ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how Barack Obama came to adopt drone warfare as the centrepiece of his counterterrorism policy, and discusses the legacy it leaves for both his presidency and that of his successors. It examines three distinct aspects of America's drone campaign namely the counterterrorism legacy left by two terms of unmanned warfare; and the broad infrastructural legacy, specifically the physical network of bases and the costs associated with their maintenance. The final aspects of America's drone campaign is the legal architecture which underwrites the drone programme, deliberating the constitutional implications this has for the presidency going forward. The chapter then argues that in the short term Obama's legacy is the establishment of an Executive dangerously empowered with the seductive ability to undertake lethal actions in a seemingly cost-free manner across the globe, whilst in the longer term his tenure has dramatically lowered the political, legal and moral threshold for the United States to employ autonomous weapons in the future.
