The United States and Great Power Responsibility in International Society: Drones, Rendition and Invasion .

• Author: Anagnostakis, Dimitrios
• Position: Book review

The United States and Great Power Responsibility in International Society

Drones, Rendition and Invasion

By Wali Aslam

Abingdon: Routledge, 2013, 174 pages, $145, ISBN 9780415644686.

The main aim of this book is to evaluate from a normative perspective the foreign policy of the United States (US) and, in particular, US conduct of the "war on terror." The central research question that the author seeks to answer is whether US behavior is close to the behavior one would expect from a responsible great power. The US has justified and supported the invasion of Iraq, the use of drones for targeted killings, and the extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects claiming that these actions were necessary for maintaining international order, peace, and stability. The US' position was that it was within the responsibilities of great powers, such as the US, to preserve this order and stability. According to the author, the above justifications beg the question of whether the US has indeed behaved responsibly.

To answer this question Wali Aslam employs a normative framework based on the English School of international relations theory. According to this framework, the benchmarks for evaluating great power responsibility are three-fold: legality, legitimacy, and prudence. While legality is related to the compliance of states with international law, legitimacy is related to whether there is an international consensus about the appropriateness of a state's measures or actions. With regard to prudence, it concerns the consequences of an actor's actions and it is linked with the concepts of deliberation and foresight. The author employs the above framework in three cases: the US operation "Iraqi Freedom," the US drone strikes in Pakistan, and the US practice of extraordinary rendition. His central argument is that in the three cases, which were examined, US foreign policy was not responsible; in other words, the US actions were not legal, they lacked legitimacy, and they lacked the element of prudence.

Starting from the author's methodological approach, the rationale for choosing the cases that are examined in the book is not clearly specified. For example, the author does not specify why he chose to analyze the US operation "Iraqi Freedom" and not the operation "Enduring Freedom" in Afghanistan. From a similar methodological point of view, there is no mention in the book on the methods used for the research undertaken. The author relies on a great variety...