Officially, our drone strikes are denied by the US government. I would expect others to follow the standard we have set. You are assuming the US won't find itself in a hall of mirrors, with several possible origins of drone strikes having "tried" one of our leaders in a perfectly legit "secret court" - another area where we are setting global standards. All of this is very shortsighted.

There is a false adultness about claiming that nations are in a "state of nature" and that we should take comfort in living in our exceptional leviathan's panopticon.

At the end of the day, nearly everyone will kill to protect their interests. At any given time we may cultivate a thicker or thinner veneer of civilization on top of this reality. I'm quite willing to concede that it may be better policy not to engage in these drone strikes, in the sense of avoiding avoidable violence. But if any country really feels its core interests threatened, they will use whatever technology they have at their disposal against us, and good will won't count for much. That's not the nature of human society. It was within the lifetime of people I know personally that Europeans, seemingly peaceful to us Americans, were killing each other by the tens of millions. What is that but a painful reminder of the state of nature that lies beneath a very thin veneer?

Frankly, I don't think that drone strikes are worth the collateral deaths and bad PR. But there is a difference between that and saying that we "can't" engage in them, because of Constitutional law or international law or moral law. Because I think such a position is totally inconsistent with the fundamentally violent nature of international relations.

A good way to wind up with Europe at war again is to lack the foresight and restraint to treat Middle Eastern terrorists as the relative nuisance they are instead of blowing our waning resources on reshaping the Middle East and building a domestic security state.