Sarah Kreps and Micah Zenko have written an important piece in the recent issue of Foreign Affairs warning of the dangers to the United States of drone weapons proliferation, and offering sensible proposals for limiting that danger.
Kreps and Zenko emphasize what many others have noted, that the proliferation of weaponized drones in the absence of agreed international rules for controlling their use could have dangerous and destabilizing consequences for U.S. and global security. If other states follow Washington’s approach of launching attacks across borders without authorization or notice, international constraints on the use of force could be weakened.
Other states are likely to be tempted to use these seemingly low-risk weapons beyond recognized war zones in settings where the deployment of ground troops would not be viable, as the United States has done in Yemen and tribal regions of Pakistan,. The availability of drone weaponry lowers the threshold for the use of military force and makes armed conflict more likely.
The United States should act now, before other states have fully developed capabilities, to seek international agreement on limiting the proliferation of armed drones and controlling their use. “Without U.S. leadership,” Kreps and Zenko emphasize, “it will be extremely difficult to get an international coalition to agree on a credible arrangement governing the use of armed drones.”
The authors identify two approaches for preventing the proliferation of drone weapons. The first is for the United States to get its own house in order by establishing fully transparent rules for target selection and permissible uses of these weapons. They recommend the formation of an independent government review panel, perhaps modelled on the Guantanamo Review Task Force and the panel to review the National Security Agency’s surveillance operations.
The proposed review panel could establish policies, as recommended by Human Rights Watch and other legal rights groups last year, disclosing the legal criteria used to identify potential targets, the standards for distinguishing between combatants and civilians, the civilian protection protocols and training given to drone operators, and the standards for post-strike procedures to investigate the legality of strikes and credible reports of civilian harm and where necessary to provide compensation for victims.
Kreps and Zenko also recommend steps to tighten international rules against the export of drone weapons technology. This could be accomplished by expanding and strengthening the restrictions already in place through the Missile Technology Control Regime, or by creating an entirely new proliferation control regime specifically focused on drone systems. This could include the creation of an international regulatory organization tasked with establishing and monitoring global standards for transparency and responsible use of drone systems.
Kudos to Kreps and Zenko for emphasizing the need to establish rules for controlling the use and spread of drone weapons.
David Cortright 
Yes indeed the Tide is high for an International Treaty for Drone Weaponry; and the set of usage parameters. My futuristic thought is there should also be an international agreement on any future weaponry development. We are living at a time where evolution is not taking decades or millennia to come about… we are fast-paced and i have a feeling that drone weaponry is not the last of the weaponry evolution that mankind is yet to see. We need to have a foundation up and running for governing future weaponry development. I have not read Kreps’ and Zenko’s piece yet; but from your article one thing is dead on – this is extremely crucial and vital, the world should know better from past lessons from World War II; we should get ahead of this by making the treaty now and save human lives and generations to come.