The drawbacks of drones: The effects of UAVs on escalation and instability in Pakistan

Erik Gartzke and James Igoe Walsh
Additional contact information
Erik Gartzke: Department of Political Science, University of California at San Diego
James Igoe Walsh: Department of Political Science and Public Administration, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Journal of Peace Research, 2022, vol. 59, issue 4, 463-477

Abstract: Growing reliance on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the effort to combat militant groups has led to considerable debate about the consequences of this new mode of warfare. While critics have focused on the impact of civilian casualties on militant recruitment and the resulting use of terrorism, evidence suggests that ‘drones’ are paradoxically more effective in limiting civilian deaths compared to other forms of military force. This article demonstrates a different causal pathway connecting militant use of force to terrorist attacks. Drone strikes encourage militants to displace operations to urban centers. Confronted with unfamiliar terrain and greater government capacity, militants emphasize terrorist attacks against civilians. The article explores these dynamics in the longest running drone campaign, in Pakistan. While civilian casualties from drone strikes have no discernible effect on terrorism, strikes that kill militants increase terrorist attacks against civilians in urban settings, while failing to reduce attacks on government targets.

Keywords: drone strikes; insurgency; terrorism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00223433211044673 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:joupea:v:59:y:2022:i:4:p:463-477

DOI: 10.1177/00223433211044673

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Peace Research from Peace Research Institute Oslo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().