Towards a Common Moral Understanding of Drones
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Towards a Common Moral Understanding of Drones Assessing Indicators for the Perception of Moral Legitimacy among Dutch Students Adv. MSc International Relations and Diplomacy Leiden University Gijs van der Gracht - s1896792 First supervisor: Dr. Roos van der Haer Second reader: Dr. Honorata Mazepus The Hague, 23 May 2018 1 Towards a Common Moral Understanding of Drones: Assessing Indicators for the Perception of Moral Legitimacy among Dutch Students by Gijs van der Gracht Cover photo: An MQ-9 Reaper drone, equipped with four AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and two Guided Bombs Unit-12 Paveway II, fires a Hellfire missile mid-air. Source: Husnutdinov / CSGSociety.org. Core word count: 16350 Leiden University Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs MSc. International Relations and Diplomacy The Hague, 2018 Supervisor - Dr. Roos van der Haer Second reader - Dr. Honorata Mazepus This thesis was submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science 2 3 Abstract This MSc thesis evaluates the lethal use of drones by governments through the normative aspect of the legitimacy. The question this thesis tries to answer is which factors can influence the public’s perception of the moral legitimacy of drones. It does so by studying moral legitimacy from different perspectives and by critically evaluating the existing literature on drones. Through the use of survey experiments, this thesis gathered data on the perception of Dutch students on the moral legitimacy of drones. It finds that the lethal use of drones by governments can be perceived as significantly more morally acceptable when the government is open and clear around the intended goals and the results of the drone deployment. It also finds that, counter-intuitively, it is not important whether the use of drones was actually beneficial for the common good of the country. Therefore, this thesis provides an argument in favour of the prevalence of national norms and values over the general or universal principles of morality when assessing the moral legitimacy of drones. The findings of this thesis are important as most of the literature on drones so far is focused on the legality of using drones and is also focused on the US. This thesis makes an empirical contribution to the moral literature on drones and adds to European data on drones. European governments can benefit from the findings of this thesis as the right procedural framework for the use of drones can enlarge public support. Keywords: drones, legitimacy, moral, perception, transparency, common good 4 Acknowledgements As this MSc thesis marks the end of the two-year programme on international relations and diplomacy for me, it also marks the end of the two amazing years that I had the pleasure of spending with my clever, weird and kind fellow students. Therefore, a big thank you for making these last two years fly by so fast in all the ups and downs that we collectively shared. A big special thank you goes to Maxime Hovenkamp, who has been a consistent and very bright light in these two years and has supported me in every endeavour I undertook. Also our constant cooperation and consultations during our time at the Clingendael Institute has provided me with unique insights and lots of energy. Both my parents deserve a big thank you for enabling me to develop the way I did. You always critically questioned the options I was considering, but in the end always trusted my own decision and supported me all the way through without exception. I would like to thank Ragnhild Drange for always looking after us, even when we sometimes forgot to do it for ourselves. Every university programme deserves a coordinator like her. In the same regard, I would like to thank Jarek Kantorowicz who is one of if not the most hard-working and kind professor I have ever encountered in my times as a student at Tilburg University, University of Western Australia and Leiden University. Thank you for your never-ending adaptability, availability and contagious enthusiasm. Thank you for all the quantitative analytical skills you have taught me. And a final thank you goes to my supervisor Dr. Roos van der Haer, and my second reader Dr. Honorata Mazepus. Thank you Roos for making me work hard, to be more critical and to be precise. These were all very necessary to improve the quality of this thesis. Thank you Honorata for guiding my analysis and playing devil’s advocate when I was trying to sell my vignettes to you, just so I could see the critical mistakes. 5 Table of contents List of figures 8 List of tables 8 Introduction 9 Literature review 12 Legitimacy 12 Drones 15 Theoretical framework 21 Moral legitimacy framework for drones 21 Transparency 22 For the common good 25 Methodology 28 Case selection 29 Sample 29 Survey and experiment 30 Results 34 Main model 37 Additional model analysis 39 Discussion 43 Conclusion 45 Main findings 45 Theoretical contribution 45 Policy implications 46 Limitations and future research 47 6 References 48 Appendix A: The vignettes 57 General vignette in English 57 Actual vignettes in Dutch 58 Appendix B: The survey in English (not distributed) 61 Manipulation checks 61 Perceived moral legitimacy of drones 61 Control and descriptive questions 61 Appendix C: The survey in Dutch (as distributed) 62 Manipulation checks 62 Perceived moral legitimacy of drones 62 Control and descriptive questions 62 Appendix D: Factor analysis of perceived moral legitimacy items 63 Appendix E: Factorial ANOVA including controls 64 Appendix F: Margins of adjusted predictions 66 7 List of figures Figure 1. Theoretical model. Figure 2. Means of moral legitimacy perception per condition. Figure 3. Mean perceived moral legitimacy scores to illustrate gender interaction effects. Figure 4. Mean perceived moral legitimacy scores with political orientation interaction effects. List of tables Table 1. Frequency table of the gender distribution. Table 2. Frequency table of the study fields of the sample. Table 3. Frequency table of the vignette allocation. Table 4. Results of the t-tests of the manipulation checks. Table 5. Results of the main two-way ANOVA for perceived moral legitimacy averages. Table 6. Results of the factorial ANOVA for perceived moral legitimacy incl. political orientation. Table 7. Variable manipulation per vignette. Table 8. Principal axis factor analysis. Table 9. Cronbach Alpha analysis. Table 10. Factorial ANOVA incl. Gender. Table 11. Factorial ANOVA incl. Political orientation, scale 1. Table 12. Factorial ANOVA incl. Political orientation, scale 2. Table 13. Margins of adjusted predictions of both main and full model. 8 Introduction On Tuesday 4th of August 2009, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban Baitullah Mehsud was killed by a pair of Hellfire missiles. It was an American Predator drone which destroyed the entire house (Callam, 2010). The drone, controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had killed Mehsud himself, one of his officers and seven bodyguards, his father-in-law, his mother-in-law, his wife and his uncle. The elimination of Mehsud was major news for Pakistan, the United States, and the international community (Khan, 2009). It was reported afterwards that it took sixteen drone strikes over a period of a year to finally take Mehsud out, which also claimed between 207 and 321 additional casualties (Callam, 2010). The CIA called the use of drones very effective but the Pakistanis generally condemn these strikes because of unnecessary casualties. Callam (2010) reports that between the years 2006 and 2010 in Pakistan, between 750 and 1000 people died by 82 drone strikes. Callam (2010) further argues that this high level of civilian casualties might actually solidify the popular support of Islamic militants which in turn may prevent success of the intervention in the region. This is because both the enemy as the local civilians perceive drones as ‘evil’ and hence are more likely to support each other. Unfortunately, the academic literature is rather divided on the claim that drones are immoral or unethical to use. This thesis will investigate the public’s perception on the morality of drones, whether people perceive drones as morally acceptable and what constitutes morally acceptable. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are the official name of drones and can range in size, capabilities and purposes (Mayer, 2015). Of interest in this thesis will be the unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), which are small self-propelled planes controlled remotely from the ground, a navy vessel or even another plane and are able to fire missiles at targets with high precision from high altitudes. These are also popularly called drones and this thesis will refer to them as drones hereinafter. Although not entirely new, the lethal use of drones has only started in 2001 by the US (Franke, 2014). Since then, drones have received criticism by international organisations, non-governmental organisations, celebrities, officials, experts and popular groups (Franke, 2014; Kreps and Wallace, 2016). These criticisms are often deeming the use of drones and the act of targeted killings unethical because they resemble assassinations (e.g. Kilcullen and McDonald Exum, 2009), or because they are causing unnecessary physical and psychological harm, both on local civilians as well as on the pilots (e.g. Callam, 2010; Benjamin, 2013; Cronin, 2013; Rogers and Hill, 2014). Nonetheless, many countries are very interested in either buying or developing drones, including the drones that can fire missiles, and the number is increasing (Franke, 2014; Kreps, 2017). Since many of modern-day governments are relying on some sort of popular support, it is important that the use of military technologies is also deemed legitimate by the public. 9 The issue of the legitimacy of drones has interested scholars in the last decade as well. For example, it is interesting to see figures on the perception of US citizens when asked about drone strikes by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (2015): the US public supports the use of drones but not overwhelmingly (58%).