Double Standards: The Implications of Near Certainty Drone Strikes in Pakistan

Abstract: In 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a policy to minimize civilian casualties following drone strikes in undeclared theaters of war. The policy calibrated Obamas approval of strikes against the near certainty of no civilian casualties. Scholars do not empirically study the merits of Obamas policy. Rather, they rely on descriptive trends for civilian casualties in Pakistan to justify competing claims for the policys impact. We provide a novel estimate for the impact of Obamas policy for civilian casualties in Pakistan following U.S. drone strikes. We employ a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effect of Obamas policy for civilian casualties, strike precision, and adverted civilian casualties. We find a discontinuity in civilian casualties approximately two years before Obamas policy announcement, corroborating our primary research including interviews with senior officials responsible for implementing the near certainty standard. After confirming the sharp cutoff, we estimate the policy resulted in a reduction of 12 civilian deaths per month or 2 casualties per strike. The policy also enhanced the precision of U.S. drone strikes to the point that they only killed the intended targets. Finally, we use a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate that the policy adverted 320 civilian casualties. We then conduct a Value of Statistical Life calculation to show that the adverted civilian casualties represent a gain of 80 to 260 million U.S. dollars. In addition to conditioning social and political outcomes, then, the near certainty standard also imposed economic implications that are much less studied.