Strengthening Standards for Consent: The Case of U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan
This article situates itself at the intersection of two separate fields of inquiry. This article draws and hopes to contribute to an existing literature on the unique legal interpretations marshaled to explain and justify U.S. armed activities in the Global War on Terror and operationalize its global hegemony. While there is a great deal of work on the erosion of sovereign equality generally, and on how the law has served legal hegemony broadly, there is little attention to the nexus of the two how sovereign equality is negotiated by the US as it pursues its foreign policy. This article seeks to illuminate the set of legal arguments put forth to support the US's armed activities in Pakistan, and their core assumptions and misconceptions with regard to sovereign equality. Additionally, this article also contributes to the multi disciplinary literature on the nature of US Pakistan relations by injecting a critical legal analysis of current bilateral relations. Indeed, drone strikes are the latest chapter of longer history of U.S. involvement in Pakistan, in which it has secured or supported domestic political arrangements favorable to the U.S.'s position and activities during the Cold War, and then during the Global War on Terror.