Taking the lead? Transatlantic attitudes towards lethal drone strikes

Abstract

While opinion polls indicate majorities of Americans support the use of lethal drone strikes for counterterrorism purposes, European publics generally are much less supportive. This article develops and tests several individual-level explanations for such attitudes among survey respondents in the United States and seven European countries, including six European ‘drone club’ member states. Evidence suggests that ideology and core policy beliefs shape respondent sentiment in clear and convincing ways. Moreover, preferences for the closeness of the European-American security partnership and the relevance of NATO indicate the importance of a shared transatlantic identity as additional determinants.

Keywords:

• drone strike
• public opinion
• transatlantic
• hierarchical model of preference formation
• security community

Notes on contributors

Stephen Ceccoli is the P.K. Seidman Professor of Political Economy at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. His teaching and research interests include studying comparative public opinion, international relations, and comparative politics. He completed his doctoral degree in political science at Washington University in St. Louis and his work has appeared in International Studies Quarterly, International Political Science Review, and Social Science Quarterly among other venues.

John Bing is Professor of Political Science Emeritus of Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio. He is past President of the Ohio Association of Economists and Political Scientists, and is presently a private consultant on higher education and an amateur blogger. He completed his doctoral degree in political science from Washington University in St. Louis and his work has appeared in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and the Journal of Third World Studies among other venues.

ORCID

Stephen Ceccoli http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3789-061X

Notes

1. Ted Hopf, ‘Dissipating Hegemony – US Unilateralism and European Counter-Hegemony’ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Le Centre Sheraton Hotel, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, March 17, 2004, p. 13).

2. Colloquially known as drones, unmanned aerial vehicle’s, sometimes referred to as remotely piloted aircraft, have been described as ‘the world’s first airborne sniper rifle’; Christopher Woods, Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), xiii. Though apt, these descriptions belie the fact that armed UAVs may also represent major military innovations (MMIs) that figure to ‘increase the efficiency with which capabilities are converted to power’. See Michael Horowitz, Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 22. For consistency and ease of use, this analysis refers to such delivery vehicles simply as drones.

3. Stephen Ceccoli and John Bing, ‘Explaining Divergent Attitudes toward Lethal Drone Strikes’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 38 (2015): 146–266, 147.

4. Timothy Gravelle, Jason Reifler, and Thomas Scotto, ‘The Structure of Foreign Policy Attitudes in Transatlantic Perspective: Comparing the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany’, European Journal of Political Research 56, no. 4 (2017): 757–76.

5. As quoted in Philip Everts and Pierangelo Isernia, eds., Public Opinion and the International Use of Force (London: Routledge, 2001), xiv.

6. Harald Schoen, ‘Identity, Instrumental Self-Interest and Institutional Evaluations’, European Union Politics 9, no. 1 (2008): 5–29, 6.

7. Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley, ‘How are Foreign Policy Attitudes Structured? A Hierarchical Model’, American Political Science Review 81 (1987): 1099–120; Mark Peffley and Jon Hurwitz, ‘Models of Attitude Constraint in Foreign Affairs’, Political Behavior 15, no. 1 (1993): 61–90.

8. See Ellen Hallams, ‘The Transatlantic Alliance Renewed: The United States and NATO since 9/11’, Journal of Transatlantic Studies 7, no. 1 (2009): 38–60; Carl Cavanagh Hodge, ‘An Ocean Apart: The Legacy of the Bush Years in Transatlantic Security’. Journal of Transatlantic Studies 8, no. 3 (2010): 279–89; Alexander Moens, ‘Transatlantic Bipolarity and NATO’s Global Role’, Journal of Transatlantic Studies 4, no. 2 (2006): 241–52; Robert Kagan, ‘Power and Weakness’, Policy Review (June & July 2002): 3–28; and Robert Kagan, Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (New York: Atlantic Books, 2003).

9. Marth Finnemore, ‘Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention’, in The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, ed. Peter Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 153–85, 160.

10. Nina Graeger and Kristin Haugevik, ‘The Revival of Atlanticism in NATO? Changing Security Identities in Britain, Norway, and Denmark’, (NUPI Report, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 2009), 12.

11. Ivo Daalder, ‘The End of Atlanticism’, Survival 45, no. 2 (2003). Summer: 147–66, 154.

12. Andrew Rettman, ‘Seven EU States Create Military Drone “Club”’. EUObserver. November 20, 2013. https://euobserver.com/defence/122167 (Accessed February 9, 2015).

13. See http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29992686; Drone Wars UK, a British watchdog organisation, points out that more than four fifths of all British aerial attacks in Afghanistan in 2014 were conducted by drones. See Chris Cole. ‘New Figures Show UK Increasingly Relying on Drones for Strikes in Afghanistan’, Drone Wars UK (2014) https://dronewars.net/2014/07/22/new-figures-show-uk-increasingly-relying-on-drones-for-strikes-in-afghanistan/.

14. Craig Whitlock, ‘Pentagon Set to Open Second Drone Base in Niger as it Expands Operations in Africa’, Washington Post, September 1. 2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-set-to-open-second-drone-base-in-niger-as-it-expands-operations-in-africa/2014/08/31/365489c4-2eb8-11e4-994d-202962a9150c_story.html (accessed February 7, 2015).

15. Chris Cole, ‘European Use of Military Drones Expanding’, Drone Wars UK 2014. https://dronewars.net/2016/07/19/european-use-of-military-drones-expanding/; Ben Knight, ‘What Germany's First Armed Drones Could Do’. June 21, 2017. Deutsche Welle. http://www.dw.com/en/what-germanys-first-armed-drones-could-do/a-39355009.

16. Israel has been the largest supplier of drones to European governments, and some estimates indicate that European nations purchase more than half of Israeli exported drones. See Harriet Sherwood, ‘Israel is World’s Largest Drone Exporter’, The Guardian May 20, 2013.

17. European Parliament resolution on the use of armed drones (2014/2567(RSP)) See: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+MOTION+P7-RC-2014-0201+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN The strongly worded resolution calls on both the European Council and EU Member States to ‘oppose and ban the practice of extrajudicial targeted killings’. The EU Parliament resolution also seeks ‘greater transparency and accountability on the part of third countries in the use of armed drones with regard to the legal basis for their use and to operational responsibility, to allow for judicial review of drone strikes and to ensure that victims of unlawful drone strikes have effective access to remedies’.

18. Benjamin Page and Marshall Bouton, The Foreign Policy Disconnect: What Americans Want from Our Leaders But Don’t Get (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

19. Gravelle, Reifler, and Scotto, ‘The Structure of Foreign Policy Attitudes in Transatlantic Perspective’, 758.

20. Micah Zenko, ‘Reforming U.S. Drone Strike Policies’, Council on Foreign Relations Special Report, No. 65. (Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, 2013), 15.

21. Kristian Nielsen, ‘Continued Drift, but without the Acrimony: US-European Relations Under Barack Obama’, Journal of Transatlantic Studies 11, no. 1 (2013): 83–108, 83.

22. Hank Jenkins-Smith, Neil Mitchell, and Kerry Herron, ‘Foreign and Domestic Policy Belief Structures in the U.S. and British Publics’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 48, no. 3 (2004): 287–309; Brian Rathbun, ‘Hierarchy and Community at Home and Abroad: Evidence of a Common Structure of Domestic and Foreign Policy Beliefs in American Elites’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 51, no. 3 (2007): 379–407; Brian Rathbun, et al., ‘Taking Foreign Policy Personally: Personal Values and Foreign Policy Attitudes’, International Studies Quarterly 60 (2016): 124–37.

Kathleen Murray Shoon, Anchors against Change: American Opinion Leaders’ Beliefs after the Cold War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).

23. Joshua Kertzer and Kathleen McGraw, ‘Folk Realism: Testing the Microfoundations of Realism in Ordinary Citizens’, International Studies Quarterly, 56 (2012): 245–58; Joshua Kertzer and Thomas Zeitzoff, ‘A Bottom-Up Theory of Public Opinion about Foreign Policy’, American Journal of Political Science 61, no. 3 (2017): 543–58.

24. Ibid., 554.

25. Hurwitz and Peffley, ‘How Are Foreign Policy Attitudes Structured? A Hierarchical Model’; Peffley and Hurwitz, ‘Models of Attitude Constraint in Foreign Affairs’.

26. Hurwitz and Peffley, ‘How Are Foreign Policy Attitudes Structured? A Hierarchical Model’, 1106.

27. Robert Shapiro and Benjamin Page, ‘Foreign Policy and the Rational Public’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 32 (1988): 211–47.

28. See Stanley Feldman, ‘Structure and Consistency in Public Opinion: The Role of Core Beliefs and Values’, American Journal of Political Science 32, no. 2 (1988): 416–40; William Jacoby, ‘Ideological Identification and Issue Attitudes’, American Journal of Political Science 35, no. 1(1991): 178–205; and Donald Kinder, ‘Diversity and Complexity in Public Opinion’, in Political Science: The State of the Discipline, ed. A. Finifter (Washington, DC: The American Political Science Association, 1983), 389–425.

29. Paul Goren, ‘Core Principles and Policy Reasoning in Mass Publics: A Test of Two Theories’, British Journal of Political Science. 31, no. 1 (2001): 159–77, 160–1. As an alternative interpretation, core values ‘pertain to desirable end states or behaviors, transcend specific situations, guide selection or evaluation of behavior and events, and are ordered by relative importance’ (as quoted by James Druckman, ‘Communicating Policy-Relevant Science’, PS. Special Issue. (2015): 58–69, 58.

30. Pamela Johnston Conover and Stanley Feldman, ‘The Origins and Meaning of Liberal/Conservative Self-Identifications’, American Journal of Political Science. November (1981): 617–645, 621.

31. John Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 328.

32. Philip Converse, ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics’, in Ideology and Discontent, ed. David Apter (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), 206–61.

33. André Freire, ‘Bringing Social Identities Back in: The Social Anchors of Left-Right Orientation in Western Europe’, International Political Science Review 27, no. 4 (2006): 359–78, 360.

34. Conover and Feldman, ‘The Origins and Meaning of Liberal/Conservative Self-Identifications’.

35. Leonie Huddy, et al., ‘Threat, Anxiety, and Support of Antiterrorism Policies’, American Journal of Political Science 49, no. 3(2005): 593–608.

36. Stanley Feldman and Christopher Johnston, ‘Understanding the Determinants of Political Ideology: Implications of Structural Complexity’, Political Psychology 35 no. 3 (2014): 337–58; Ariel Malka, Yphtach Lelkes, and Christopher Soto, ‘Are Cultural and Economic Conservatism Positively Correlated?’, British Journal of Political Science 106, no. 6 (2017): 1–25.

37. Francis Castles and Peter Mair, ‘Left-Right Political Scales: Some ‘Expert’ Judgments’, European Journal of Political Research 12 (1984): 73–88, 73.

38. John Robinson and John Fleishman, ‘A Report: Ideological Identification: Trends and Interpretations of the Liberal-Conservative Balance’, The Public Opinion Quarterly 52, no. 1 (1988): 134–45.

39. Goren, ‘Core Principles and Policy Reasoning in Mass Publics: A Test of Two Theories’, 160.

40. Eugene Wittkopf, Faces of Internationalism: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990). See also Ole Holsti, Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy. Revised Edition (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).

41. Bastien Irondelle, Frédéric Mérand and Martial Foucault, ‘Public Support for European Defence: Does Strategic Culture Matter?’ European Journal of Political Research 54, no. 2 (2015): 363–83.

42. Ibid., 363.

43. Ibid., 363.

44. Gravelle, Reifler, and Scotto, ‘The Structure of Foreign Policy Attitudes in Transatlantic Perspective’.

45. Ronald Asmus, Philip Everts and Pierangelo Isernia, Power, War and Public Opinion: Thoughts on the Nature and Structure of the Trans-Atlantic Divide (Washington, DC: German Marshall Fund of the United States, 2003); Ronald Asmus, Philip Everts and Pierangelo Isernia, Across the Atlantic and the Political Aisle: The Double Divide in US-European Relations (Washington, DC: German Marshall Fund of the United States, 2004).

46. In addition to microlevel considerations, the intersection of these dimensions also figures prominently in broader transatlantic security relations. Drezner acknowledges, for instance, ‘If Europe still needs the United States to provide its hard security, then the United States still needs Europe to augment its economic power. Europe is vital to projecting the economic dimension of hard power’. Daniel Drezner, ‘The Power of Economics and Public Opinion’, Policy Review April/May (2012): 17–26, 24.

47. Asmus, Everts, and Isernia, Across the Atlantic and the Political Aisle.

48. Ibid., 3.

49. Ibid., 3.

50. Ibid., 4.

51. William Chittick Keith Billingsley and Rick Travis, ‘A Three-Dimensional Model of American Foreign Policy Beliefs’, International Studies Quarterly 39, no. 3 (1995): 313–31.

52. Joshua Kertzer, ‘Making Sense of Isolationism: Foreign Policy Mood as a Multilevel Phenomenon’, Journal of Politics 75, no. 1 (2013): 225–40.

53. Rathbun, et al., ‘Taking Foreign Policy Personally: Personal Values and Foreign Policy Attitudes’, 129.

54. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what States make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics’ International Organization 46, no. 2 (1992): 391–425, 397.

55. Christopher Hemmer and Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Why is There No NATO in Asia? Collective Identity, Regionalism, and the Origins of Multilateralism’, International Organization 56, no. 03 (2002): 575–607.

56. Schoen, ‘Identity, Instrumental Self-Interest and Institutional Evaluations’, 20.

57. Asmus, Everts, and Isernia, Across the Atlantic and the Political Aisle, 2.

58. Ronald Asmus and Alexandr Vondra, ‘The Origins of Atlanticism in Central and Eastern Europe’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 18, no. 2(2005): 203–16, 204.

59. Graeger and Haugevik, ‘The Revival of Atlanticism in NATO?, 13.

60. In the context of strategic and international issues, Kagan provocatively asserted, ‘Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: They agree on little and understand one another less and less’. Kagan, ‘Power and Weakness’, 3.

61. Donald Rumsfeld, Jan. 2003 – when asked why there wasn’t more support from Europe toward US policy on Iraq: ‘You’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe. If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the centre of gravity is shifting to the east and there are a lot of new members. The vast numbers of other countries in Europe, they’re not with France and Germany, they’re with the United States’. Peterson has argued that the transatlantic relations changed long before the Iraq war differences, contending that the changes took place at the end of the Cold War. See John Peterson, ‘Is the Wolf at the Door this Time? Transatlantic Relations after Iraq’, European Political Science 5, no. 1 (2006): 52–61. Also see, John Peterson, ‘Europe, America, Iraq: Worse Ever, Ever Worsening?’ Journal of Common Market Studies 42 (2004): 14–16.

62. Nielsen, ‘Continued Drift, but without the Acrimony’, 87.

63. Dirk Peters, ‘European Security Policy for the People? Public Opinion and the EU's Common Foreign, Security, and Defence Policy’, European Security 23, no. 4 (2014): 388-408, 389; Anand Menon and Jonathan Lipkin, ‘European Attitudes Towards Transatlantic Relations 2000–2003: An Analytical Survey’, The European Research Institute, University of Birmingham, 2003; Graeger and Haugevik, ‘The Revival of Atlanticism in NATO?, 21.

64. Data limitations force us to exclude Greece, the seventh ‘drone club’ member, from the analysis. At the time the ‘drone club’ was established, the European Defense Agency press released noted, ‘the objective of this community is to exchange information as well as to identify and facilitate co-operation among member states which currently operate or plan to operate RPAS [Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems]’ Rettman, ‘Seven EU states create military drone “club”’.

65. Constanze Stelzenmueller, et al., ‘Transatlantic Trends Survey, 2013’, ICPSR34973-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2014-04-02. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34973.v1.

66. In separate model testing, ordered logistic regression and logistic regression results are nearly identical. Moreover, since the original outcome variable lacks a ‘middle’ category (e.g. indifferent), collapsing the four possible outcomes into just two outcomes (i.e. 0 = strongly and somewhat disapprove and 1 = strongly and somewhat approve) is appropriate for ease of interpretation.

67. Scott Long and Jeremy Freese, Regression Models for Categorical Dependent Variables using Stata, 3rd ed. (College Station, TX: Stata Press, 2014).

68. Ibid. While noting that ‘no single summary of effects is ideal for all situations’, Long and Freese (245) contend that the average marginal effect offers ‘the best summary of the effect of a variable’. As they point out, ‘Because it averages the effects across all cases in the sample, it can be interpreted as the average size of the effect in the sample’.

69. Thomas Risse-Kappen, ‘Collective Identity in a Democratic Community: The Case of NATO’, In The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics ed. Peter Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 357–99, 367. (Emphasis added.)

70. Council of the European Union, EU-US Declaration on Combating Terrorism (10760/04 Presse 205), Dromoland Castle, 26 June 2004) https://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsUpload/10760EU_US26.06.04.pdf.

71. Michael Boyle, ‘The Costs and Consequences of Drone Warfare’, International Affairs 89, no. 1 (2013): 1–29, 27.

72. Anthony Dworkin, ‘Drones and Targeted Killing: Defining a European Position’. European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) Policy Brief 84 (London, United Kingdom, 2013), 2.

73. Birmingham Policy Commission, ‘The Security Impact of Drones: Challenges and Opportunities for the UK’, October (2014), 37.

74. Gravelle, Reifler, and Scotto, ‘The Structure of Foreign Policy Attitudes in Transatlantic Perspective’, 771.

75. Rathbun, et al., ‘Taking Foreign Policy Personally: Personal Values and Foreign Policy Attitudes’, 129.

76. Feldman and Johnston, ‘Understanding the Determinants of Political Ideology’; See also John Jost, Christopher Federico, and Jaime Napier, ‘Political Ideology: Its Structure, Functions, and Elective Affinities’, Annual Review of Psychology 60 (2009): 307–37.

77. Malka, Lelkes, and Soto, ‘Are Cultural and Economic Conservatism Positively Correlated?’.

78. Kertzer and Zeitzoff, ‘A Bottom-Up Theory of Public Opinion about Foreign Policy’.

79. Ibid., 551.

80. Hugh Gusterson ‘Toward an Anthropology of Drones: Remaking Space, Time, and Valor in Combat’, In The American Way of Bombing, ed. Matthew Evangelista and Henry Shue (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), 191–206, 206.