Argument: The use of drones creates a precedent that other states may use.

The United States is the first state with a large number of drones and other unmanned military vehicles. It is also the first country to use them. This inevitably means that the US is creating the precedent for how they will be used in future. The United States is aware of this potential and President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser John Brennan has stated “Other nations also possess this technology, and many more nations are seeking it, and more will succeed in acquiring it. President Obama and those of us on his national security team are very mindful that as our nation uses this technology, we are establishing precedents that other nations may follow, and not all of those nations may — and not all of them will be nations that share our interests or the premium we put on protecting human life, including innocent civilians.” [1] This is exactly the problem; do we really want to live in a world where any country can carry out targeted killings of people who are in another nation? Such a world would have the ever present risk of a covert conflict becoming a much more open shooting war.

[1] McNeal, Greg, ‘Is the U.S. Setting Precedents in its Drone Wars’, Forbes, 6 June 2012.

Candidate 1: "It is absolutely not the case that UAVs will mean unnecessary attacks that would not otherwise be made; all the targets are checked by a large number of national security experts and the attacks are signed off by the President himself. The attacks are therefore taken very seriously by the administration. Moreover that the attacks are low cost is exactly what we want – the capability to strike our enemies without losses to ourselves or any collateral damage should be prized not shunned."
Candidate 2: "This is a conflict situation, a war, pure and simple. While this is a new kind of conflict; when the opponent is a non-state actor states have to be able to strike at these groups that intend to attack them even when they are sheltering in other states. Such attacks should also not include the state where those groups are sheltering unless that state is supporting that group as was the case in Afghanistan.

Yes the distinction between civilian and combatant is blurred by this conflict but this is something that happens regardless of whether the United States uses UAVs. It is the terrorists themselves who through their horrific attacks by ‘civilians’ on civilian targets that strip away the distinction. The United States has to be able to respond with whatever method is most likely to prevent more of these terrorist attacks."
Candidate 3: "Any other nation seeking to take a precedent from the use of drones would have to be involved in a conflict against a terrorist organisation that poses a credible, clear, and present danger and not be able to fight those terrorists by other means. The situation in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia is in many ways unique in that these are states that have either failed or are near failure. As a result the sovereign government cannot be relied to combat terrorists on their own soil."
Candidate 4: "Getting special forces or allies on the ground is not always an option. In countries like Somalia and Yemen where there have been conflicts between factions the authorities will not always cooperate and even if they do they may not control the territory where the strike team would need to operate. There will also be many times where it is simply too dangerous to try and snatch someone. If that person is a danger they need to be stopped in the quickest way possible; and that will be by the use of the UAV that is already far above monitoring the target."

Any other nation seeking to take a precedent from the use of drones would have to be involved in a conflict against a terrorist organisation that poses a credible, clear, and present danger and not be able to fight those terrorists by other means. The situation in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia is in many ways unique in that these are states that have either failed or are near failure. As a result the sovereign government cannot be relied to combat terrorists on their own soil.
