Abstract
Drone warfare has been the subject of intense debate and scholarly attention in recent years, with a clear focus on killing from a distance, the subjectivity of the drone operator and the impact of this form of warfare on militaries and soldiers. Few studies, however, have treated drone warfare to a gendered analysis. This chapter aims to explore drone warfare from a number of different gendered perspectives that bring to the fore the intricate ways in which the domestic/international divide blurs, and how masculinism is reasserted in warfare. It focuses on the primacy of technology and how masculinist subjectivities are reconstituted through drone warfare.
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Notes
- 1.
In 2012, 83% of respondents to a Washington Post/ABC poll in the USA supported the use of drone strikes to target terrorists outside the borders of the USA (Cillizza 2013). A poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre in 2013 found a significant gender gap in public opinion on the use of drones . In Japan and the Czech Republic this gap was 31 and 30 points respectively. In Canada, Australia and Germany, Spain and Britain, the gap ranged between 24 and 28 points, with the gap somewhat narrower in the US (17 points) (Stokes 2013).
- 2.
There is also a neo-liberal dimension to Sauer and Schörnig’s description, as the relationship the development, production, distribution and profits of the drone industry also drive developments. I thank Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox for this observation.
- 3.
Over Obama’s two terms in office, 563 strikes were carried out in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen (BIJ 2017). Precise figures for deaths and casualties are difficult to ascertain due to secrecy and differing methodologies used to report by various agencies , although the Bureau of Investigative Journalism is seen to adopt the most inclusive methodology. See Stanford/NYU Law School (2012: 44–47). The Obama administration claimed that between 64 and 116 ‘non-combatants’ were killed in strikes carried out during 2009–2015 in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya, which differs to the estimated 380–801 civilian casualties recorded by BIJ, six times higher than official figures. The estimated number of deaths is placed at 2436 by the US government, compared with 2753 by BIJ (Searle 2016). As of June 4, 2017, BIJ estimated a total of 2935 minimum confirmed strikes. In Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan , an estimated 6382–9240 have been killed. Between 739 and 1407 civilians have been injured, and an estimated 240–308 children killed (https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/projects/drone-war).
- 4.
Since 2006, surveillance drones have been used in the work of humanitarian protection in Chad, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Haiti. The use of drones in humanitarian work has been touted as a positive development for civilian protection , monitoring vulnerable populations in high-risk areas, and allowing peacekeepers to better track and respond to violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) (Karlsrud and Rosén 2013; Sandvik and Lohne 2014; Sandvik and Jumbert 2017; Choi-Fitzpatrick 2014).
- 5.
An intricate web of actors, hierarchies , bureaucracies, databases, chains of command (Wilcox 2017: 15) and labour are required to operate drones . US Drone strikes are carried out across two different authorities—the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), part of the US Department of Defence (DOD) Special Operations Command, and the CIA . CIA -led drone strikes are covert and cannot be acknowledged by the US government, making the operations opaque (Zenko 2013). The line between civilian and military is also blurred, as CIA -led drone strikes have been carried out by the US Air Force as well as civilian contractors (Woods 2014; Beauchamp 2016). As Derek Gregory has observed, the CIA does not operate under military control, and to blur the lines between the military and the CIA contributes to a transformation of the battlespace (2011a: 241). Under President Trump , the CIA has been granted new authority to launch its own strikes against militants without the involvement of the military and with no need for White House approval. Plans to ease restrictions on strikes, such as removing the requirement for ‘near certainty’ that no civilian deaths may be incurred outside of war zones, is part of an anticipated overhaul of the constraints of the Obama administration (Crilly 2017). In this regard accountability and transparency around the drone programme is set to become more opaque.
- 6.
Although un‘manned’, drones are not at this stage unpiloted. They are controlled by a crew working from a base which is located either locally in the combat zone or thousands of miles away. Drone missions conducted over Afghanistan are controlled from Creech air force base in Nevada, USA. Take off and landings are managed at local sites (BBC 2012; Rothstein 2015; Chamayou 2015). Human labour is needed to carry out surveillance and strikes, across several sites globally. The domestic/international divide becomes complex, involving operators and pilots at air bases in the US, command and control centres in the military, coordinating forces at bases in Germany and other sites. Crandall also illustrates the range of actors that are called into play when drones are ‘downed’—from the governmental agencies representing states to the company that manufactures the drone , transport, security, emergency services and law enforcement. These ‘component agencies’ reveal an overlooked geopolitics (Crandall 2014: 266–271) that belies the simple binaries that are presented in drone discourse and debates.
- 7.
I thank Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox for this insight.
- 8.
There is also an interesting analogy with birth to be noted, not simply in the notion of a ‘proxy’ birth (thanks to Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox for this suggestion) but also with respect to military discourses about male birth and creation, as Cohn refers to in relation to nuclear weapons (1987).
- 9.
Brant indicated that he did not want to make gender the central focus of the play, because he regarded male and female pilots as similar to each other, more so than in other contexts (De Angelis 2014: 114).
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Nicholas, L., Agius, C. (2018). Drones and the Politics of Protection. In: The Persistence of Global Masculinism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68360-7_5
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