An article in the the Washington Post earlier this week summarizes a secret cable written by the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. The cable warned
"that the persistence of enemy havens in
Pakistan was placing the success of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan in
jeopardy, U.S. officials said. The cable, written by Ryan C. Crocker, amounted to an admission
that years of U.S. efforts to curtail insurgent activity in Pakistan by
the lethal Haqqani network, a key Taliban ally, were failing."
The article does not include specific references to drone strikes from the cable, but notes that drones and other types of force have been aimed athe Haqqani network from some time with little apparent long-term effect.
I'll note that this conclusion is similar to that from a recent paper I co-authored with Megan Smith. We found that drone strikes had little effect on one type of effort produced by terrorist groups--propaganda videos. Al Qaeda's media arm, as-Sahab, has been able to produce a consistent stream of propaganda videos, many of which feature scenes from the regions on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, despite drone strikes aiming to disrupt the terrorist groups.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
How Americans Think About Drones, part deux
Here is a summary of another recent of survey of Americans' attitudes towards the use of drones. The conclusions are pretty similar to those I posted about earlier based on another survey.
What is interesting here, I think, is how attitudes change a bit depending on the context of the question. Seventy-six percent of respondents approve of using drones "to kill terrorists". But 49 percent think that using drones is more important to use drones to avoid the diplomatic problems they create in relations with Pakistan. Thirty-three percent prefer to avoid problems with Pakistan than to use drones.
This suggests that support for drones drops when the problem of relations with Pakistan are explicitly mentioned. Perhaps respondents are factoring in this cost when they evaluate drones, at least when prompted to do so. Recall from an earlier post that one approach to understanding the use of force would draw attention to the public's perception that the force will be successful. These polling results may mean that support for drones could follow the same pattern--it will drop when the drone campaign is perceived as less likely to succeed. To date I think that the drone campaign has been presented as successful to the American public, who see high tech weapons targeting enemies and less of any civilian casualties or diplomatic problems they might create. Maybe this poll means this pro-drone consensus would decline if drones start to fail. This could happen if, for example, the terrorists are able to launch an attack on the homeland of the United States that was planned in Pakistan.
What is interesting here, I think, is how attitudes change a bit depending on the context of the question. Seventy-six percent of respondents approve of using drones "to kill terrorists". But 49 percent think that using drones is more important to use drones to avoid the diplomatic problems they create in relations with Pakistan. Thirty-three percent prefer to avoid problems with Pakistan than to use drones.
This suggests that support for drones drops when the problem of relations with Pakistan are explicitly mentioned. Perhaps respondents are factoring in this cost when they evaluate drones, at least when prompted to do so. Recall from an earlier post that one approach to understanding the use of force would draw attention to the public's perception that the force will be successful. These polling results may mean that support for drones could follow the same pattern--it will drop when the drone campaign is perceived as less likely to succeed. To date I think that the drone campaign has been presented as successful to the American public, who see high tech weapons targeting enemies and less of any civilian casualties or diplomatic problems they might create. Maybe this poll means this pro-drone consensus would decline if drones start to fail. This could happen if, for example, the terrorists are able to launch an attack on the homeland of the United States that was planned in Pakistan.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
How Americans Think About Drones
A new poll of Americans includes some questions about drones (article here, summary of data here). Eighty-three percent of Americans approve or strongly approve of the Obama administration's use of drones "against terrorist suspects overseas". This support crosses party lines: 77 percent of respondents who identify as Democrats support the use of drones. If the suspected terrorists are Americans living overseas, 79 percent of respondents still approve of the use of drones.
How surprising are these results? In one sense, not surprising at all. A large body of research, drawing on John Mueller's seminal book, concludes that there is a strong and inverse relationship between military casualties and support for the use of force. Drones, of course, create zero US casualties. If Americans oppose the use of force primarily to avoid casualties, then drone strikes create a politically easy way to strike overseas.
From another perspective, such strong support for drone strikes may be surprising. This stream of research, best analyzed in Paying the Human Costs of War by Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler, holds that Americans' support for the use of force depends on their estimates that the military mission will be successful. So Americans might be supporting the use of drones because they think that drones are a good way to defeat terrorists. This could be the case because the technology behind drones is so impressive, or because Americans think that the raid that killed Osama bin Laden relied on drone strikes. If this is the case, the respondents are not familiar with the good arguments about why drone strikes might be counter-productive, creating anger in the Muslim world that leads to more, not less, support for terrorist and insurgent groups.
A third approach might explain the strong support for drones as a result of elite consensus. This perspective, exemplified by the work of Adam Berinsky, holds that American's opinions about the use of force are less strongly influenced by casualties or success. Instead, members of the public looks to the preferences of political leaders when forming their own opinions. When political leaders from different parties all support a policy, so does much of the public. This has certainly been the case for drone strikes--they were initiated by the Bush administration, accelerated by the Obama administration, and supported strongly by members of Congress from both parties who have pushed the military in intelligence agencies to expand their research on and use of drones.
Too little work has been done surveying how Americans think about drones. But they could have big consequences for Americans use of force. If the casualty aversion approach is correct, drones could lead make it much easier, and perhaps tempting, for Presidents to use them in conflicts overseas. If the success approach best explains opinions on drones, any future failures (such as not preventing al Qaeda from attacking the homeland of the United States) might lead to a decline in support. And if the elite consensus explanation best fits the data, we are unlikely to see support for drone strikes wane until one party or leader opposes their use.
How surprising are these results? In one sense, not surprising at all. A large body of research, drawing on John Mueller's seminal book, concludes that there is a strong and inverse relationship between military casualties and support for the use of force. Drones, of course, create zero US casualties. If Americans oppose the use of force primarily to avoid casualties, then drone strikes create a politically easy way to strike overseas.
From another perspective, such strong support for drone strikes may be surprising. This stream of research, best analyzed in Paying the Human Costs of War by Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler, holds that Americans' support for the use of force depends on their estimates that the military mission will be successful. So Americans might be supporting the use of drones because they think that drones are a good way to defeat terrorists. This could be the case because the technology behind drones is so impressive, or because Americans think that the raid that killed Osama bin Laden relied on drone strikes. If this is the case, the respondents are not familiar with the good arguments about why drone strikes might be counter-productive, creating anger in the Muslim world that leads to more, not less, support for terrorist and insurgent groups.
A third approach might explain the strong support for drones as a result of elite consensus. This perspective, exemplified by the work of Adam Berinsky, holds that American's opinions about the use of force are less strongly influenced by casualties or success. Instead, members of the public looks to the preferences of political leaders when forming their own opinions. When political leaders from different parties all support a policy, so does much of the public. This has certainly been the case for drone strikes--they were initiated by the Bush administration, accelerated by the Obama administration, and supported strongly by members of Congress from both parties who have pushed the military in intelligence agencies to expand their research on and use of drones.
Too little work has been done surveying how Americans think about drones. But they could have big consequences for Americans use of force. If the casualty aversion approach is correct, drones could lead make it much easier, and perhaps tempting, for Presidents to use them in conflicts overseas. If the success approach best explains opinions on drones, any future failures (such as not preventing al Qaeda from attacking the homeland of the United States) might lead to a decline in support. And if the elite consensus explanation best fits the data, we are unlikely to see support for drone strikes wane until one party or leader opposes their use.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
More Mechanical Turk Resources
Experimental Turk links to some of the key articles and working papers for using Mechanical Turk for surveys and experiments. There is more than enough here to get started.
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