drone strikes and politics in Movies

Eye in the Sky presents a bleak portrait of drone technology and calls into question the norms of global counterterrorism and warfare. Technological tools of surveillance allow for targeted operations, aimed at known terrorists. These tools entrench existing hegemonies of power. However much drones are celebrated for reducing the numbers of casualties in counterterrorism units while simultaneously targeting top terrorism suspects, the effects of the drone strikes can be devastating on the local innocents, the civilians caught in the drone fire, and may even have some detrimental long-term effects such as increased acts of terror or reduction of the credibility of counterterrorism.

Public attitudes towards the use of drones vary considerably. In the United States, attitudes toward the use of drone strikes as a counterterrorism tactic "is moved more by legal principles than by military effectiveness," (Kreps and Wallace). Given the ways drones can be reframed as legally problematic, and given the impact of public attitudes on counterterrorism strategies in general, it is possible that films like Eye in the Sky could lead to shifts in policy towards drones. Drones have been discussed as a reconfiguration of violence toward a video gaming model, in that drones confer "visual superpower," (Maurer 1). Drones enable targeted man hunting on a scale never before possible in military history.

Drone warfare is based on the principle of remote agency. The psychological and even spiritual distance placed between drone operator and target may be meaningful from an ethical as well as pragmatic perspective. As Asaro suggests, drone operators have been extricated from their military positions and placed within a professional configuration. Drone operators have "professionalized careers and technological systems of supervision and management" qualitatively different from their military counterparts (Asaro 196). Whether these changes are beneficial or ethical remains to be seen, but those types of judgments also depend on what side of the surveillance machine one stands. From Washington's point-of-view, drone strikes are indeed effective at wiping out key terrorists, at senior levels of management as well as lower levels in their respective organizations (Bergen and Tiedemann). It is widely claimed that drones, known more officially as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), are "killing fewer civilians than other means of attack," and are therefore crucial in the war against terror (Boyle 1).

The harshest critics of drone warfare claim the use of drones will have a net negative effect by stimulating anti-American/anti-Western sentiment, bolster recruitment efforts for terrorist networks worldwide due precisely to anti-American sentiment, and also create a new level of global instability. Specifically, Boyle warns that drones "will usher in a new arms race and lay the foundations for an international system that is increasingly violent, destabilized and polarized between those who have drones and those who are victims of them," (1). What Eye in the Sky so aptly demonstrates is the psychological effect drones have on their victims. That effect is that persons in positions of military, political, and economic power like the Americans or the British also have the power to decide who deserves to live or die. As such, drones need to be taken more seriously as a political issue. Eye in the Sky shows how senior officers like Colonel Powell in the film make their "kill" decisions based on political and diplomatic considerations.

Perhaps what makes viewers acutely uncomfortable when watching Eye in the Sky, or when contemplating the realities of drone warfare from the levels of senior leadership, is the fact that human life is quantifiable. When Colonel Powell, for example, estimates the statistical probabilities of civilians -- in some cases specific civilians like the little girl -- dying in the strike, they are doing so for rational and arguably good reasons. The audience, and those critical of drone warfare, will find Powell's assessments dehumanizing. There are no easy answers. On the one hand, drone warfare is dehumanizing, placing a gulf of psychological distance between the parties who use surveillance and then kill, and the parties who are being watched and who may die. On the other hand, terrorism exists and would almost certainly persist even if drone warfare were ceased altogether. The alternatives to using drones include traditional warfare, which offers no more solace in terms of preventing civilian casualties. Traditional warfare also entails upper-level decision-making processes about who lives and who dies, and traditional warfare has included espionage and surveillance for thousands of years. Drones represent the latest technological phase of warfare, in which surveillance has reached a new level of intensity and enables targeted attacks more readily. Drones are the "iconic weapon of the early twenty-first century," (Asaro 196). They are postmodern in their showcasing Foucault's principles of the panopticon, and they are as cold and calculating as a robot warrior in a science fiction movie.

Drones confer power to the hegemony in an unprecedented way. If drones continue to draw attention to the imbalance of power in global affairs, then it becomes potentially more likely for countries with nuclear weapons to think more seriously about using them as a last resort against a perceived global tyrant, the new "visual superpower," (Maurer 1). The long-term impacts of drones on perception of American integrity may be dire because drones also create a psychologically chilling landscape of oppression in places that already are oppressed; an invisible and supremely powerful entity like the United States has the power to watch over daily life with "hypervisibility, visual immersion, and invisibility" in target areas like Big Brother (Maurer 1). The hegemony has powers beyond the power to kill; the power of surveillance is in some ways the ultimate weapon and tool of systematic oppression. It is an effective counterterrorism tool in the sense that terrorism is designed to create systematic psychological terror with corresponding political results, and the same can be said for drone warfare.

As Boyle points out, the drone arms race also has political implications in the unstable regions where it is used most such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Drone warfare has enabled a system in which the hegemon "provides a steady flow of arms and financial resources to build up governments whose legitimacy it systematically undermines by conducting unilateral strikes on their territory," (Boyle 1). Moreover, drone strikes are threatening to destabilize potentially emerging democracies. The permissiveness of the governments of Pakistan and Yemen towards American government use of drone warfare for counterterrorism measures may be beneficial for the Americans but not for domestic politics in those countries. After all, the residents of countries like Pakistan and Yemen are fed up with being under unilateral surveillance. Somalia, on the other hand, has no real government and therefore offers fewer impediments to using drones and disrupting the lives of residents (Miller). Governments working with the United States to allow drones genuinely want and need the foreign intervention given the proliferation of terrorism and what it does for instability, and yet those governments remain under pressure from their citizens.

Drones symbolize the new nature of asymmetrical warfare. Those who possess drones have greater power than just to kill -- the power to monitor and conduct continual surveillance is an act of terror, or can at least be construed as one. The United States and its allies who also possess drones are failing to mitigate effectively the ill side effects of drones. "The problem with the drones policy isn't that drones themselves are bad, but that they are happening without broader political, social, and even economic policies that could mitigate their pernicious consequences," (Foust 1). If the United States only relies on electronic surveillance, and neglects the value of human sources of information on the ground in affected nations, then it may even damage counterterrorism and generate greater instability. As Eye in the Sky clearly demonstrates, drones empower the hegemon with the power of broad electronic surveillance, while distancing the individuals within the hegemon from the individuals on the ground.

Drones are dehumanizing. They transform warfare into acts seemingly no greater than video games. Drone technology alleviates some of the psychological and physical burdens of traditional warfare, but only asymmetrically. The people living on the ground in target regions are being watched, essentially oppressed by a distant Big Brother power that cares little for their desires or daily needs. Drones convey a sense of distance, of not taking responsibility for the act of killing. The person has the power to kill and that power is not as military oriented as it used to be but rather, bureaucratic (Asaro 196). Eye in the Sky shows how there are various levels of power involved in the decisions in making strikes. Those at the upper level of the decision-making can make calculated decisions based on mathematical probabilities, divesting themselves of the responsibility of actually assassinating people. Drones "configure violence as a form of man hunting," similar to video games (Maurer 1). Reconsidering the psychological effects of drones might help the United States, Britain, and other powers to mitigate their drone programs with damage control and public relations campaigns.

Works Cited

Asaro, Peter M. "The labor of surveillance and bureaucratized killing: new subjectivities of military drone operators. Social Semiotics, Vol. 23, Issue 2, 2013, pp. 196-224.

Bergen, Peter and Tiedemann, Katherine. "Washington's Phantom War." Foreign Affairs, 90, Issue 12, 2011, pp. 12.

Boyle, Michael. "The Costs and Consequences of Drone Warfare." International Affairs, Vol. 89, Issue 1, pp. 1-29.

Foust, Joshua. "The political consequences of a drones-first policy. The Atlantic. 27 Jan, 2012, Retrieved online: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/the-political-consequences-of-a-drones-first-policy/252129/

Hood, Gavin. Eye in the Sky. [Feature Film].

Kreps, Sarah E. and Wallace, Geoffrey PR. "International Law, Military Effectiveness, and Public Support for Drone Strikes." (May 19, 2015). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2608137 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2608137

Maurer, Kathrin. "Visual power: The scopic regime of military drone operations." Media, War, and Conflict, April 7, 2016, doi: 10.1177/1750635216636137

Miller, Greg. "Under Obama, an emerging global apparatus for drone killing." The Washington Post. Dec 2011, Retrieved online: http://www.agriculturedefensecoalition.org/sites/default/files/file/drones_517/517X_2_2011_Under_President_Obama_Emerging_Global_Apparatus_for_Drone_Killing_The_Washington_Post_December_27_2011_Entire_Article.pdf