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On 24 June 2012, Jimmy Carter, the 39th US President, and the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote an Op-ed piece in the New York Times, entitled “A Cruel and Unusual Record”, in which he stated “The United States is abandoning its role as the
On 24 June 2012, Jimmy Carter, the 39th US President (20 January 1977 – 20 January 1981), and the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize ("for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development"), wrote an Op-ed piece in the New York Times, entitled “A Cruel and Unusual Record”, in which he states “The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights” (1).
He concludes this because top US officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including some American citizens. This, he wrote, is disturbing proof of how far US violation of human rights has extended.
He dates this development to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington of September 11 2001. “As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues”.
(The term ‘targeted killing’ means the intentional killing, by a government or its agents, of a civilian or unlawful combatant targeted by the government. The person targeted is allegedly taking part in an armed conflict or terrorism.)
The use of drones to target people for assassination abroad is causing a great deal of controversy because they can kill innocent citizens in the neighborhood of an attack. Carter points out that US policy is based on the “arbitrary rule that any man killed by drones is declared an enemy terrorist”. The death of “nearby innocent women and children is accepted as inevitable”.
There has been a large increase in the number of drone attacks, which ex-President Carter writes, “has turned aggrieved families toward terrorist organizations, aroused civilian populations against us and permitted repressive governments to cite such actions to justify their own despotic behavior”.
Drones
A drone is an aircraft which is not flown by a human pilot onboard but which is either controlled autonomously by computers in the vehicle or under the remote control of a pilot on the ground (who may be far distant) or in another vehicle. Drones are produced in a large variety of shapes, sizes, and characteristics.
The first modern drone was developed by Israel as a result of the heavy damage caused, by Syrian missile batteries in Lebanon, to Israeli combat aircraft during the 1973 Yom Kippur war. At the beginning of the 1982 Lebanon War, the Israelis used UAVs for surveillance (in real time), electronic warfare and decoys against Syrian air defences so effectively that no Israeli aircraft was brought down.
In the 1990s, the U.S. Department of Defense began to acquire UAVs from Israel and to develop new types - the Pioneer drone, for example, which is still in use today. Many US drones were used in the 1991 Gulf War.
Although the early generations of drones were mainly used for surveillance, some UAVs, like the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, are armed; the Predator carries AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles. The Predator and Reaper drones, for example, typically carry 100-pound (45 kilogram) laser-guided Hellfire missiles or 500-pound (227 kilograms) GPS-guided smart bombs that can reduce buildings to smoldering rubble.
Drone (unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV) attacks are ongoing in locations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen and an unknown number (many hundreds of thousands) of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each one of which is approved by top authorities in Washington.
It is surprising to many people that the Obama administration has considerably expanded the policy of drone strikes adopted by the administration of former President George W(alker) Bush. There is considerable concern about the adequacy of the current legal regime governing the use of drone warfare.
The use of drones is attractive because: it is a faster and more expedient way to kill enemy terrorists than to arrest and try them in court. Moreover, drone warfare does not risk the lives of American servicemen. And drones are much cheaper than manned aircraft.
But, human rights lawyers, such as Ramesh Thakur, point out expediency does not justify the use of actions that challenge international humanitarian law and which may constitute war crimes (2). In the words of Jimmy Carter, drone attacks and targeted assassinations abroad are seen as “America’s violation of international human rights”, that “abets our enemies and alienates our friends.” (1)
The Switchblade drone
Drone technology is continually evolving. The US will soon deploy a very small but lethal drone called the Switchblade which is small enough to fit into a soldier’s backpack and which can carry a tiny explosive warhead that can be delivered to its target with great accuracy (3). Its use should, it is hoped, reduce civilian casualties and collateral damage.
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The Switchblade drone weighs less than 6 pounds (2-7 kilograms), is only 2-foot long and its wings fold into its fuselage and spring out after launch. The Switchblade is fired from a tube, like a mortar, and is controlled, by the soldier who fires it, by a hand-held control set.
A soldier can himself identify and destroy a target with a Switchblade drone, without needing to call for a strike by a larger drone. Because the responsibility for firing the Switchblade is delegated to the soldier on the ground the chain of command is extremely short. Human rights experts argue that in this situation more mistakes can be made than when there is a longer chain of command, involving more senior people.
The Switchblade is a good example of how the momentum of military technology outpaces human rights law. It should be stressed that concerns about the human rights aspects of targeted assassinations is not just an American problem.
The British military, for example, increasingly relies on drones in its war against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, firing laser-guided Hellfire missiles and bombs at suspected insurgents (4). The drones are ‘flown’ by Royal Air Force pilots from a US Air Force base in Nevada, USA.
The capture of a RQ-170 Sentinel drone
Drones were again in the news on 4 December 2012 when, much to the embarrassment of the US government, the Iranians announced that they had captured a top-secret US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth (‘batwing’) drone in an almost perfect condition (5).
The Iranians probably did not shoot down the Sentinel drone but brought it down by a cyber attack – using electronic warfare to ambush it without damaging it. Iran now not only has the secrets of stealth technology but also the information stored in the drone’s computers.
A crucial question is: why didn’t the RQ-170’s self-destruct system work to prevent its secret information falling into the wrong hands? Because it did not, the US and Israel will have to modify any plans they may have to attack the Iranian nuclear programme. It is virtually certain that any such attack will involve the use of drones like the RQ-170.
Can Iran be dissuaded from developing nuclear weapons?
A US or Israeli military attack on Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear facilities is an option that is kept on the table. The western powers do not believe Iran’s claim that its nuclear programme is just for peaceful civilian purposes. Instead, they fear it is designed to fabricate nuclear weapons.
According to an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, on 19 June 2012, this fear was enhanced in September 2009 when it was discovered that Iran was clandestinely constructing another uranium enrichment facility near the city of Qom. Iranian politicians point out that Iran is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and, as such, has the legal right to enrich uranium for civil uses.
Nevertheless, the USA, the European Union and Israel are applying a number of increasingly stringent sanctions against Iran to persuade it, so they say, to abandon its uranium enrichment efforts. In addition, the United Nations Security Council has passed a number of resolutions condemning Iran’s uranium-enrichment activities.
The Tehran government is responding with defiance, and persists in continuing to enrich uranium. Moreover, according to an article in the British Guardian newspaper, written by Julian Borger and published on 4 July 2012, there are also signs that the Iranian leadership “could be preparing to announce an increase in the level to which it enriches uranium. In a bill passed yesterday, the Majlis called on the government to start building ships ‘not reliant on fossil fuels’ – a reference to an announcement by the Iranian navy that it was planning to build nuclear-powered submarines.” (6)
Borger explains that the reactors powering nuclear submarines are best fuelled with uranium enriched to 90 per cent of the isotope uranium-235 - uranium which can also be used to fabricate nuclear weapons.
Although Iran admits that it is enriching some uranium to a level of 20 per cent in the isotope uranium-235, for peaceful purposes only, it insists that it has no intention of enriching uranium to the 90 per cent level required for the fabrication of nuclear weapons. Be this as it may, it is a relatively small step to enrich uranium from the 20 per cent level to the 90 per cent level.
Will Iran’s uranium-enrichment activities provoke the USA and/or Israel to take military action against Iran, even though such action will probably be counter-productive and speed up, rather than hamper, Iran’s efforts to fabricate nuclear weapons?
Conclusion
History shows that it is, to say the least, very difficult to dissuade a country intent on acquiring nuclear weapons from doing so. The example of North Korea, which went ahead with its fabrication of nuclear weapons despite many rounds of sanctions and United Nations Security Council resolutions, demonstrates this.
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Iran seems to have concluded that its security depends on acquiring nuclear weapons. If it has, sanctions, or any other pressures, are unlikely to change its mind. The international community may well have to come to terms with a nuclear Iran.
References
1. Jimmy Carter, "A Cruel and Unusual Record", New York Times, Op-Ed, 25 June 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-human-rights-record.html.
2. Ramesh Thakur, Drone warfare clashes with law, human rights, The Japan Times: Thursday, June 21, 2012 www.japantimes.co.jp › Opinion
3. W. J. Hennigan, Pentagon to soon deploy pint-sized but lethal Switchblade drones, Los Angeles Times, 11 June 2012. http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/11/business/la-fi-kamikaze-drone-20120611
4. Nick Hopkins, British reliance on drones in Afghanistan prompts fears for civilians, The Guardian, 18 June 2012. www.guardian.co.uk › News › World news › Afghanistan
5. BBC, Iran 'building copy of captured US drone' RQ-170 Sentinel BBC News, 22 April 2012. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17805201
6. Julian Borger, Iran nuclear talks resume as tension rises in the Gulf, The Guardian, 4 July 2012, p.17. www.guardian.co.uk
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