The Foreign Service Journal, October 2014

68 OCTOBER 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL What Goes Around Comes Around Sting of the Drone Richard A. Clarke, omas Dunne Books, 2014, $25.99, hardcover, 298 pages. R S A H Unmanned aerial vehicles, more famil- iarly known as drones, have become so ubiquitous that it is hard for many Americans to recall a time when they were not a key component of our coun- terterrorist strategy. In fact, the debut of drones as a U.S. foreign policy tool dates back to 1959, when the Air Force began using planes to over y the Soviet Union. e Department of Defense continues to administer America’s “overt” drone program, which for the most part is noncontroversial. But in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the George W. Bush administration authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to run a “covert” drone program that has killed thousands of foreign militants—as well as many noncombatants and some American citizens. And that latter application is the subject of Richard A. Clarke’s timely new thriller, Sting of the Drone . Few people are better versed in this subject than Clarke, whose 30 years in federal service included a decade at the White House as special assistant to the president for global a airs, special adviser for cyberspace, and national coordinator for security, infrastructure The novel’s resolution is not as pat as you might expect— in keeping with the complexity of the moral and ethical questions the author thoughtfully addresses throughout the book. BOOKS protection and counterter- rorism. Before retiring from government service in 2003, he also held various posi- tions at State and Defense, including assistant secre- tary for political-military a airs. (Full disclosure: I worked for Clarke from 1990 to 1991 while serving as a third-tour Foreign Service o cer in PM. His man- agement style would never be described as warm and fuzzy, but he was always on top of his brief.) Written in the style of a screenplay, the plot cuts back and forth between the White House Situation Room, where targets are identi ed by an interagency “Kill Committee,” and the Nevada air base where hotshot pilots execute those directives remotely. We also travel from the mountains of Afghanistan, where a group of extrem- ists hatch a scheme to ght back against the drones and teach America a lesson it won’t soon forget, to several European capitals and other locations. As the clock ticks, Clarke weaves an alarmingly realistic drama in which his heroes scramble to thwart interlinked plots they’re only vaguely aware of. Will they be able to track down their anony- mous enemies before it’s too late? I wouldn’t dare risk a drone attack by giving away the answer to that question here, but I can say that the novel’s reso- lution is not as pat as you might expect—in keeping with the complexity of the moral and ethical ques- tions the author thoughtfully addresses throughout the book. ough no one is likely to mistake it for literature, Sting of the Drone is a refreshingly well-written page-turner (something one cannot take for granted in this genre, alas). at said, the sex scenes seem rather gratuitous, mainly calculated to increase the novel’s marketability as a lm rather than to advance the plot or make the characters more sympathetic. Most of the protagonists, both Americans and foreigners, come across as believable characters—not just one- dimensional wonks, bureaucrats and action gures, though we do meet some of those along the way. It is a particular pleasure to read a novel in which State Department employees are portrayed as profes- sionals, rather than weenies. But I wish Clarke had resisted the temptation to settle scores by depicting journalists and members of Congress as misguided and naïve at best, if not self-serving and vindictive. Foreign Service readers are presum- ably already keenly aware of the foreign policy dilemmas Clarke explores in Sting of the Drone . But it is still useful to be reminded of their intractability. As several of his characters ruefully observe, “ ere will always be bad guys out there.” What matters is how we deal with them as a nation and a society, and how well we learn from the mistakes we will inevi- tably make along the way. Steven Alan Honley is e Foreign Service Journal’s contributing editor.

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