Michael J. Boyle - The Drone Age: How Drone Technology Will Change War and Peace

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Michael J. Boyle 2020

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Boyle, Michael J., 1976 author.

Title: The drone age : how drone technology will change war and peace /

Michael J. Boyle, La Salle University.

Other titles: How drone technology will change war and peace

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020] |

Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019047301 (print) | LCCN 2019047302 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780190635862 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190635886 (epub) |

ISBN 9780197501788 (online)

Subjects: LCSH: Drone aircraft. | Drone aircraftPolitical aspects.

Classification: LCC UG1242.D7 B69 2020 (print) |

LCC UG1242.D7 (ebook) | DDC 358.4/183dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019047301

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019047302

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This book would not have been possible without the support of many institutions and people.

I would like to first thank the Smith Richardson Foundation for awarding me a Strategy and Policy Fellowship in spring 2015. This fellowship enabled me to conduct interviews for this book and to take a semester away from teaching to work on the research and writing. I also wish to thank Alan Luxenberg and Michael Noonan of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) who recommended that I apply for this fellowship. The FPRI has also been kind enough to invite me to present this work in a number of ways and I have benefited from the discussion and feedback that I received at each presentation.

I would also like to thank the Leaves and Grants committee of La Salle University for granting me a one semester research leave to work on this project. For their support of my proposal, I would particularly like to thank former dean Thomas Keagy, Professor Emeritus Michael R. Dillon, and Professor Miguel Glatzer. I would also like to thank all of the staff of the Connelly Library for their help.

I would also like to thank the faculty and staff of Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania, where I was a visiting fellow in fall 2016. I am particularly indebted to William W. Burke-White and Michael C. Horowitz for arranging my visit and making my stay there such a pleasant one. I was also fortunate to have an opportunity to present my work at their research seminar and I thank all of the participants at the university for their feedback.

I would like to thank all of the interviewees that have spoken to me for this project. I would particularly like to thank the US Air Force Academy in Colorado for facilitating a very useful visit to their campus.

Elsewhere, I have presented this work at the American Political Science Association (APSA) and International Studies (ISA) conferences. I also presented versions of the chapters at the John Jay College at the City University of New York (CUNY), the Jenkintown Lyceum and the Valley Forge Freedom Foundation. I am grateful to all of these audiences for their feedback. I would like to thank in particular friends and colleagues who read or commented on some early drafts of the proposal and the chapters, especially William W. Burke-White, Michael C. Horowitz, Emma Leonard Boyle, Michael Noonan, Nicholas Staffieri, Dominic Tierney, and the anonymous referees. I am also grateful to my research assistant, Selena Bemak, who did a wonderful job fact-checking the manuscript and helping with its last stages. I would also like to thank Julie Shawvan for indexing the book. Of course, I am wholly responsible for any errors or omissions in the book.

I would also like to thank Oxford University Press for permission to reprint some amended text from my original article, The Costs and Consequences of Drone Warfare, International Affairs 89:1 (2013), pp. 129 and MIT Press for the right to reprint some parts of my correspondence in Michael J. Boyle, Michael C. Horowitz, Sarah E. Kreps, and Matthew Fuhrmann, Debating Drone Proliferation, International Security, 42:3 (Winter, 2017/18), pp. 178182.

I am also very grateful to my agent, Andy Ross, who assisted with the proposal and sharpening the argument of this book. I would also like to thank David McBride and Oxford University Press for their patience as this book was finished.

Finally, I would like to thank my family for their love and support for all of the long days and weekends lost writing this book. My son, George, arrived during the writing of this book and his laughter in the room next to me provided just the right impetus to get it done. I am also thankful for my dog and (according to my son) research assistant Millie who patiently sat in my study as I worked. But the book is dedicated with love to my wife, Emma, who has shown patience and a bit of bemusement as I wrestled with yet another book project. I thank her for everything she has done to enrich my life in so many ways.

This breakfast meeting was not out of the ordinary for Awlaki, a leader in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), an increasingly powerful offshoot of the terrorist organization started by Osama bin Laden. Since returning to Yemen in 2004, Awlaki had become the public face of this organization through his charismatic sermons, both in Arabic and in English, which criticized US foreign policy and inspired people to join al Qaedas jihad. By 2009, he moved beyond inflammatory speeches and became operational, according to US counterterrorism officials.

For the Obama administration, Awlaki posed a more vexing problem than bin Laden because he was a US citizen. Born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, he spent several years as a child in the United States when his father, Nasser, was on a Fulbright scholarship. After living his teenage years in Yemen, he moved back to the United States to study civil engineering at Colorado State University in 1991. He was later active in mosques in Denver and San Diego and moved to Falls Church, Virginia, shortly before the September 11 attacks. Although the FBI investigated his links with the September 11 hijackers, they found nothing incriminating, but nevertheless continued to keep him under surveillance. For a brief time, Awlaki took on a public role as a spokesperson on interfaith tolerance. He was even invited to the Pentagon as part of an Islamic outreach program and to an interfaith prayer service at the US Capitol.