But misses. According to the article, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little "stopped short of calling the incident an act of war". It's not clear from the article whether this assertion is press hyperbole or part of a broader wink-and-nudge by the Pentagon that wasn't quoted. Assuming that the drone is in international airspace, which the US claims. Should this be considered an act of war? There's no human risk on either side- it was an unarmed Predator. It's an incident, certainly. Possibly a very weak casus belli. I don't think it's anything near an act of war, however. Thoughts? I'm wondering if we'll see a redefinition of some of the classic diplomatic jargon as drone use becomes more prevalent.
Fuck em'. If you don't want to be stenciled onto the side of a Reaper it would behoove you to not shoot at one unless you're absolutely certain it isn't going to be shooting back.
He certainly better stop short of calling it an act of war; last time that kind of thing got a bit out of hand. The whole point of drones is to have them be expendable, and you're going to need more than crocodile tears as a contingency plan for when your targets find a way to deal with them. Wait until things with Pakistan get sour enough that this sort of thing becomes a trophy someone there wants. Probably won't have to wait long.
Given that we're on D&D, I'm forced to reply to this over-testosteroned post in a manner that is less than... expressive. Please be so kind as to modulate and interpret this in the most gaudy terms possible. When two nations engage one another in a cold, quasi-proxy'd war, as is certainly the case these days between the U.S. and Iran, you cannot approach it in such deterministic terms. These drones are a valuable tool because they separate the operator from the battlefield, which has implications to what would or wouldn't be a reasonable response to an attack upon the asset. In this particular instance, with circumstances as they are, it would behoove the U.S. to avail itself of the latitude provided by the fact that this drone doesn't have a highly trained american pilot tucked into it, and simply not give a fuck. Why? Because playing in the sand hasn't proven to be a good idea in the past decade. And goddamn you for making me take kerzain's side in any argument, good sir. Edit: Damnit, lizardo!
Where did I recommend using it as a causus belli to invade Iran or attempt to bomb it into submission? That would be insane. They attempt to shoot down your robot, you attempt to shoot down their jet, you make a press statement that your gadget was flying where it has a perfect right to fly and that if they don't like the consequences maybe they should amend their behaviour to be in accordance with international laws which they have signed.
Well, what are they going to do about it that they're not already doing? "We were going to be nice and stop funding militants in neighbouring countries, honest. But since you shot down our aircraft we're going to keep it up just to be dicks."
I don't really understand the argument you're trying to advance for why the strategy of foreign relations should mirror that of a schoolyard bully. Separately, your citation of international law advances the fiction that it's binding in a manner comparable to domestic law under a shared social contract; instead, it's a useful way to organize mutually advantageous positions and a rhetorical device outside of that. In this case, you're talking about a treaty that both sides have apparently not signed and ratified, which makes it even more nebulous in its relevance. "What are they going to do about it?" is not an interesting or useful question. "What are our goals with Iran, and what do we think theirs are, and what do the compromise positions look like long-term?" is what the administration ought to do, and the little press conference is what that looks like, more than likely. The measuring contest you propose is a way to play into the hands of hardliners on both sides while throwing away the work invested over the last four years. It's not implausible, simply because the US performance of outrage with Iran swings from one minute to the next, but it's almost certainly a mistake.
Come on, Obama is President. They're going to do it the Chicago way. I'm surprised McCain hasn't been foaming at the mouth yet over this one. He is probably still having fits over Benghazi though.
Come to think of it, is there any precedent for how to treat attacks on automated devices? Satellites, maybe?
Obama watched our plucky drone die on a live feed in the situation room. He has machine oil on his hands.
Pointy-bearded man: "I'd offer him that towel to clean his hands but I like the way you dry the dishes. More wine?"
If it's more or less just a gentleman's agreement anyway (it is) then the distinction between ratified, signed, and merely agreeing in principle is moot, though the presence of such a treaty isn't. Moreover, the schoolyard bully metaphor is useless because Iran makes a terrible victim, particularly in any case (such as the one we are discussing) where they precipitate a confrontation. Well of course what they will do is not an interesting question, there's not much they can or would do about it except realize that jets and pilots cost more than drones. How it fits into the grand strategy should be obvious: Iran isn't risking valuable hardware shooting at drones because they hear they're good eating, and they're not dumb enough to think that killing a drone or two is going to severely impact the US's ability to spy on them. They want to know whether they can pressure the US out of the Gulf with threat of war, and shooting at drones is a relatively safe way to go about gauging your willingness to shoot back, for precisely the reasons that Tankero outlined above. Hell, warn them beforehand of an intent to shoot back should it happen again, they might get the hint.
There are a few anti-satellite weapons out there, nobody has ever done more than test them because all of your spy satellites going dark is... well...
Yes, but it's classified. :) But since you asked nice, I'll tell you. The US has a history of screwing with other countries orbiting hardware and vice versa, to the point of de-orbiting or otherwise making such hardware non-functional. No one has started a war over it yet.
Your post suggested otherwise. The fact is that the slow strangulation of Iran is going to involve pushback from many of the factions within the government and around it. There's a coherent strategy in place for checking that. It does not involve the dick-measuring you advocated in your post. The metaphor is applicable because of the power dynamics at play. How nasty the Iranian state is largely irrelevant. Why does North Korea get wider berth? Because they already have nuclear weapons and other threats lined up, and are being rewarded for looking crazy enough to try it. A confrontation wasn't precipitated out of thin air, it's one of a long sequence of confrontations and due to the relative Iranian silence in this instance it's pretty fair to assume that this wasn't an action with broad support in the ruling class. Yes, guaranteeing the hardliners a halfassed shooting war if x condition is met is a wonderful idea. In fact, why don't we just turn over the Department of State directly to the mullahs and skip the foreplay? Incidentally, this is also one of many good reasons why Netanyahu can take his red lines and stick them. A couple of points worth having clear: I don't know if it was well-reported that the drone was unharmed. The response is temperate and adequate and doesn't paint the US into a corner in order to satisfy the strong posture fetishists. Thank goodness they were able to keep this out of the election. Hardliners pushing buttons.
The press conference. That's it. Then it's the Iranian move, which if the ruling faction can get its act together should be very little in public. It's more likely than not an attempt to sabotage backstage negotiations and weaken the US position by putting its distasteful drone policy front and center, but they lack the President Romney component for the kind of shit fit that would really dress the whole thing up nicely. I'm not sure what you mean by "prescribed", though.
This. If they manage to shoot down a drone (which they didn't even accomplish with the current incident) then our response can be "Hey, thanks for stimulating our economy, assholes!" Then replace them. The reason we have drones in the first place is to replace manned missions with an alternative that we can more readily afford to lose in action. Shooting down their manned jets is not a proportional response. We would be the ones initiating bloodshed. I guess this must be the heart of the disagreement here. I don't believe the Iranians are irrational enough to equate our response to shooting at a drone with our willingness for self-defense.
Also, there is no plausible Iranian strategy that results in US departure from the Persian Gulf, with threats or anything else. The math for that changes slightly once they go nuclear, but not that much barring a significant change in management. This is not news to Iranians. There are a number of potential Israeli moves that result in the Iranians having a radically different set of options that are across the board terrible for US interests, but hopefully they'll focus back on screwing up their domestic politics now that the Mitt window has closed. I use US interests in the narrow sense of the administration at hand, of course, and not in the broader philosophical sense.
I missed that part, mea culpa. You could have skipped the entire rest of your post and just quoted that, it suggests a decidedly different interpretation of events. This is why I'm not president.
This is all I could find. Fights over satellites have provoked a high level response several times, basically.
I suspect that the planes who shot down the drone were manned by Al Queda. And there is evidence each plane contained Weapons of Mass Destruction. Invasion! (Ow - sorry, that was a previous administration.)
