KL%202010%20Afghanistan%20Drones%201AC



1AC Contention 1 is Inherency Drone usage is increasing rapidly and on track to become a major part of the military P.W. Singer, P.W. Singer is Senior Fellow and Director of the 21 st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, 09 (“ Wired for War? Robots and Military Doctrine”, Joint Forces Quarterly, issue 52, 1 quarter 2009, http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:DVQbttWCZXIJ:scholar.google.com/+wired+for+war&hl=en&as_sdt=4000000000) T he growth in our use of unmanned systems has taken place so rapidly that we often forget how far we have come in just a short time. While U.S. forces went into Iraq with only a handful of drones in the air (all of V Corps had just one), by the end of 2008, there were 5,331 unmanned aircraft systems in the American inventory, from vigilant Global Hawks and armed Predators that circle thousands of feet overhead to tiny Ravens that peer over the next city block. A similar explosion happened on the ground, where zero unmanned ground vehicles were used in a tactical sense during the 2003 invasion; by the end of 2008, the overall inventory crossed the 12,000 mark, with the first generation of armed ground robotics arriving that year as well. And notably, these are just the first generation, much like the iPod, already outdated by the time they hit the marketplace and battlespace. In many ways, the most apt historic par- allel to this era may well turn out to be World War I. Back then, strange, exciting new tech- nologies, which had been science fiction a few years earlier, were introduced and then used in greater numbers on the battlefield. They did not really change the fundamentals of the war, and in many ways the technology was balky and fighting remained frustrating. **But these early models did prove useful enough that it was clear that the new technologies were not going away and militaries had better figure out how to use them most effectively**. It also became clear with such new technologies that their effects would ripple out, reshaping areas that range from the experience of the soldier at war and how the media reports war to asking troubling new questions about the ethics and laws of war. Much the same is just starting to happen with our unmanned systems today. And, deployment of UAVs is set to double in 2011, despite controversy over their legality under Customary International Law Chris Jenks, Chief of the International Law Branch Office of The Judge Advocate General, 20 09 , University of North Dakota Law Review, “Law From Above: Unmanned Aerial Systems, Use Of Force, And The Law Of Armed Conflict” http://www.law.und.nodak.edu/LawReview/issues/web_assets/pdf/85-3/85NDLR649.pdf In September 2009, the United States Air Force (USAF) graduated its first pilot training class that did not receive flight training.1 These pilots are not headed for the cockpit but to the controls of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS). In 2009, the USAF trained more UAS pilots than fighter or bomber pilots2 in an attempt to meet what the former commander of United States Central Command labeled an “insatiable need” for UAS .3 While the UAS “surge” began under President Bush, President Obama is expanding both UAS acquisition and their use.4 The proposed 2011 defense budget would double UAS production and for the first time the USAF will order more UAS than manned aircraft.5 While UAS are now ubiquitous on the modern day battlefield,6 the disagreement and controversy surrounding them continues to grow. One commentator referred to UAS as “armed robotic killers,”7 while a senior analyst at Human Rights Watch described them as the weapon system most capable of destruction he has ever seen.8 Much of the recent controversy and associated disagreement involves armed UAS launching missile attacks at al Qaeda and Taliban targets in the northwest portion of Pakistan.9 The disagreements manifest themselves in varying conclusions on the legality of a given UAS strike in Pakistan. Yet, that overt disagreement on the answer to the legality question masks that the various participants in the discussion are utilizing wholesale different methodologies and talking past each other in the process. Some speak in terms of how the United Nations Charter governs the overarching question of legality ; others claim that the Charter provides only some of the framework; and still others posit that the Charter does not meaningfully apply at all. 10 This divergence leads to correspondingly varied answers as to what extent the law of armed conflict (LOAC) or human rights law applies to the use of force through the United States engaging targets in Pakistan. These answers range from the characterization of the conflict in Pakistan as a war and UAS strikes as “just the killing of the enemy, wherever and however found” to the same strike being labeled extrajudicial killings, targeted assassination, and outright murder Thus, the Plan- The United States Supreme Court should rule that the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Afghanistan violates Customary International Law. Advantage 1 is Customary International Law Drone attacks violate CIL stipulation of self defense Sikander Ahmed Shah, Assistant Professor of Law and Policy, LUMS University, Lahore, Pakistan, 7-21- 10, Washington University Global Studies Law Review “War on Terrorism: Self Defense, Operation Enduring Freedom, and the Legality of U.S. Drone Attacks in Pakistan” Lexis The United States cannot justify the legitimacy of its drone attacks on Pakistani territory on the basis of self defense. Even if one were to assume that such use of force is legitimate, the United States is still required to comply with the customary international law requirements of immediacy, necessity, and proportionality under the Caroline paradigm. n320 For purposes of immediacy and necessity, the customary rule laid out by Daniel Webster requires an instant and overwhelming danger leaving no choice of means or moments of deliberation for a state to respond. n321 The United States does not yet find itself in such threatening circumstances when it conducts drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal belt region. In fact, such attacks are conducted after intensive intelligence gathering and deliberation and have continued for years. n322 There is no instant or overwhelming danger posed to the United States if it does not conduct such attacks in Pakistan. These attacks are in fact preemptive [*123] strikes that aim to weaken al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the long-term by neutralizing their leadership, and thus, are just one of the many measures that the United States undertakes to achieve its inchoate long-term objectives that have little to do with self defense as recognized under international law. This determination is further evinced from the presence of the controversial Bush Doctrine and the 2006 U.S. National Security Strategy, n323 both of which disregard principles of international law constraining the use of force. n324 The U.S. use of force in self defense in the form of targeted drone strikes on Pakistan is impermissible because they are unnecessary, as other, peaceful means of facing the threat have not been exhausted given the time parameters involved. After years of bombing FATA with the Government of Pakistan officially and consistently protesting such attacks, the U.S. administration has only recently formally shown a willingness to conduct joint operations with Pakistan in these tribal areas. n325 Even though Pakistan has rejected this particular offer with its lopsided terms, it has confirmed that it is more than willing to conduct such targeted strikes itself when provided with the requisite intelligence, drones, and missiles. n326 The United States, however, has ignored this proposition and continues to violate the territorial integrity of Pakistan without showing any real willingness to negotiate a compromise under which Pakistan is given a real chance to effectively deal with militarism thriving within its borders, absent U.S. armed unilateralism. [*124] As has been historically proven, the United States also has the capability of coercing the Pakistani Government, and more importantly, its armed forces, n327 which have until recently tackled the Taliban threat rather sluggishly, to deal more effectively with militarism. The Pakistani Government and military are heavily dependent on U.S. economic and military aid for survival. n328 The United States holds immense diplomatic sway with Pakistan, and it also can successfully use the S.C. mechanism to pressure Pakistan into using force more aggressively against militant extremists under the mandate of international law, such as through the promulgation of a binding S.C. resolution under Chapter VII. The use of force is unnecessary in self defense when, rather than diminishing the dangers involved, the gravity of the threat posed is augmented by the use of force. U.S. drone attacks exacerbate the threat of terrorism, both from a regional and global perspective, and intensely strengthen militancy and insurgency in the troubled Pak-Afghan region. The War on Terror that prompted U.S. military adventurism in the region has proven to be a blessing in disguise for extremist and militants groups. U.S. attacks have given birth to an unprecedented level of resentment and anger among the tribal populace, which has been craftily exploited by fanatical factions through organized propaganda to successfully recruit thousands of disillusioned and impressionable young fighters for their causes. Consequently, these burgeoning violent movements embedded in religious fanaticism have dangerously engulfed many parts of Pakistan propagating insurgency, civil unrest, and terrorism. U.S. drone attacks are no different in causing this level of resentment and anger, and they have provided impetus to extremist recruitment and [*125] bolstered the resolve of militants. The resulting aggressiveness is apparent from recent terrorist attacks conducted by extremists in secure metropolises of Pakistan distant from the tribal areas, as retribution for the drone attacks. n329 For instance, Baitullah Mehsud, the deceased leader of Tehrik-e-Taliban, n330 the umbrella organization of all Pakistani Taliban outfits, had threatened that his fighters would continue to undertake terrorist attacks in secure parts of Pakistan on a weekly basis as reprisal for the continuing drone attacks. n331 This proxy fight between the United States and the militants within Pakistan is dangerously destabilizing the country and increasing the dangers of international terrorism to all nations, including the United States. Therefore, the necessity of the drone attacks for eliminating the threat of terrorism emanating out of the tribal areas of Pakistan is highly questionable. It must also be understood that U.S. drone operations in Pakistan are not proportional in relation to the wrong it suffered. n332 It is inappropriate to measure the wrong suffered by the United States on the fateful day of September 11 in relation to the drone attacks being carried out in Pakistan today nearly a decade later, not only because of intervening events and the long passage of time, but also because of the partial disconnect between those responsible for the September 11 attacks and those being targeted. In any case, the attacked state of Pakistan was not itself involved in the commission of the September 11 attacks on the United States. If the wrong suffered is being measured in terms of the costs borne by the United States and its armed forces associated with its occupation embattling insurgents and militants in the restive regions of Afghanistan bordering Pakistan, then the author is highly skeptical on whether such wrong could be classified as legally sufficient for purposes of a legitimate exercise of the right of self defense against Pakistan under international law. [*126] Additionally, if the U.S. drone attacks are carried out on a preemptive basis against the amorphous threat of global terrorism, then the wrong has yet to come into existence or is at best conceptual in nature. Moreover, global terrorism is, by definition, a wrong suffered by the entire world community, and if any one state was allowed to use it as a basis to attack other states then the whole system of international relations would risk disintegration. U.S. drone attacks are also not proportional "in terms of the nature and amount of force employed to achieve the objectives and goals." n333 First, goals and objectives must be valid and relate to the removal of an actual danger posed. As mentioned, the goals alluded to by the U.S. administration as justification for carrying out drone attacks are both undefined and incapable of achievement though armed aggression. n334 Second, the intensity and frequency with which these drone attacks have been carried out over the past three years have resulted in the unnecessary killing of hundreds of civilians and needless destruction of infrastructure. n335 Importantly, drone attacks are carried out by unmanned robotically controlled planes whose targeted strikes are determined by intelligence, which has often proved quite faulty in retrospect. n336 Without a pilot, who potentially has a better ability to distinguish between civilian and militant targets at the time of a strike, drones lack the capability to, on site, factor in the fact that civilians and militants reside coterminously in the vicinity of the planned attack. This explains why "between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 [strikes] were able to hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders, besides perishing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians. The success percentage of the U.S. Predator strikes thus comes to not more than six per cent." n337 International transgressions undermine United States’ credibility Sikander Ahmed Shah, Assistant Professor of Law and Policy, LUMS University, Lahore, Pakistan, 7-21- 10, Washington University Global Studies Law Review “War on Terrorism: Self Defense, Operation Enduring Freedom, and the Legality of U.S. Drone Attacks in Pakistan” Lexis For these critics, it is troubling that the United States bypassed international institutional involvement when it had been directly affected by the events of September 11, because this time there was United Nations ("U.N.") sanction of the U.S. position, and international consensus on a suitable course of action was forthcoming. n42 For critics, the status of the United States as a hyper power has allowed it to consider itself as not effectively constrained by or subject to rules of international law, even when it has historically enjoyed a preferential status both legally and in practice within international governmental systems. n43 The United States, however, mandates that other nations be bound by the same norms of international law that it routinely violates. n44 This approach undermines the role and effectiveness of important multilateral systems both in the short and long term. n45 Critics maintain that U.S. foreign policy is, broadly speaking, blindly driven by a dangerous interplay of self-interest and short term objectives that encourages it to act paternalistically and also to unwarrantedly intrude into the domestic affairs of foreign nations. n46 These unholy alliances between the United States and foreign governments eventually give birth to mutual mistrust and may bring about radical regime changes or even ignite revolutions. n47 Frequently, U.S. allies transform into foes, or at the very best, the United States is dissatisfied with the performance of these governments and their inability to deliver on its mandate. n48 U.S. transgressions of international law in the form of reprisals are often a result of such processes taking a turn for the worse and are thus a consequence of its own creation. These observations are substantiated with regard to the use of force when the United States acts either preemptively or in the form of reprisals against governments or other actors who were created or supported by the United States, not far in the distant past, for the pursuit of ulterior motives. n49

Ruling on CIL on recent issues is critical to setting precedents for global modeling Anthea Elizabeth Roberts, Lecturer of ILAW at London School Economics, 01 (“TRADITIONAL AND MODERN APPROACHES TO CUSTOMARY INTERNATIONAL LAW: A RECONCILIATION”, 2001, pdf) When a state violates an existing rule of customary international law, it undoubtedly is “guilty” of an illegal act, but the illegal act itself becomes a disconfirmatory instance of the underlying rule. The next state will find it somewhat easier to disobey the rule, until eventually a new line of conduct will replace the original rule by a new rule. 266 The number of disconfirmatory acts that are required before the breach of an old rule will constitute the basis for a new rule depends on the extent of previous practice and the importance of the moral principles involved. Moral customs, and in particular jus cogens norms, are unlikely to be undermined by contrary practice. Furthermore, well-established customs will demonstrate relative resistance to change because new state practice or opinio juris must be weighed against a wealth of previous contrary practice. 267 However, a custom can change quickly in the face of very strong state practice or opinio juris, particularly if the rule was uncertain or still developing. 268 Recent practice may also carry proportionately greater weight than past practice in determining the present or future state of custom. Customs can develop or change in light of the recognition of new moral considerations in international law. For example, the customary prohibition against genocide stemmed from the recognition of human rights as a substantive aim of international law after World War II. Likewise, currently nonbinding aspirations may harden into legally binding custom in the future. For example, D’Amato and Sudhir Chopra have argued that whales may have an emerging right to life under customary international law. 269 Thus, the content of custom can change in view of new practice and principles in international law. The fluidity of custom is demonstrated by the present debate over whether NATO’s intervention in Kosovo has formed the basis for an emerging customary right to unilateral humanitarian intervention. In the Nicaragua case, the Court found a general customary pro- hibition on intervention in other states but held that “[r]eliance by a State on a novel right or an unprecedented exception to the principle might, if shared in principle by other States, tend towards a modification of customary international law.” 270 Whether states have suc- cessfully created an exception to the general custom of nonintervention will depend in part on whether they “justified their conduct by reference to a new right of intervention or a new exception to the principle of its prohibition.” 271 It will also depend on whether the action provokes protest by other states or is emulated or met with acquiescence. However, if a state prima facie breaches a custom but “defends its conduct by appealing to exceptions or justi- fication contained within the rule itself, then whether or not the State’s conduct is in fact justifiable on that basis, the significance of that attitude is to confirm rather than to weaken the rule.” 272

Customary International Law is key to global democracy – current system forces smaller countries’ laws to be determined not by the people, but by larger countries Eyal Benvenisti, Professor Human Rights Law at Tel Aviv University, 08 (“RECLAIMING DEMOCRACY: THE STRATEGIC USES OF FOREIGN AND INTERNATIONAL LAW BY NATIONAL COURTS “, JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Vol.102:241, 2008, pdf) Is it legitimate for national courts to reach out beyond their respective jurisdictions and forge collective policies that diverge from their governments’ positions? Is it legitimate for them to rely on international law and comparative constitutional law, rather than using the norms pro- mulgated by the domestic democratically elected bodies? Critics have thus far addressed the second, the more apparent, question. Foreign law, the familiar argument goes, has little role to play in a sovereign democracy. The criticism of the more recent and less apparent practice of using foreign law to form interjudicial coalitions can easily be imagined: the courts are over- stepping their authority by preempting their respective political branches. These arguments build upon the theme of the countermajoritarian dif ﬁculty, the “obsession” or “ﬁxation” 151 mainly of U.S. constitutional theory since the publication of Alexander Bickel’s The Least Dan- gerous Branch. 152 Evidence of interjudicial cabals aimed at limiting the discretion of govern- ments—as exempliﬁed in the migration context—seems to add to this apprehension. The analysis in this article, however, suggests that the concern about the countermajoritar- ian dif ﬁculty is unwarranted, at least in those spheres of judicial action aimed at strengthening domestic democratic deliberations. The debate over the extent to which courts can legitimately get involved in the business of the political branches, especially in the context of reviewing leg- islation, has proceeded on the assumption that the polity is free to make up its mind according to its citizens’ wishes. Citizens could shape their lives through participation in the political pro- cess. But in an era of global interdependency, polities often lose this ability, and external actors seize the opportunity to shape outcomes as they see ﬁt. With the possible exception of the United States, most nations have yielded signiﬁcant parts of their policymaking to external forces. Foreign governments and private actors increasingly leave national governments and legislatures little choice but to defer to their demands. The responses of governments and leg- islatures to the post-9/11 counterterrorism measures and the failure of governments of devel- oping countries to protect the environment, as described above, exemplif y this predicament. National courts —again, with the exception of the U.S. courts, which for obvious reasons do not share these concerns— react to what they identif y as the weakness of the political branches in the face of pressure, especially from external sources, to comply with standards imposed by strong global powers or market forces. To the extent that courts are doing their utmost to resus- citate this process, resorting to foreign and international law to resurrect domestic democracy and compel domestic deliberation , the Bickelian type of criticism is simply misguided. By seek- ing to coordinate their stances, national courts are not motivated by utopian globalism, but quite the contrary: their coordination ef forts are aimed at promoting domestic interests and concerns. This role is thoroughly justiﬁed in democratic terms. Interjudicial coordination can potentially contribute to the strengthening of democratic decision making within international institutions. The available checks and balances to ensure the accountability of such institutions—which include self-regulation and “peer review” opportunities —leave much to be desired. 153 A coalition of national courts, less dependent on governments than many of the current alternatives, may prove a welcome addition to a robust global system of checks and balances and nurture transnational deliberations. This interjudicial collective self-empowerment obviously raises concerns: ultimately, courts are also delegated institutions; they may suf fer from class, gender, and ethnicity biases; they do not have the expertise necessary to assess and manage risks; and their intervention could burden global governance. These concerns, well-known in the debate about the legitimacy of domestic judicial review, are equally valid in the context of transnational review. Courts are aware of these concerns and at times exhibit self-restraint. As the discussion on migration policies dem- onstrated, the French and German courts took the public debate within their polities seriously and “defected” from the judicial coalition over refugee status. Obviously, judicial self-restraint is not always effective, and excess can be expected. Overall, however, it cannot be denied that national courts bring to the emerging global deliberative process a voice that might not be ade- quately heard but for their insistence. Democracy solves nuclear and biological warfare, genocide, and environmental destruction Diamond Hoover Institution, Stanford University 19 95, Larry, December, PROMOTING DEMOCRACY IN THE 1990S, 1p. http://www.carnegie.org//sub/pubs/deadly/diam_rpt.html // Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty and openness. The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built. Advantage 2 is Pakistan Scenario 1 is Relations The US-Pakistan relations are at the brink of collapse – public resentment in both countries Maleeha lodhi, Former Ambassador of Pakistan to US, 09 (“the Future of pakistan-U.S. Relations: opportunities and challenges “, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, April, 2009, http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA497485) Relations between Pakistan and the United States are today defined by a paradox. Never have ties been more vital for both countries. But never has the relationship been so mired in mutual mistrust and suspicion. Both countries acknowledge the crucial importance of each other for the attainment of their respective national objectives. Pakistan is pivotal for the achievement of the key U.S. national security goals of defeating terrorism and stabilizing Afghanistan. But its importance goes beyond that. Pakistan is the world’s second largest Muslim nation and its newest nuclear power. It has a critical role to play in many of the pressing issues of our time, such as **countering violent extremism, bolstering democracy and development, addressing issues of international peacekeeping** (as the larg- est contributor to United Nations troops), **encouraging nuclear nonproliferation, and improving relations between the West and the Islamic world**. For its part, Pakistan needs the help of the international community, especially the United States, to enable it to stage a strategic recovery from the twin, intercon- nected crises of security and solvency, regions bordering Afghanistan. Despite sharing a number of common goals, the Pakistan-U.S. relationship is characterized today by mutual frustration and a growing trust gap. While the leader- ships of **the two countries** place a high value on their ties, and **acknowledge the dangers of a collapse of their relationship,** their publics and legislatures do not share these perceptions and increasingly view the other with suspicion and depict one another as an unreliable ally. In a recent poll, most Pakistanis did not believe the Pakistan-U.S. security cooperation had benefited Pakistan. According to a Gallup Poll, Americans view Pakistan as among their five least favorite nations, along with Iran and North Korea. Burden of History These mutually negative perceptions can be ascribed in part to the burden of history. This, after all, has been a rollercoaster relationship, characterized by an erratic stop-go pattern in which Pakistan has swung between being Amer- ica’s most “allied ally” and “most sanctioned friend” to a “disenchanted partner.” Three things stand out about the troubled relationship from a historical perspective. First, relations have lurched between engagement and second, these swings have occurred under both U.S. Republican and Democratic administrations, and on the Pakistani side, under democratic and military governments alike. Third, the episodic nature of ties has reflected Washington’s changing strategic priories changing strategic priories changing strategic priori- ties and shifts in global geopolitics, which in turn have reinforced the popular perception in Pakistan that the country is seen from a tactical perspective, and not in terms of its intrinsic im- portance. When U.S. geostrategic interests so dic- tated, relations with Pakistan warmed, and aid and support followed. But when U.S. priorities shifted or when Pakistan pursued an independ- ent stance, as, for example, on the nuclear issue, it led to long periods of discriminatory sanctions. This entrenched the view in Pakistan, at both the official and public levels, that Washington has pursued relations with Islamabad on a transac- tional and not a consistent or predictable basis. The post-9/11 transformation in ties, after over a decade of multiple sanctions, opened up a new chapter of intense engagement and cooperation. But in a repeat of the past pattern, the relationship continued to have a single focus (that is, security). The scope and nature of rela- tions remained narrow. The imperative of build- ing a longer term and broad-based relationship was not addressed. Even though official-speak often referred to the strategic nature of ties, there was a large gap between declaratory statements and operational reality. Window of Opportunity **This leads to the present state of Pakistan- U.S. relations. A new administration in Wash- ington and a democratic government in Islam- abad provide a rare and opportune moment to redefine and reset the relationship,** learn from past mistakes, and empower the bilateral relationship with the capacity to negotiate common challenges. Changing the terms of the engagement may in fact determine the extent and quality of cooperation that Washington and Islamabad are able to mobilize to address complex regional problems. Relations have a bilateral dimension and a regional dimension that relate to Afghanistan. Both dimensions have to be addressed to recraft and strengthen relations. There is need for a Pakistan policy that is not just a function of Washington’s Afghanistan policy. Formulating policy only through the prism of Afghanistan ig- nores the reality that Pakistan is a much bigger and strategically more important country. President Barack Obama’s enunciation of his administration’s new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan after a 2-month interagency review seeks to address both of these dimensions but places greater emphasis on the role that Pakistan is expected to play in eliminating al Qaeda and stabilizing Afghanistan. This urges the need for the two countries to jointly frame common objectives and fash- ion concrete plans to implement them while launching efforts, in a spirit of candor and openness, to reconcile their differences and remove mutual suspicions. The two countries share a number of common objectives. These include defeating terror- ism and eliminating violent extremism from the region, strengthening peace and stability in nuclear South Asia, and promoting the economic and social development of Pakistan to strengthen its long-term stability as a strategic priority. Further expansion of drones threatens to undermine US-Pakistan Relations – Government and the people feel their sovereignty has been soiled Trend News, leading news provider in the Caucasus and Caspian region, 10 ('Drone attacks endanger US-Pakistan relations', Trend News (No specific author), January 14th, 2010, http://en.trend.az/regions/world/ocountries/1617888.html) [|__Pakistan__] has warned the [|__US__] that drone attacks on its soil would endanger the two countries' ties, urging a halt in the air raid s, [|Press TV] reported. "I said despite the partnership that we enjoy, Pakistan cannot, and Pakistan feels that it will undermine our relationship, if there's expansion of drones and if there are operations on ground ," Foreign Minister [|__Shah Mehmood Qureshi__] told at a press conference on Wednesday after meeting the visiting US Special Representative for [|Afghanistan] and [|Pakistan] [|Richard Holbrooke]. Qureshi also slammed the US's new air passenger screening measures and said he had discussed "red lines" in the meeting with Holbrook, the Press TV correspondent reported. " The people of Pakistan feel that innocent people are treated like terrorists, " he said about the inclusion of Pakistani citizens flying to US for body-screening at airports. The minister also called the measure regrettable. Holbrooke is in Pakistan on a three-day visit to meet the country's top political and military officials as well as tribal elders. Washington has stepped up its drone attacks against Pakistan's tribal regions in recent weeks. Pakistan has repeatedly said such attacks violate the country's sovereignty and fuel anti-American sentiments among Pakistani people. Public resentment with US drones threatens to break down US-Pakistan Relations – the country no longer views itself as an ally, but rather a tool of the US Maleeha lodhi, Former Ambassador of Pakistan to US, 09 (“the Future of pakistan-U.S. Relations: opportunities and challenges “, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, April, 2009, http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA497485) President Obama’s decision to send an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan not only contradicts his stated aim to talk to the Taliban, but it is also fraught with risk for Pakistan. The bulk of the troops will be deployed in the insur- gency belt in southern and eastern Afghanistan. Increased military engagement on Pakistan’s border would escalate rather than diminish the threat of instability in Pakistan for several reasons. A military surge could lead to an influx of militants and al Qaeda fighters into Pakistan and increase the vulnerability of U.S.–North At- lantic Treaty Organization supply routes through the country, as supply needs will likely double. It may also lead to the influx of Afghan refugees as they seek to escape the worsening fighting. And finally, all this could produce a spike in violence with terrorist reprisals expected to intensify. An even more significant worry for Islama- bad is the military escalation signaled by the focus on rooting out “safe havens” in Pakistan’s border region and redefining the war as a regional conflict. President Obama’s suggestion that if Pakistan did not take action, the United States would step in, implies a widening of the war into western Pakistan even if the President later explained that he would consult Pakistani leaders before terrorist hideouts were pursued. All this has still left open the prospect of increased U.S. Predator strikes against targets in FATA, **a risky course since this action will only inflame public opinion in Pakistan and have destabilizing effects. Drone attacks have already evoked condemnation from the National, Frontier, and Balochistan Assemblies**. Any policy that is vehemently opposed by the people will ultimately be unsustainable. The tactical gains claimed from these strikes must be set against the costs in terms of undermin- ing strategic goals. Such a perilous approach should be abjured in favor of the only viable one, which is based on the sharing of intelligence and technol- ogy, to enable Pakistan and its forces to address the terrorist threat in its own territory. The United States should show strategic patience as well as respect for a sovereign country’s red lines in deeds, and not just in words. Moreover, an approach that attempts to deal with al Qaeda only militarily ignores the fact that the organization has to be defeated in the ideological battle because it is ideology that finds followers who are ever ready to replace those “taken out.” A counter–al Qaeda strat- egy must attempt to neutralize the network’s ideological appeal in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other parts of the world where it finds recruits and allies. Al Qaeda is now more of an idea. Terrorist operations are increasingly conducted mostly by self-generated “affiliates” drawn from young men in various countries who have been radicalized by al Qaeda’s ideology. The notion of fighting al Qaeda only militarily will remain only a partial response. Islamabad and Washington will also need to close the gap in their perceptions over how they identify the strategic center of gravity of the threat that has to be addressed. Islamabad has long argued that the core of the problem and its solution lies in Afghanistan while acknowledging that support for the insurgency is provided by fighters using Pakistani soil. In Washington’s view, it is the safe havens in Paki- ’s view, it is the safe havens in Paki- s view, it is the safe havens in Paki- stan that are now the central front of the battle to defeat international terrorism. Islamabad believes that U.S. strategy downplays the fact that the situation in FATA is the consequence of the collapse of security in Afghanistan and not the other way around. Islamabad also finds the notion of treating Pakistan and Afghanistan’s border region as a the notion of fighting al Qaeda only militarily will remain only a partial response “single theater of combat” unsettling, not least because the security trajectories, causes, contexts, and capacities are so different and because it would be a grave error to think one size fits both. If the flawed concept of “AfPak” has achieved anything so far, it is to unite the militants on both sides of the border in a new alliance to resist the troop reinforcements in Afghanistan ordered by President Obama. The United States recognizes that the attain- ment of its redefined goals depends critically on Pakistan’s stability. That is the rationale for the economic and security assistance that President Obama has pledged to give Pakistan. He has urged Congress to pass the bill sponsored by Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar that authorizes $1.5 billion in nonmilitary aid over the next 5 years. But Islamabad has taken strong exception to the proposed conditions and benchmarking of the aid, linking this to its counterterrorism perfor- mance. In stating that Washington will not provide a blank check to Pakistan, President Obama struck a note that is counterproductive. This stance rein- forces the transactional nature of the **relationship that Pakistanis resent, and it strengthens rather than breaks from the paradigm of treating Paki- stan as hired help rather than a valued ally**. The metrics that U.S. officials say are being developed in consultation with Congress for such benchmarking are already a source of friction in the relationship, recalling an unhappy history of legislative-driven sanctions. Senator Kerry’s remarks in an interview that these metrics might include checks on whether Pakistan is moving its forces away from its border with India to concentrate on the insurgent threat in the west will raise hackles in Islamabad. Any effort to impose conditions that aim to change Pakistan’s national security calculus would be misguided and doomed to fail. No country’s national security priorities or structures can be reconfigured from outside. The only way to change the country’s security paradigm is to engage with the sources of longstanding Pakistan-India tensions. Good relations between a strong US-Pakistan alliance is key to resolve the Kashmir issue between India and Pakistan – if left unresolved this issue will end in nuclear war Bruce Riedel, senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, 08 (“Pakistan and Terror: The Eye of the Storm”, The annals of the American academy of political and social science, July, 2008, sage journals) But this does not rule out an option that would involve a major effort to resolve the Kashmir problem on a more realistic basis. The basis for such an approach would be to complement the ongoing Indo-Pakistani bilateral dialogue. That dia- logue has already produced a series of confidence-building measures between the two countries, reopening transportation links, setting up hotlines between military commands, and holding periodic discussions at the foreign secretary level on all the issues that divide the two. Unfortunately, the dialogue has not seriously addressed the Kashmir issue because of the significant gulf between the two parties and India’s refusal to negotiate while still a target of terrorist attacks planned and organized in Pakistan. The United States has been reluctant to engage more actively in the Kashmir dispute in light of the Indian posture that outside intervention is unwarranted and that Kashmir is a purely bilateral issue. Faced with the likelihood of India’s rejection of outside intervention, American diplomacy has put the Kashmir prob- lem in the “too hard” category and left it to simmer. The results are all too pre- dictable. The Kashmir issue periodically boils over, and the United States and the international community have to step in to try to prevent a full-scale war. This was the case during the Kargil crisis in 1999, after the terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in 2001, and again in 2002 when India mobilized its army for war on the Pakistani border. A unique opportunity for quiet American diplomacy to help advance the Kashmir issue to reach a better, more stable solution may exist in 2009. The U.S.- India nuclear deal agreed to during President Bush’s July 2005 visit to South Asia should create a more stable and enduring basis for U.S.-Indian relations than at any time in history. The deal removes the central obstacle to closer strategic ties between Washington and New Delhi: the nuclear proliferation problem, which has held back the development of their relationship for two decades. In the new era of U.S.-Indian strategic partnership, Washington should be more prepared to press New Delhi to be more flexible on Kashmir. It is clearly in the American interest to try to defuse a lingering conflict that has generated global terrorism and repeatedly threatened to create a full-scale military con- frontation on the subcontinent. It is also in India’s interest to find a solution to a conflict that has gone on for too long. Since Kargil, India has been more open to an American role in Kashmir because it senses Washington is fundamentally in favor of a resolution on the basis of the status quo, which favors India. The United States currently has better relations with both India and Pakistan than at any time in the past several decades. The U.S. rapprochement with India, begun by President Clinton and advanced by President Bush, is now supported by an almost unique bipartisan consensus in the American foreign policy estab- lishment and the Congress. At the same time, U.S.-Pakistani relations are stronger now than at any time since the Reagan years, and the sanctions that poi- soned U.S.-Pakistani ties for decades have been removed by legislation sup- ported by both Republicans and Democrats. It is a unique moment. A Kashmir solution would have to be based around a formula for both making the line of control a permanent and normal international border (perhaps with some minor modifications) and creating a permeable frontier between the two parts of Kashmir so that the Kashmiri people could live more normal lives. A spe- cial condominium might be created to allow the two constituencies to work together on issues that are internal to Kashmir, such as transportation, the envi- ronment, sports, and tourism. It is unlikely that the two states will be able to reach such an agreement on their own given the history of mistrust that pervades both sides of the problem. A quiet American effort to promote a solution, led by the next U.S. president, is probably essential to any effort to move the parties toward an agreement. Resolution of the Kashmiri issue would go a long way to making Pakistan a more normal state and less preoccupied with India. It would also remove a major rationale for the army’s disproportionate role in Pakistani national security affairs, thus helping to restore genuine civilian democratic rule in the country. A resolution of the major outstanding issue between Islamabad and New Delhi would reduce the arms race between the two countries and the risk of nuclear conflict. And it would remove the need for Pakistan to find allies, such as the Taliban, LeT, and al Qaeda, to fight asymmetric warfare against India. Of course, it would not resolve all the tensions between the two neighbors or end the problem of the Taliban in Afghanistan. But more than anything else it would set the stage for a different era in the subcontinent and for more produc- tive interaction between the international community and Pakistan. The alternative is to let Kashmir simmer and avoid trying to find a means to advance the Indo-Pakistani dialogue. In the long run, this approach is virtually certain to lead to another crisis in the subcontinent. Sooner or later, the two countries will again find themselves on the precipice of war. In a worst-case sce- nario, **a terrorist incident** like the July 2006 metro bombings in Mumbai or the hijacking of IA 814 **could spark an Indian military response against targets in Pakistan allegedly involved in the planning and orchestration of terrorism. And that could lead to nuclear war.** **The next president must adopt a more sophisticated approach to Pakistan** and its terror nexus that goes beyond threats and sanctions, beyond commando raids and intelligence cooperation, beyond aid and aircraft sales. **It is time to come to grips with what motivates Pakistan’s behavior and make peace.** Indo-Pak nuclear war risks fast escalation and Nuclear Winter NTI, governed by an expert and influential Board of Directors with members from the United States, Russia, Japan, India, Pakistan, China, Jordan, Sweden, France and the United Kingdom, 10 (“Regional Nuclear War Could Devastate World Population, Report Warns “, NTI, March 16, 2010, http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20100315_4193.php) Computer modeling suggests a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would block out the sun with large amounts of airborne debris, disrupting global agriculture and leading to the starvation of around 1 billion people, //Scientific American// reported in its January issue (see //[|GSN]//, March 4). (Mar. 16) - //A 1971 French nuclear test at Mururoa Atoll. Climatic changes caused by an Indian-Pakistani nuclear conflict could lead to the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, computer models suggest (Getty Images).// The nuclear winter scenario assumes that cities and industrial zones in each nation would be hit by 50 bombs the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in World War II. Although some analysts have suggested a nuclear exchange would involve fewer weapons, researchers who created the computer models contended that the panic from an initial nuclear exchange could cause a conflict to quickly escalate. Pakistan, especially, might attempt to fire all of its nuclear weapons in case India's conventional forces overtake the country's military sites, according to Peter Lavoy, an analyst with the Naval Postgraduate School. The nuclear blasts and subsequent blazes and radiation could kill more than 20 million people in India and Pakistan, according to the article. Assuming that each of the 100 bombs would burn an area equivalent to that seen at Hiroshima, U .S. researchers determined that the weapons used against Pakistan would generate 3 million metric tons of smoke and the bombs dropped on India would produce 4 million metric tons of smoke. Winds would blow the material around the world, covering the atmosphere over all continents within two weeks. The reduction in sunlight would cause temperatures to drop by 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit for several years and precipitation to drop by one-tenth. The climate changes and other environmental effects of the nuclear war would have a devastating affect on crop yields unless farmers prepared for such an occurrence in advance. The observed effects of volcano eruptions, smoke from forest fires and other events support the findings of the computer modeling, the researchers said."A nuclear war could trigger declines in yield nearly everywhere at once, and a worldwide panic could bring the global agricultural trading system to a halt, with severe shortages in many places. Around 1 billion people worldwide who now live on marginal food supplies would be directly threatened with starvation by a nuclear war between India and Pakistan or between other regional nuclear powers," wrote Alan Robock, a climatology professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Owen Brian Toon, head of the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder."The combination of nuclear proliferation, political instability and urban demographics may constitute one of the greatest dangers to the stability of society since the dawn of humans," they added. "Only abolition of nuclear weapons will prevent a potential nightmare. Immediate reduction of U.S. and Russian arsenals to the same levels as other nuclear powers (a few hundred) would maintain their deterrence, reduce the possibility of nuclear winter and encourage the rest of the world to continue to work toward the goal of elimination" (Robock/Toon, //Scientific American///[|Rutgers University], January 2010). Scenario 2 is Pakistan Stability Pakistan is on the verge of collapsing due to internal instability – continued drone usage pushes the country over the brink by allowing the Taliban to expand their territory New Statesman, award-winning British magazine on Current affairs, world politics, and the arts, 10 (Samira Shackle, contributing writer, “Drone attacks: what is America doing in Pakistan?”, NewStatesman, January 7th, http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/01/drone-attacks-pakistan-policy) Seventeen people [|have been killed] in two US drone attacks in North Waziristan, a tribal area and Taliban stronghold in Pakistan. The body count is still growing from the attacks, targeted at a compound alleged to be a militant training camp. These latest attacks are part of an expansion authorised by Barack Obama last month, in line with the troop surge in Afghanistan. It's a policy that is anything but transparent. For the uninitiated -- what is going on? Well, the first attacks were launched by George Bush in 2004 as part of the "war on terror". They feature unmanned aerial vehicles firing Hellfire missiles (that's actually what they're called, I'm not embellishing) at militant targets (well, vaguely), and have increased in frequency since 2008. Top US officials are extremely enthusiastic about the drone attacks. They stated in March 2009 that the strikes had killed nine of al-Qaeda's 20 top commanders. High-profile successes such as the [|death of Baitullah Mehsud], the former Taliban commander in Pakistan, have no doubt given further encouragement. The attacks' status [|in international law] is dubious but, hey, when has that ever been a concern? Yet in terms of how the Pakistani public might receive it, it is an incredibly reckless policy for the US to pursue, and for the discredited Islamabad administration to allow. Since the strikes were stepped up in mid-2008, hundreds of people have been killed, many of them civilians. The American think tank the Brookings Institution [|released a report] in July 2008 saying that ten civilians perished in the attacks for every single militant killed. The UN Human Rights Council, too, delivered a [|highly critical report] last year. The investigator Philip Alston called on the US to justify its policy: Otherwise you have the really problematic bottom line, which is that the Central Intelligence Agency is running a programme that is killing significant numbers of people and there is absolutely no accountability in terms of the relevant international laws. Islamabad has publicly criticised the attacks on Pakistani territory as being counterproductive (though reports abound about the level of its complicity). Pakistan's foreign ministry today [|__issued an angry statement__] saying that US and Nato forces "need to play their role inside Afghanistan ". **Pakistan is a state on the verge of collapse. Amid poverty, the instability engendered by frequent terrorist attacks, and a corrupt and fragile government, the very extremism that the west's cack-handed Af-Pak strategy aims to counter has fertile ground on which to grow** **.** The Pakistani public is overwhelmingly and consistently opposed to the drone attacks. A [|poll for al-Jazeera] in August 2009 showed that 67 per cent of respondents "oppose drone attacks by the United States against the Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan". A poll in October for the [|International Republican Institute] found that 73 per cent of respondents opposed US military incursions into the tribal areas and 76 per cent did not think that Pakistan and the US should partner to carry out drone attacks. The "war on terror" is an increasingly meaningless phrase. But one thing is certain: **as** young Britons travel to Pakistan expressly for to attend training camps (frequently spurred on, I would argue, by their anger at western foreign policy) and **the Taliban continue to expand across the country, we cannot** -- to employ another overused phrase -- **afford to lose any more "hearts and minds". The escalation of drone attacks does just that**. Banning drones stops Pakistan from destabilizing – fueling of radicals prohibits Pakistan to maintain power and influence over the region Maleeha lodhi, Former Ambassador of Pakistan to US, 09 (“the Future of pakistan-U.S. Relations: opportunities and challenges “, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, April, 2009, []) Terrorism and Extremism President Obama’s new strategy acknowledges new strategy acknowledges new strategy acknowledges Pakistan’s pivotal importance in achieving the goal of defeating terrorism and its stability as the key to regional and global security. Before considering the implications of Wash- ington’s policy review, it is important to examine how and why Islamabad’s security challenges have intensified over the years. This will help to highlight the different narratives of the two coun- tries about how we have reached the present point. The years 2007 and 2008 were the deadliest in Pakistan’s history, with a record number of suicide bombings and casualties from terrorist violence. According to one unofficial estimate, 6,000 lives were lost last year alone in bombings and terrorist attacks. Since 2001, 15,000 people have been killed in terrorist violence. The deterioration of the security situation in Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan and the challenge of rising militancy are the cu- mulative outcome of the double blowback effect. First was the blowback from the post-1979 joint struggle that Pakistan waged with the U.S.-led international coalition against the Soviet occu- pation. This famously relied on Islamic fighters to eject the Russians from Afghanistan. This war of unintended consequences bequeathed to Pakistan a witches’ brew of problems that continue to plague the nation today, weakening the traditional fabric of society in its western provinces. The explosive legacy of the Afghan jihad included militancy and violent extremism, millions of Afghan refugees, and the exponential growth of madrassas, narcotics, and prolifera- tion of arms. The most dangerous aspect of this legacy was that some 40,000 Islamic radicals were imported from across the Arab world to fight alongside the Afghan mujahideen. They later became the core of al Qaeda. The second blowback followed 9/11 and the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan. The 2001 intervention relied on the Tajik-dominated North- ern Alliance to oust the Pashtun Taliban regime, which provoked opposition from the Pashtun tribes that straddled both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border known as the Durand Line. The way the war was waged in Afghanistan, and especially the lack of any hammer and anvil strategy during the crucial military attack on Tora Bora, increasingly pushed al Qaeda militants and Taliban fight- ers into Pakistan’s frontier regions, where many melted away into Afghan refugee camps. The overmilitarized approach pursued in Afghanistan involved heavy reliance on aerial bombings and high collateral damage of civilian casualties. This fueled support for the growing insurgency and gave the Taliban a rationale to rally traditional resistance against foreign occu- pation. The slow and under-resourced recon- struction effort stymied any significant cam- paign to win hearts and minds while corruption and ineffectual governance widened the gap between Kabul and the countryside, especially in the Pashtun south and east. Lack of clarity about the goals pursued by coalition forces in the past 7 years and the inabil- ity to distinguish between al Qaeda and Taliban began to result in the growing confusion about the aims of the war effort. It also led to the grow- ing fusion between Pashtun nationalism and Muslim radicalism, which in turn strengthened the insurgency. The fatal distraction of the Iraq War and the consequential diversion of resources and attention compounded all these problems. The downward trajectory in Afghanistan caused a devastating fallout on Pakistan, espe- cially in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) where it spread militancy and radical- ized some of the tribes in South and North Waziristan. This in turn accentuated the threat of the Talibanization of Pakistan. Much like the war in Vietnam was pushed into Cambodia, the escalation of the military campaign and failure to contain and subdue the Taliban in Afghani- stan pushed the conflict into Pakistan’s tribal formulating policy only through the prism of Afghanistan ignores the reality that Pakistan is a much bigger and strategically more important country belt. **Meanwhile, intensified missile strikes by unmanned U.S. Predator drones inside Paki- stani border territory not only killed a number of al Qaeda targets, but also inflamed public opinion in the country, undercut Pakistan’s own counterinsurgency efforts, and further reinforced support from local tribes for the militants**. The deterioration in the security situation in FATA has been a consequence and not a cause of the collapse of security in Afghanistan. **It follows that containing the insurgency in Afghanistan, together with Pakistan’s help in curbing the support it receives from militants using its territory**, **would have a salutary effect in FATA and on its ability to defeat the Pakistani Taliban.** Once a disparate group, the Pakistani Taliban are now united by the goal of assisting the Afghan Taliban against the U.S. military surge expected in the coming months. Destabilized Pakistan provides a serious risk for a nuclear terrorist attack – Pakistan can’t protect the weapons and the destabilized region will allow for terrorists to operate freely to launch attacks Paul K. Kerr and Mary Beth Nikitin, Analysts in Nonproliferation, 10 (“Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation and Security Issues”, Congressional Research Service, February, 2010, [] [|opencrs.com]) Chronic political instability in Pakistan and the current offensive against the Taliban in the northwest of the country have called attention to the issue of the security of the country’s nuclear weapons. Some observers fear that Pakistan’s strategic nuclear assets could be obtained by terrorists, or used by elements in the Pakistani government. Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen described U.S. concern about the matter during a September 22, 2008, speech: To the best of my ability to understand it—and that is with some ability—the weapons there are secure. And that even in the change of government, the controls of those weapons haven't changed. That said, they are their weapons. They're not my weapons. And there are limits to what I know. Certainly at a worst-case scenario with respect to Pakistan, I worry a great deal about those weapons falling into the hands of terrorists and either being proliferated or potentially used. And so, control of those, stability, stable control of those weapons is a key concern. And I think certainly the Pakistani leadership that I've spoken with on both the military and civilian side understand that. U.S. officials continue to be concerned about the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons in a destabilized Pakistan. General David H. Petraeus, Commander, U.S. Central Command, testified March 31, 2009, that “Pakistani state failure would provide transnational terrorist groups and other extremist organizations an opportunity to acquire nuclear weapons and a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks.” That prevents extinction Alexander, professor and director of the Inter-University for Terrorism Studies in Israel and the United States, 03 **[** Yonah 8/25/03 The Washington Times, []] Last week's brutal suicide bombings in Baghdad and Jerusalem have once again illustrated dramatically that the international community failed, thus far at least, to understand the magnitude and implications of the terrorist threats to the very survival of civilization itself. Even the United States and Israel have for decades tended to regard terrorism as a mere tactical nuisance or irritant rather than a critical strategic challenge to their national security concerns. It is not surprising, therefore , that on September 11, 2001, Americans were stunned by the unprecedented tragedy of 19 al Qaeda terrorists striking a devastating blow at the center of the nation's commercial and military powers. Likewise, Israel and its citizens, despite the collapse of the Oslo Agreements of 1993 and numerous acts of terrorism triggered by the second intifada that began almost three years ago, are still "shocked" by each suicide attack at a time of intensive diplomatic efforts to revive the moribund peace process through the now revoked cease-fire arrangements (hudna). Why are the United States and Israel, as well as scores of other countries affected by the universal nightmare of modern terrorism surprised by new terrorist "surprises"? There are many reasons, including misunderstanding of the manifold specific factors that contribute to terrorism's expansion, such as lack of a universal definition of terrorism, the religionization of politics, double standards of morality, weak punishment of terrorists, and the exploitation of the media by terrorist propaganda and psychological warfare. Unlike their historical counterparts, contemporary terrorists have introduced a new scale of violence in terms of conventional and unconventional threats and impact. The internationalization and brutalization of current and future terrorism make it clear we have entered an Age of Super Terroris m (e.g . biological, chemical, radiological, nuclear and cyber ) with its serious implications concerning national, regional and global security concerns. Advantage 3 is Robowar Continued Reliance UAV’s to achieve military goals forces global airpower autonomization [Robert Sparrow, senior lecturer of philosophy and bioethics for Monash University, Spring 20 09 “Predators or Plowshares” IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE] The risk of accidental war trig- gered by the activities of UMS is only likely to increase in the future because the logic of the develop- ment of unmanned systems clearly points to their eventual deploy- ment in “fully autonomous” mode. Despite the insistence of military spokespeople that autonomous ro- bots will never be allowed to kill human beings [16], there are sig- nificant reasons to doubt that this promise will be kept. The satellite links and other communications infrastructure necessary to oper- ate UAVs remotely are an obvious weak point in the operations of these systems and are consequently a predictable target for the enemy’s countermeasures. Those systems that can continue to operate in the absence of these links have obvious military advantages. Indeed, systems that do not involve a human operator may possess advantages even where the robustness of communica- tions is not at issue. The limits of the human nervous system serve as a constraint on the capacities of manned systems. In a limited range of domains at least, comput- ers are capable of assessing a situ- ation and making a decision faster and more accurately than human beings [2, pp. 6–7]. As the technol- ogy involved in robotic weapons improves, eventually we will reach a point where whenever a manned and an unmanned weapon system go into combat against each other, the odds will strongly favor the unmanned system [1], [5]. Once this point is reached, warring na- tions will have to field autono- mous weapons systems or accept a severe military disadvantage. This prospect also establishes a signifi- cant incentive for advanced indus- trial powers to work towards the development of systems capable of reliable combat operations in the absence of a human operator. Autonomous airpower results in full-scale war [Robert Sparrow, senior lecturer of philosophy and bioethics for Monash University, Spring 20 09 “Predators or Plowshares” IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE] The development of long-range UMS capable of extended operations may make it possible for some states to maintain a permanent armed presence just outside the airspace and territorial waters of their potential enemies, in the form of “loitering” UMS. These forces might be capable of carrying out a devastating attack in a fashion that would allow their target very little time to respond. If an attack is suspected or seems imminent, there is a brief window of opportunity between possible con- tact and destruction available to de- termine whether one is under attack by UMS. This places states under significant pressure to mobilize their own forces, and increases the chance that war will occur in error. The widespread use of UMS may also increase the amount of contact between opposing forces during peacetime and so further multiply the opportunities for an accident or incident to escalate to conflict. Thus one can envision that, in the future, not only will strategic rivals patrol the limits of each other’s territories with squad- rons of UAVs , Unmanned Surface Vehicles ( USVs ), and UUVs ready to attack at a moment’s notice. But these systems may, in turn, be shadowed by further groups of systems poised to destroy them. In these circumstances, accidents or even mere uncertainty about the intentions of an enemy may trigger a full-scale conflict. Placing robots in space is likely to greatly exacerbate these difficulties [1]. Even short of further development, the current, futuristic nature of UAVs lowers the threshold for war and targeted killings [Robert Sparrow, senior lecturer of philosophy and bioethics for Monash University, Spring 20 09 “Predators or Plowshares” IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE] With the develop- ment of the Gen- eral Atomics MQ-1 Predator, robotic weapons came of age. The operations of this Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northern Africa in the last few years have given us a glimpse of the future of high-tech war [6], [14], [24 ]. It is a future in which thousands of miles separate those firing weapons from those whom they kill, in which joystick jockeys have replaced pi- lots and soldiers, and in which the psychological barriers to killing are greatly reduced by the distance be- tween weapon operators and their targets. Perhaps more importantly, it is a future in which wars are more likely, in which decisions about when weapons are fired and who they are fired at are increasingly in the hands of machines, and in which the public has little knowl- edge of—or control over—what is being done in its name. Finally, it is a future that is likely to come about not because it represents a better, less destructive, way of fighting war but because the dynamics driv- ing the development of unmanned weapon systems (UMS) are likely todictate that they be used more and more often. Terminator world by 2020. No doubt Tom Engelhardt, American journalist and author April 7, 20 09 , “Terminator Planet: Launching the Drone Wars” file:///Users/Jake/Desktop/drones%20pdf%27s%20uncut/tom_engelhardt_terminator_planet.html In other words, our drone wars are being fought with the airborne equivalent of cars with cranks, but the "race" to the horizon is already underway. By next year, some Reapers will have a far more sophisticated sensor system with 12 cameras capable of filming a two-and-a-half mile round area from 12 different angles. That program has been dubbed " Gorgon Stare", but it doesn't compare to the future 92-camera Argus program whose initial development is being funded by the Pentagon's blue-skies outfit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Soon enough, a single pilot may be capable of handling not one but perhaps three drones, and drone armaments will undoubtedly grow progressively more powerful and "precise." In the meantime, BAE Systems already has a drone four years into development, the Taranis, that should someday be "completely autonomous"; that is, it theoretically will do without human pilots. Initial trials of a prototype are scheduled for 2010. By 2020, so claim UAV enthusiasts, drones could be engaging in aerial battle and choosing their victims themselves. As Robert S. Boyd of McClatchy reported recently, "The Defense Department is financing studies of autonomous, or self-governing, armed robots that could find and destroy targets on their own. On-board computer programs, not flesh-and-blood people, would decide whether to fire their weapons ."It's a particular sadness of our world that, in Washington, only the military can dream about the future in this way, and then fund the "arms race" of 2018 or 2035. Rest assured that no one with a governmental red cent is researching the health care system of 2018 or 2035, or the public education system of those years.In the meantime, the skies of our world are filling with round-the-clock assassins. They will only evolve and proliferate. Of course, when we check ourselves out in the movies, we like to identify with John Connor, the human resister, the good guy of this planet, against the evil machines. Elsewhere, however, as we fight our drone wars ever more openly, as we field mechanical techno-terminators with all-seeing eyes and loose our missiles from thousands of miles away ("Hasta la Vista, Baby!"), we undoubtedly look like something other than a nation of John Connors to those living under the Predators. It may not matter if the joysticks and consoles on those advanced machines are somewhat antiquated; to others, we are now the terminators of the planet, implacable machine assassins .True, we can't send our drones into the past to wipe out the young Ayman al-Zawahiri in Cairo or the teenage Osama bin Laden speeding down some Saudi road in his gray Mercedes sedan. True, the UAV enthusiasts, who are already imagining all-drone wars run by "ethical" machines, may never see anything like their fantasies come to pass. Still, the fact that without the help of a single advanced cyborg we are already in the process of creating a Terminator planet should give us pause for thought... or not Robot warfare causes extinction Campbell IT Consultant 09 (H+ Magazine covers technological, scientific, and cultural trends, 5/19/9, Greg, Campbell “Robots in War: Is Terminator Salvation an Oxymoron?” http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/robots-war-terminator-salvation-oxymoron The beastly Terminator T-600 model is an eight-foot-tall brute, armed to the teeth and wrapped in rubber skin. Easy to spot at close range, the T-600s use their somewhat human-like appearance to get high-caliber weapons into striking range. Walking around with damaged rubber skin, the T-600s look like extras from a George Romero zombie movie. You're probably more familiar with the T-800 models – machines encased in living tissue indistinguishable from human beings – famously played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in leather jacket and shades in the 1984 classic, T he Terminator. Well... he's back ... the Governator's face digitally added to the latest installment in the franchise, Terminator Salvation, to once again portray the first series of T-800s through the magic of CGI. The twisty plot lines of the first three Terminator movies involve both time travel and timeline alteration. The terminators –- machines directed by the self-aware AI (artificial intelligence) computer network Skynet –- have the sole mission to completely annihilate humanity. A man named John Connor starts the Tech-Com resistance to defeat them and free humanity. Of course the machines are evil. And of course we fear for John Connor's life as he tries to save us and our progeny from a robotic war of annihilation. Such is the logic of Hollywood. Or... do we need to rethink this? The trailers for Terminator Salvation allude to a new character, Marcus Wright. He's a stranger whose last memory is of being human on death row. He starts to raise questions about the possibility of being “human” while encased in robotic terminator armor. In the new movie, this terminator-like bot with human memories may hold the key to the salvation of humankind. This puts a new spin on the popular notion of evil robots at war. Are our fears of evil robot uprisings with zombie-like T-600s justified? What are the real-world moral implications of using bots to fight a “just war” –- for example, if terminators had been around to help defeat Adolf Hitler during World War II? Is “terminator salvation” simply an ironic contradiction in terms, an oxymoron? Or can bots be programmed to make morally responsible decisions in war? Robots in War: Today's Reality Amy Goodman reported that three days after President Obama took office, an unmanned U.S. Predator drone fired missiles at houses in Pakistan’s Administered Tribal Areas. Twenty-two people were reported killed, including three children. According to a Reuters poll, the U.S. has carried out thirty such drone attacks on alleged al-Qaeda targets inside Pakistan since last summer, killing some 250 people. There has also been a dramatic increase in the use of ground robotics. When U.S. forces went into Iraq in 2003, they had zero robotic units on the ground. Now there are as many as 12,000. Some of the robots are used to dismantle landmines and roadside bombs, but a new generation of bots are designed to be fighting machines. One bot, known as SWORDS, can operate an M-16 rifle and a rocket launcher. In the new Terminator movie, the fictional Skynet computer network directs a variety of hunter killers robots: aerial and land-based-drones, as well as motorcycle-like Mototerminators, serpent-shaped Hydrobots, and the terrifying and gigantic Harvesters. Alarmingly, many of these bots exist in some form today -- drones like Predator and Reaper, the ground-based TALON, and iRobot's PacBots and BigDogs. P.W. Singer, author of Wired For War, who advised President Obama on science during the 2008 campaign, believes that we are witnessing the dawn of the robot warrior age. (See R.U. Sirius' upcoming interview with Peter Singer, later this week.) “Just look at the numbers,” says Singer. “We went into Iraq in 2003 with zero robots. Now we have 12,000 on the ground. They come in all shapes and sizes, from tiny machines to robots bigger than an 18-wheeler truck.” “There are ones that fit on my little finger and ones with the wingspan of a football field.” You can find many of them on YouTube. Parental guidance advised: BigDog – With a built-in computer that controls locomotion, BigDog is equipped with sensors that aid it in adapting to varying conditions. The sensors provide stereo vision, joint force, joint position and ground contact that aids in continuous movement. Most importantly, this bot is equipped with a laser gyroscope that aids in balance under extreme conditions. BigDog, still in the prototype phase, is capable of maintaining its balance while packing a payload of up to 340-pounds over inhospitable terrain. PacBot – About the size of a lawn mower, the PackBot mounts cameras and sensors, as well as a nimble arm with four joints. It moves using four “flippers.” These are tiny treads that can also rotate on an axis, allowing the small bot not only to roll forward and backward using the treads as a tank would, but also to flip its tracks up and down (it's sort of like a seal in motion) to climb stairs, rumble over rocks, squeeze down twisting tunnels, and even swim underwater. TALON – Made by Foster-Miller Inc., whose offices are a few miles from the better known robotics company iRobot’s, the TALON has been remodeled into a “killer app,” the Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System, or SWORDS. The new design allows users to mount different weapons on the bot, including an M-16 rifle, a machine gun, and a grenade or rocket launcher and easily swap them out. MARCbot (Multi-Function Agile Remote-Controlled Robot) – One of the smallest but most commonly used robots in Iraq, the MARCbot looks like a toy truck with a video camera mounted on a tiny antenna-like mast. Costing only $5,000, this miniscule bot is used to scout for enemies and to search under cars for hidden explosives. Predator – At 27 feet in length, this propeller-powered drone is just a bit smaller than a Cessna plane. Perhaps its most useful feature is that it can spend up to 24 hours in the air, at heights up to 26,000 feet. When the drone flies out of bases in the war zone, the human pilot and sensor operator are 7,500 miles away, flying the planes via satellite from a set of converted-single-wide trailers located mostly at Nellis and Creech Air Force bases in Nevada. Raven – Just over three feet long (there is an even smaller version called Wasp that carries a camera the size of a peanut), these little bots are tossed into the air by individual soldiers and fly just above the rooftops, transmitting video images of what’s down the street or on the other side of the hill. Medium-sized drones such as the Shadow circle over entire neighborhoods, at heights above 1,500 feet, to monitor for anything suspicious. The U.S. military is the biggest investor in robot soldiers. The Army's Future Combat Systems was budgeted to spend $240 billion over the next 20 years, but Secretary Robert Gates recent decision to whack $160 billion out of the program. Ever resourceful Army planners and defense contractors are looking for ways to cannibalize parts of the program to keep them going on a smaller budget. Singer is worried that in the rush to bring out ever more advanced systems, many lethal robots will be rolled out before they are ready. It's a chilling prospect. “Imagine a laptop armed with an M16 machine-gun, ” says Noel Sharkey, a professor of robotics and artificial intelligence at Sheffield University. One of the biggest concerns is that this growing army of robots could stray out of communication range. “Just imagine a rogue robot roaming off the battlefield and into a nearby village,” he says. “Without experts to shut it down, the results could be catastrophic. ” Robots in War: When Robots Decide for Themselves What happens when robots decide what to do on their own? One nightmare real-life incident was recently reported in the Daily Mail. “There was nowhere to hide,” one witness stated. “The rogue gun began firing wildly, spraying high explosive shells at a rate of 550 a minute, swinging around through 360 degrees like a high-pressure hose.” A young female officer rushed forward to try to shut the robotic gun down – but it was too late. “She couldn't, because the computer gremlin had taken over,” a witness later said. The rounds from the automated gun ripped into her and she collapses to the ground. By the time the robot has emptied its magazine, nine soldiers lay dead (including the woman officer). Another 14 were seriously injured. A government report later blamed the bloodbath on a “software glitch.” The robotic weapon was a computer-controlled MK5 anti-aircraft system, with two huge 35mm cannons. The South African troops never knew what hit them. Ultimately the complexity of coordinating an attack using advanced autonomous robotics technology like the MK5 will require a sophisticated computer network. The Terminator films depict the fictional Cyberdyne Corporation in Sunnyvale, California, that develops the Skynet network of AI supercomputers. Skynet initially replaces human beings as commercial and military aircraft pilots, but ultimately takes control of all other military weapons systems, including nuclear missiles and terminators. This leads to nuclear “Judgment Day” when a self-aware Skynet decides that humans are in the way. Here's another frightening real-world prospect: the U.S. military is currently in the process of developing a network of supercomputers as part of the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program. As the lead systems integrator for the FCS, The Boeing Company has a larger role than most prime contractors have had on previous defense projects. While the Army selected General Dynamics and BAE Systems to make robotic ground vehicles, Boeing received a contract award for the program’s computer network. The ground vehicles include an array of infantry carriers, reconnaissance, medical command and combat vehicles. The Army is evaluating the computer network, as part of a revised scaled-back plan due in September. The Department of Defense (DoD) is also financing studies of autonomous, or self-governing, armed robots that could find and destroy targets on their own. On-board computer programs, not flesh-and-blood people, would decide whether to fire their weapons. "The trend is clear – warfare will continue and autonomous robots will ultimately be deployed in its conduct, " says Ron Arkin, a robotics expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Arkin advocates the development of an ethical guidance system or “ethical governor” akin to the governors used to control steam engines. Only banning UAV’s under Customary International law can prevent the atrocities of post-human war Jutta Weber, Guest Professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen, 20 09 “Robotic Warfare, Human Rights & the Rhetorics of Ethical Machines” pcms_311_Weber_Robotic_Warfare.pdf As I already mentioned, one of the most pressing concerns about autonomous combat systems is that they might make going to war quite easy. Until now, in democracies a basic agreement in the population about going to war has to be achieved – or at least an disagreement has to be avoided. How will this change if war is conceived as a matter of pushing buttons from a remote place, without risk to one’s own soldiers? And what chances are taken and people killed if there is no one responsible for the killing of civilians or surrendering combatants? Also disobeying inhumane orders will no more happen in robot wars. This is (or was?) a crucial part of at least a bit more humane way of warfare. We know – for example – that human soldiers often point and shoot their guns in the air and not at the combatants. But robots will always do what they are programmed for. As autonomy of weapon systems on the one hand and responsibility of the soldiers for their own deeds on the other hand is contradictory in itself, robot wars could endanger the international law of war (Geneva Conventions etc.). The general introduction of robot weapons will possibly lead to a “destabilization of the military situation between potential opponents, arms races, and proliferation, and would endanger the international law of warfare.” (Altmann 2006) And at the same time, it is quite likely that advanced and capable autonomous killing systems will be 13deployed anyhow because one is afraid that they might be used by one’s enemy. Therefore it is highly necessary to ban autonomous weapon systems. Bans are not new. We have a ban of biological and of chemical weapons as well as of anti-personal mines in most European countries. If there could be an agreement that autonomous systems are in contradiction with the Geneva Conventions, further development, and deployment would have to be stopped. Since 2002, violations of the international laws of warfare, such as the Geneva Conventions, can also be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. In Germany, for example, there is a code of law, which enables the State Attorney? to open a lawsuit against suspects of war crimes or crimes against humanity in the cause of the international law of war.