Endless War Challenges Analysis of Drone Strike Effectiveness

• Author: David Sterman
• Position: Senior Policy Analyst with New America's International Security program
• Pages: 305-318

Endless War Challenges Analysis of Drone

Strike Effectiveness

David Sterman*

INTRODUCTION

A major question for U.S. policy is whether counterterrorism strikes are effec-

tive. Efforts to measure effectiveness are challenged by how the United States’

selection of expansive, unachievable objectives has given rise to endless war.

This article will apply the lens of “endless war” to illustrate the various chal-

lenges that the endless character of American counterterrorism warfare poses for

scholars and analysts assessing the effectiveness of U.S. counterterrorism strikes.

The United States has long sought to accomplish its unlimited objectives of

destroying or defeating al Qaeda, ISIS, and other terrorist groups. These objec-

tives appear to be beyond the United States’ ability to achieve. As the United

States also does not face the prospect of its own decisive defeat, the pursuit of

such unlimited objectives has given its counterterrorism wars an endless

character.

The presence of unachievable objectives constrains analyses of the effective-

ness of counterterrorism warfare even when it comes to more limited objectives

because the apparent accomplishment of limited objectives does not result in an

end to the state of war. The number of strikes may decline or even pause in partic-

ular theaters, but the war and its claims of authority for violence never reach a tip-

ping point, where the war is declared over and authority withdrawn.

1

Brianna Rosen, Ending Perpetual War, JUST SECURITY (2022), https://perma.cc/EYT2-3QP8.

As a result,

claims that counterterrorism strikes have achieved objectives short of the unlim-

ited objective are essentially a debate over tactics. This focus on the tactical can

fuel what some strategists have identified as “an addiction to killing terrorist lead-

ers,” diverting focus from the failure to envision and implement achievable politi-

cal ends.

2

Moreover, the war’s endless character undermines many of the forms

of measurement and theories that underlie assessments of the effectiveness of

strikes.

Recently, academic, policy analyst, and government stakeholders have sought

to square the circle by downplaying the unlimited objective of decisively defeat-

ing al Qaeda and instead focusing on the ability to achieve limited objectives.

However, unlimited and limited objectives do not easily co-exist. Confusion

reigns in the absence of a reckoning with the persistence of the unachievable,

unlimited objectives (of destroying various terrorist groups) and more substantial

* David Sterman is a Senior Policy Analyst with New America’s International Security program.

© 2023, David Sterman.

1.

2. DAVID KILCULLEN, BLOOD YEAR: THE UNRAVELING OF WESTERN COUNTERTERRORISM 4, 230–231

(2016).

305