Mémoire
| Résumé : | This master thesis intends to explain why drone strikes outside of official battlefields became an important weapon of the United States of America to globally fight against Al Qaeda and its allies. Based on a constructivist research approach, developed by Hugh Gusterson, it analysed the discourse of an epistemic community of security experts inside and outside the Obama administration who advocated for this weapon technology. It assumed that this drone proponents’ discourse created and disseminated a positive image of armed drones, which favoured their establishment as a major counterterrorism tool. To verify this hypothesis it analysed drone proponents’ discourse within the Obama administration, in two journals as well as various media and online debate platforms. The applied research design focused on the underlying beliefs and the functioning of this drone favourable expert discourse. It found out that their drone advocacy was based on two core beliefs. While the first suggested that the use of armed force against Al Qaeda outside official battlefields was necessary, the second insisted that armed drones were the most suitable weapon to accomplish this task. Furthermore, the community’s discourse protected both beliefs by systematically subjugating drone criticism, that was voiced by civil society, journalists or other academics. Their use of these three discourse elements revealed how drone proponents created and disseminated a drone-favourable image, which proved this paper’s initial hypothesis. This highly positive drone image most likely contributed to the establishment of armed drones as a major American counterterrorism tool. Nevertheless, the precise link between the Obama administration’s decision to centre its counterterrorism strategy on drones and the aforementioned positive drone image, that was spun by drone proponents, was not proven by this paper. Future research with access to more internal governmental documents may pursue this task. |
