and attendant fear) is having on young children.

Continuous U.S. activity in this area has also opened the door to other states such as Russia and China, or terror groups themselves, to launch their own lethal drone programs — leaving anyone labelled a terrorist as a potential target.

One of the more troubling aspects of Obama’s drone program is its detachment from any legal and constitutional strictures — let alone the accompanying moral and diplomatic black hole. Not only is there little in the way of congressional (or even judicial, for that matter) oversight, but the overall program (conducted separately by both the CIA and the Pentagon) continues to operate under the highly suspect congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists resolution of September 2001 (after the 9/11 attacks). The final decision to launch, then, rests solely with the president, and whenever Obama decides such a drone strike is warranted (and the potential loss of civilian life is thought to be worth it).

The extraordinary secrecy surrounding the U.S. program also raises all kinds of red flags. On what basis does President Obama make his decision to unleash a targeted assassination? Can a drone strike be halted at any time? How are names added to and subtracted from the “kill list”? Is the U.S. president susceptible to manipulation by those handlers providing him the requisite intelligence and surveillance data?

It is also worth highlighting that, since 2011, at least three U.S. citizens that we know of have been killed by Obama-ordered drone strikes. American-born cleric and al-Qaida member Anwar al-Awlaki, who was targeted because of his Internet videos urging Muslim attacks on U.S. citizens and reported involvement in several terror plots on U.S. soil, was eliminated in September of 2011.

Let’s set to one side these purported claims and ask whether he still deserved to die in a drone attack. What about his legal rights, due process and his right to be tried on the basis of evidence and before a jury of his peers?

Even more disturbing was the assassination-by-drone of his Denver-born 16 year-old son, Abdulrahman, two weeks later in Yemen. As far as we know, no one ever accused him of being a terrorist. In fact, the U.S. military subsequently admitted his death was a mistake and never should have happened. But it did. And that’s part of the problem.

No one is suggesting here Obama has not left a solid foreign policy legacy. But his overall record has been tainted by his heavy reliance on an expansion and secretive use of drone warfare.

Unfortunately, he has also paved the way for other “autonomous weapons systems” (such as deadly robotics) to be used by a future U.S. president with similarly few, if any, restrictions. Now Obama finds himself in the very uncomfortable position of having to bequeath what he built and institutionalized to the unpredictable and mercurial Donald John Trump.

Peter McKenna is professor and chair of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.