Fight night. In Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence went to work as attack dogs for their respective campaigns, with Kaine pushing hard to make the case that Trump is a dangerous choice for president, and Pence staking out positions on nuclear weapons, Russia, and Syria, that were often at odds with those of his boss, Donald Trump.
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Drone rules. The Obama administration is set to announce Wednesday that it is working with 40 countries to establish a set of standards for the use and sale of armed and unarmed drones, setting the stage for a meeting next year to hammer out details. Bloomberg got the jump on the document, and an administration official tells SitRep that the idea is to ensure that drones are for the first time “subject to international law” while stressing “the need for transparency about exports.”
But Rachel Stohl of the Stimson Center emails SitRep that while the declaration “is laudable,” it doesn’t go far enough. “The standards in the joint declaration are lower than those that the United States maintains for its own export and there is little incentive for countries to strive for higher standards,” she said. What’s more, once countries have signed on to this declaration “they can tick a box that they have committed to high standards and are acting responsibly. The joint declaration could be seen as a blank check for future exports and use.”
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