A state can prioritize its own soldiers’ lives over unlimited foreign civilian casualties.

Evidence

The duties of the nation-state thus override the universal obligations declared by international humanitarian law. Or rather, it is assumed to be acceptable to revise the universal obligations imposed by that law because the fundamental normative threshold it is based on has shrunk to the particular duties of a state toward its own subjects. The law on armed conflicts applies limitations to the exercise of armed violence based on the universal rights of civilians, whoever they are. However, Kasher and Yadlin’s revisionist architectonic reshapes the map of the relevant categories, making the limit of state sovereignty the separation line. On one side of that line certain lives must be preserved as a priority, even at the price of carnage for civilians who find themselves on the other side of that line. This involves a complete disproportion, since the preservation of the life of a single national soldier may justify forsaking an indefinite number of foreign civilians: “According to our norm of priorities on grounds of duties, the state should give priority to saving the life of a single citizen, even if the collateral damage caused in the course of protecting that citizen is much higher, which may seem unacceptable.” In Kasher and Yadlin’s theoretical assault, the principle of distinction drags along with it the principle of proportionality, which will be sacrificed in the name of saving national lives. … The president of the Israeli Academy of Sciences, Menahem Yaari, expressed himself more boldly: “A military code of conduct that discriminates, in cases of hazards being inflicted upon innocent civilians, on the basis of whether these civilians are ‘ours’ or ‘theirs’ is all the more worrisome when viewed against a general background of growing ethnocentric and xenophobic attitudes in Israel’s traditional establishment. We see an ongoing drift from universalism and humanitarianism toward parochialism and tribalism.” — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 441

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s core question about the twisted logic legitimizing wartime killing and impunity for imperial combatants. — connects to: Soldiers’ lives were redefined as citizens deserving protection above enemy civilians. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 439; US ground forces in Afghanistan and Iraq also privileged soldier protection over civilians. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 436; Hyperprotecting soldiers shifts the burden of risk onto civilians — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 300 (+2 more)

Related

• Soldiers’ lives were redefined as citizens deserving protection above enemy civilians. (similarity 0.92)
• Kasher and Yadlin formally ranked national soldier lives above enemy civilian lives (similarity 0.86)
• Hyperprotecting soldiers shifts the burden of risk onto civilians (similarity 0.86)
• Protecting national lives in war increases those lives’ social precariousness (similarity 0.85)
• US ground forces in Afghanistan and Iraq also privileged soldier protection over civilians. (similarity 0.83)
• Israel formalized the doctrine that protecting Israeli soldiers outranks enemy civilians. (similarity 0.82)
• Just-war theorists reject prioritizing own soldiers’ safety over enemy civilians’ safety. (similarity 0.82)
• Protecting national lives through drones increases their social precariousness. (similarity 0.81)
• Removing risk reduces the soldier to a mere executioner in need of new victimhood (similarity 0.80)
• Combat indifference to killing spread to accept civilian deaths by mistake (similarity 0.80)
• Preserving one’s own soldiers has become a quasi-absolute imperative excluding sacrifice. (similarity 0.80)
• The drone state aims to replace mobilized citizen bodies with mechanical agents. (similarity 0.79)
• A sui generis principle of imperial-combatant immunity emerged above the law of armed conflict (similarity 0.78)
• Drone assassination reframes war as social defense through preventive security measures (similarity 0.78)
• The drone reconciles liberal security statehood with unrestricted waging of war. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Hyperprotecting soldiers shifts the burden of risk onto civilians #expands (0.80) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 300
• Right to kill depends on readiness to expose own soldiers #corroborates (0.70)
• Protecting national lives in war increases those lives’ social precariousness #complicates (0.60)