The Spatial Politics of Drone Warfare Item Type Electronic Dissertation; text Authors Shaw, Ian Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 28/09/2021 10:57:58 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/145131 1 THE SPATIAL POLITICS OF DRONE WARFARE by Ian Graham Ronald Shaw _____________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of THE SCHOOL OF GEOGRAPHY AND DEVELOPMENT In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WITH A MAJOR IN GEOGRAPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2011 1 2 UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Ian Graham Ronald Shaw entitled The Spatial Politics of Drone Warfare and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy __________________________________________________________Date: 3/23/2011 John Paul Jones III __________________________________________________________Date: 3/23/2011 Sallie Marston __________________________________________________________Date: 3/23/2011 Paul Robbins __________________________________________________________Date: 3/23/2011 Marv Waterstone Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate's submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. __________________________________________________________Date: 3/23/2011 Dissertation director: John Paul Jones III 2 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. Signed: Ian Graham Ronald Shaw 3 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank JP Jones, Sallie Marston, Paul Robbins, and Marv Waterstone for reasons too numerous to list. I’ve had such a wonderful journey because of you. Funding for the final year of my PhD was kindly awarded by a ‘University of Arizona Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences Graduate Fellowship’. 4 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures…..…………………………………………………………………………………………………….….…..7 Abstract….………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………8 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………9 Bloody Numbers….……………………………………………………………………………………………………..9 Present Study….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………16 Playing War………………………………………………………………………………………………………………16 The Unbearable Humanness of Drone Warfare in FATA, Pakistan…………….…….………..20 Predators in the Sky: Investigating Military Drones…………..……………….……………………..23 The Force of Things…………………………………………………………………………………………………..27 References……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………33 Appendix A: Playing War…..………………………………………………………………………………………….37 Introduction: The Drone …..………………………………………………………………………………………37 Theory at Play….……………………………………………………………………………………………………….42 Transitional Space…………………………………………………………………………………………………….45 The Military Entertainment Complex……….……………………………………………………………….47 Oriental Aesthetics……………………………………………………………………………………………………50 Civilian-Soldiers?...…………………………………………………………………………………………………...54 Conclusion: ‘Till We Rise in Heaven’………….………………………………………………………………59 References………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..62 Appendix B: The Unbearable Humanness of Drone Warfare in FATA, Pakistan..……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..70 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………………70 The Coming Drone Army……………………………………………………………………………………………73 Targeting….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….78 FATA………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….82 Exceptional Territory, Exceptional Technology…………….……………………………………………89 Conclusion…..…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….99 References……………………………………………………………………………………….……………..………101 Appendix C: Predators in the Sky: Investigating Military Drones…………………………………109 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………109 Meet the Robots……………………………………………………………………………………………….……113 Towards Autonomy………………………………………………………………………………………………..116 5 6 Metaphysical Objects…..………………………………………………………………………………………….124 Towards a Military Metaphysics……….……………………………………………………………………..127 Conclusion…..………………………………………………………………………………………………………….134 References………………………………………………………………………………………………………………136 6 7 LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 1: MQ-1 Predator Drone………………………………………………………………………………….12 FIGURE 2: MQ-1 Predator Drone Pilots…………………………………………………………………………13 FIGURE 3: Screenshot from Predator drone in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 …………..17 FIGURE 4: Video feed from Predator…………………………………………………………………………….18 FIGURE 5: Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Pakistan……………………………………………..21 7 8 ABSTRACT This dissertation investigates drone warfare, which is the military’s use of unmanned planes to strike enemy targets, an integral and relatively new strategy in the ‘war on terror’. The dissertation is composed of three unique research papers. The first gets to grips with how this warfare is represented in video games. These virtual spaces contain carefully crafted aesthetics that are important for widespread cultural participation, recruitment, and legitimization. The second paper investigates the use of U.S. military drones in the tribal regions of Pakistan, a historically ‘exceptional’ territory that today finds itself the continued subject of colonial violence. The paper is motivated by understanding the logic of the legislation that enables such warfare, as well as the military’s ‘fetishization’ of the drone as an actor devoid of social relations. The third paper builds upon the second to take seriously the drone as an object of extreme political importance. The analytic is driven by ‘object-oriented philosophy’ and argues that drones are metaphysical objects responsible for slicing and dicing the world into their own image. Overall, the main contribution of the dissertation is to signal and review the political importance of a new and deadly military zeitgeist: one that encroaches upon everyday life, geopolitics, and reality itself. 8 9 INTRODUCTION Bloody Numbers The story of blind men fumbling to describe an elephant is well-known. A trunk, a tusk, a tail – all parts of the elephant’s body confounding the hapless interpreters. To examine the U.S.-led ‘war on terror’ follows a similar impossibility: the size of the imperial beast is so vast that a unified description is difficult. Tusks and tails tear through a single narrative. Seeing this as less a methodological problem than a lesson in parallax, this dissertation reveals the geographies of the ‘war on terror’ from three interconnected viewpoints: representation, territory and metaphysics. Specifically, this dissertation takes stock of U.S.-led ‘drone warfare’, which is the military’s use of unmanned planes to strike enemy targets, an integral (and relatively new) strategy of the ‘war on terror’. This is realized through three central papers that comprise the bulk of this investigation (Appendices A, B, and C). Their findings suggest that drone warfare is reconfiguring everyday life, geopolitics, and reality itself. In this introduction, I briefly sketch what is at stake with this dissertation – outlining the magnitude of the elephant in the room. The next chapter summarizes the findings. 9 10 Contemporary U.S. foreign policy is underwritten by a legacy of intervention. Since the close of the Second World War, every corner of the globe has felt the consequences of a New American Century. Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Cuba – these countries have all fallen under the crosshairs of Presidents ranging from Kennedy to Obama. Although these personalities have varied (at least superficially), a violent Washington consensus has persisted: that the Republic is a beacon of liberty that shines across the globe and that it is the duty of these United States to transform the world wherever chaos spills from shadow. The numbers involved in maintaining an empire are daunting. For the fiscal year of 2010, the budget allocated to the Department of Defense (DoD) was just under $700 billion – and to add defense-related expenditure from outside the DoD – would take the number to over a trillion dollars, easily surpassing the money spent on the nation’s social security, not to mention the combined budgets of the next 15 countries in the world. Over a quarter of U.S. defense expenditure is passed directly into the hands of private contractors. The additional cost of war in Afghanistan and Iraq is staggering. For the former theater of violence, there has