Armed drone projects were framed as solving Vietnam’s political contradictions

Evidence

The drone was regarded as the low-cost weapon par excellence, in accordance with a double logic of economy, with respect to “the value of the human lives involved, and the financial costs” … The press, picking up on these arguments, regarded the projects for armed drones as the solution to the political contradictions of the Vietnam War: “The intensified bombings of North Vietnam since the beginning of the year has swelled the ranks of the more than 1600 American servicemen believed held prisoner in Indochina. Taking the pilots out of the bombers will remove a serious obstacle to the Nixon Administration’s avowed intension to maintain American air power in South Asia.” — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 765

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to reader’s interest in the ‘principle of impunity’ — eliminating pilot casualties removes the political cost that limited bombing. — connects to: Officers feared manhunting doctrine would echo Vietnam’s Phoenix Program.; The drone resolved a centuries-old contradiction in the theory of state sovereignty over war; Armed drones reshape sovereignty over a state’s own subjects, not just enemies (+3 more)
• SEED: Angle: the drone as an answer to a domestic political constraint, not just a military innovation — killing without a constituency to lose.

Related

• Officers feared manhunting doctrine would echo Vietnam’s Phoenix Program. (similarity 0.90)
• Armed drones reshape sovereignty over a state’s own subjects, not just enemies (similarity 0.87)
• The drone reconciles liberal security statehood with unrestricted waging of war. (similarity 0.86)
• The drone resolved a centuries-old contradiction in the theory of state sovereignty over war (similarity 0.86)
• The armed drone resolves a centuries-old tension in political sovereignty. (similarity 0.85)
• Drone assassination reframes war as social defense through preventive security measures (similarity 0.82)
• Drones lower political, economic, and ethical costs of war (similarity 0.82)
• Drone war turns strategic evaluation into disconnected body counts. (similarity 0.81)
• The drone state aims to replace mobilized citizen bodies with mechanical agents. (similarity 0.81)
• Drone warfare creates a new configuration that is neither war nor peace (similarity 0.81)
• Low cost of drone warfare removes congressional restraint on military action (similarity 0.81)
• Eliminating reciprocal exposure to violence makes drones look like cowardly weapons. (similarity 0.81)
• The drone’s impossibility of capture deliberately converts kill into the only option (similarity 0.80)
• Drone warfare establishes a norm neither war nor peace via imperial immunity (similarity 0.80)
• Air Force pilots resisted drones partly because unmanning threatened their virility. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• The drone resolved a centuries-old contradiction in the theory of state sovereignty over war #exemplifies (0.70)
• The drone reconciles liberal security statehood with unrestricted waging of war. #corroborates (0.70) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 565
• Armed drones reshape sovereignty over a state’s own subjects, not just enemies #expands (0.60)
• Drone warfare creates a new configuration that is neither war nor peace #expands (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 1
• Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace #expands (0.60)