The Biden Administration’s New Policy on Drone Strikes
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2022
⏱️ 63 minutes
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Summary
Recently, Charlie Savage of the New York Times reported that the Biden administration had finalized a new policy governing drone strikes used in counterterrorism operations outside war zones. The policy tightens up rules established under the Trump administration—which themselves replaced an earlier guidance set out by President Obama. President Biden’s policy is the latest effort to calibrate America’s use of force in a 21st-century conflict outside the traditional battlefield.
To talk through Charlie’s reporting, Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down with him and Lawfare cofounder Bobby Chesney, who has closely observed this area of U.S. law and policy. They discussed how U.S. counterterrorism operations have changed in recent years, how Biden’s approach compares to the Obama and Trump policies before it, and the significance of these changes for U.S. counterterrorism going forward.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
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| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | The Obama administration was at pains to try to establish that with the policy guidance, |
| 0:40.0 | there wasn't really much of a gap between our law of armed conflict model |
| 0:44.0 | and their international human rights law model. |
| 0:47.0 | In one place where that would seem to be hard to establish, |
| 0:50.0 | would be with respect to whether or not you're allowed to use force |
| 0:53.0 | when the target is not on the verge of attacking someone, |
| 0:57.0 | and the human rights law model, you need that strict temporal immanence. |
| 1:01.0 | The use of the policy language containing the immanent threat |
| 1:05.0 | makes it sound like that window has been closed, |
| 1:08.0 | but as I explained the definition in actual practice, |
| 1:11.0 | there really is still quite a gap there. |
| 1:14.0 | I'm Quintedrassic, a senior editor at LawFair, |
| 1:17.0 | and this is the LawFair podcast, October 21st, 2022. |
| 1:23.0 | Recently, Charlie Savage of the New York Times reported that the Biden administration |
| 1:28.0 | had finalized a new policy governing drone strikes, |
| 1:31.0 | used in counterterrorism operations outside of war zones. |
... |
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