Northrop Grumman

The U.S. must also reckon with the inevitability of rival powers and nonstate actors developing their own drones. Given its global head start and leverage on the issue, the U.S. has an interest in leading an effort to codify the use of drones in the laws of war, as it did with nuclear weapons in the Cold War. Otherwise, reflexively anti-American international bodies such as the United Nations Human Rights Council, which last week announced a nine-month investigation into the drone campaign, will step into the vacuum.