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The Obama administration's controversial use of drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen has made the subject a hot topic of political and academic discourse. While most of this debate has focused so far on the legal, ethical and prudential use of large armed aerial vehicles, this article seeks to address the potential wider impact of this new technological innovation. The article argues that drones constitute a new and disruptive technology not just in the way that they have been used to enable a new form of counterterrorism. Instead, it argues that drones pose a new form of terrorist threat against the West which is at present under-analysed, unarticulated and underestimated. Part of the reason for this underestimation is the failure to appreciate the scale and scope of drone use for commercial purposes which is about to unfold. Technological innovation now means that drones will be capable of many jobs currently performed by small planes and helicopters, but more cheaply and easily-in addition to many other new applications. The proliferation of this cheap and easily available technology will make its application for terrorist use easy to achieve and difficult to counter. The ability of drones to penetrate traditional defences and established conceptions of what constitutes a plausible threat is a challenge which so far has gone unheeded. This article seeks to challenge that complacency. (International Affairs (Oxford) / SWP)

Transatlantic relations during the Bush administration sank to the lowest point in the post-war period following the invasion of Iraq in 2003. This article provides an analysis of both the current state of that relationship and the academic debate which accompanies it. Arguments over the impact of various factors are analysed to determine the extent of transatlantic divergence. Thus, demographic change in America and Europe, divergence of political values between Europe and America, power differences, post-war geopolitical realignments, European integration and American unilateralism and exceptionalism are all analysed and evaluated. While some of these arguments presented are challenged, the article argues that the process of constructing separate European and American identities from within the transatlantic community is the single most significant contemporary challenge to transatlantic relations.

AbstractThis essay is written in response to John Young's article in issue 1:3 of this journal, 'A Case Study in Summitry: The Experience of Britain's Edward Heath, 1979-1974', which chronicles the period's face-to-face meetings between heads of government. In his analysis, Young uses the definition of summitry that I set out in my 1996 book Diplomacy at the Highest Level: The Evolution of International Summitry. And yet in applying this definition of summitry as he does, he demonstrates the limitations of both this definition and indeed this approach to the study of diplomatic history in general.This article presents a critique of Young's use of summitry as a tool for understanding the diplomacy of the Heath administration in particular and diplomatic studies in general. It argues that the use of summitry in this way is a distorting lens through which to approach such an analysis. The article argues that Young's approach both overprivileges actual meetings as opposed to other executive involvement in diplomacy and downplays more significant activities, which fall outside this definition. If casual courtesy visits are to be included as summits, there is clearly something wrong with the definition being used. If this definition were to stand, then the term 'summit' and the use of summitry as a device for understanding diplomatic activity would be rendered meaningless. The article ends by suggesting new ways of defining summitry and pointing to the need for new research in this area.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the foreign policy of the Bush administration was shifted radically in its pursuit of the war on terror. As part of this change, the administration announced a new strategic doctrine in 2002 in the form of the National Security Strategy of the United States which was to become known as the Bush doctrine. At its heart this document advocated the use of pre-emption & unilateralism in its pursuit of pre-eminence. This article traces the development of this thinking & subsequent application of this doctrine, & argues that policy failures in Iraq have nothing to contribute to American foreign policy in the second term. His argued that because of this failure, it is not a doctrine worthy of the name. Adapted from the source document.