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.

The result of the UK referendum on membership of the EU has occasioned considerable debate on Britain's international standing. An important (but so far largely overlooked) aspect of this debate is how the possibility of Brexit impacts upon NATO and, specifically, the UK's position within the Atlantic alliance. In this connection, the initial signs are worrying. London may wish to focus on NATO as a way of compensating for a troubled exit from the EU, but its ability to do so is weakened by uncertainties over the UK defence budget (and standing as a nuclear power), a loss of credibility as a global player and the blame that will attach to it for undermining NATO cohesion. The likely upshot of Brexit will be a loss of British influence and a blow to the integrity of the alliance.

The spectre of American decline is once again animating both observers and practitioners of US foreign policy. The global financial crisis, a faltering American economy and continued costly and controversial military engagements overseas have been presented as conclusive proof that American foreign policy will soon lack the resources needed to sustain its previous international hegemony. Arguments of domestic weakness have been linked to analyses of the economic vitality of America's competitors to demonstrate a seemingly watertight case for relative decline. The inexorable rise of China has been presented from various quarters as evidence that the American era will soon be drawing to a close. Yet, such declinist arguments continue to suffer from fundamental weaknesses, overestimating the likely future strength of America's rivals while concurrently downplaying the capacity of the US to rejuvenate its economy and thus revivify its liberal universalist creed. The most interesting development in this regard has been the sudden resurgence of the US energy sector. Written off less than a decade ago as being in terminal decline, the American oil and gas industry has staged a remarkable recovery. Vast reserves of shale gas and accompanying tight oil offer the potential to aid the revival of the American economy, with some forecasts pointing to US energy self‐sufficiency within two decades. Notions of US relative decline may yet prove premature. The geopolitical impact of American energy self‐sufficiency is likely to be very significant, making an important contribution to a reversal of the US trade deficit, a revival of America's industrial base, and the possibility of a corresponding relative decline in power for conventional fossil fuel exporters.

The desire for regime change in Iran has coloured the Bush administration's approach to the challenge presented by Tehran's apparent desire to build a nuclear weapons capability. Yet the threat of military force either to destroy Iran's nuclear infrastructure and/or to eff ect regime change has proved counterproductive to the simultaneous eff orts to stop the Iranian programme through diplomacy. Indeed, the entire Bush policy towards Iran of simultaneously wishing to coerce, undermine and replace the regime while also seeking to persuade it to abandon its nuclear programme through diplomacy has proved both strategically inconsistent and consistently counterproductive. In failing to decide whether it prioritizes a change of regime or a change of behaviour it has got neither. This article elucidates the rationale behind the Bush administration's policy approach, demonstrating how in seeking both objectives simultaneously it has achieved neither. It sets out instead a set of policies to regain the initiative in US‐Iranian relations and to prioritize and coordinate American policy goals within a broader Middle East policy.

The 1990s was a period of strategic innovation in US foreign policy. Operation Allied Force in particular represented an important step in the contorted evolution of America's attitude towards the use of force in the post‐Cold War period. That operation demonstrated the growing influence of humanitarian concerns and the extent to which America was willing to reconsider Cold War criteria on the prudence and utility of force in support of its foreign policy. In its decision to intervene in Kosovo, the Clinton administration also divided opinion among the military. This, in effect, reduced the premium placed on the counsels of the armed forces and made it easier for the Bush administration subsequently to ignore their advice. Furthermore, having fought the war multilaterally through NATO, Operation Allied Force made America more wary of doing so again. In other words, the intervention set a number of precedents and left a significant legacy for the way in which US foreign policy was pursued in the decade that followed. This legacy is considered in two parts: the first analyses those issues associated with the use of force debate; the second considers how the Kosovo experience affected US attitudes to coalition warfare.