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For Sale: The Administration’s New Drone Policy
Last week the State Department announced that after a long internal review, the U.S. would now allow for the sale of armed drones to allied countries. While the U.S. has sold unarmed drones—utilized mostly for intelligence purposes—to allies such as Italy and France, this is the first time that armed drones would be sold to a country other than the UK. Along with the announcement of this new policy, the State Department also provided some troubling guidelines about how the U.S. would vet its potential buyers, a process it described as being “months, not years-long”. Combined with their ambiguous nature, these new guidelines call into question whether or not the U.S. has the ethical credibility that would allow it to regulate the sale and monitor the use of armed drones to other countries.
The administration insisted that the review process would ensure that potential buyers would have to meet a rigorous standard, requiring that they have a consistent record of respecting international human rights and humanitarian law and would agree to use them in accordance with international law. However, these standards requiring adherence to international human rights law in regards to their use have raised some eyebrows. While the White House has insisted that its own drone strikes are carried out when there is “near certainty” of the identity of the target, the U.S. has faced criticism of the high civilian death toll from U.S. drone strikes, particularly in Yemen.
Source: www.aaiusa.org