Claimed precision paradoxically expands global killing rather than limiting it

Evidence

For even though the law on armed conflicts defines the principle of proportionality as a good relation between estimated collateral damages and the scale of the military advantage expected, it provides no estimated scale nor, clearly, any unit of measurement. As Sharkey points out: “There is no known metric to objectively measure needless, superfluous, or disproportionate suffering. It requires human judgment. No clear objective means are given in any of the laws of war for how to calculate what is proportionate” (Sharkey, “Killing Made Easy”). To convert the principle of proportionality into a calculation would be like adding together apples and pears without any method of recognizing them. What is the commensurability between a particular number of lost civilian lives and an expected military advantage? What could the common unit of measurement be? However, as Eyal Weizman has shown, this kind of calculation, as necessary as it is impossible, serves solely to legitimate the deaths that result, and serves this function simply by being done. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 1130 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Precision weaponry expands rather than confines the battlefield to the whole world.; Claimed technical precision is used to justify global extension of lethal force.; Weapon precision cannot improve the adequacy of target identification. (+16 more)

Related

• Claimed technical precision is used to justify global extension of lethal force. (similarity 0.86)
• Proportionality’s incalculability serves to legitimize the deaths it governs (similarity 0.85)
• Proportionality calculations in war merely legitimate deaths rather than measure them (similarity 0.80)
• Impersonal long-range killing is aseptic homicide rather than rational progress (similarity 0.79)
• Proponents conflate firing accuracy with impact extent and target identification (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Impersonal long-range killing is aseptic homicide rather than rational progress #corroborates (0.70)
• Proportionality calculations in war merely legitimate deaths rather than measure them #corroborates (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 1130
• Target-centered battlefield logic legally licenses worldwide execution of suspects #corroborates (0.60)
• Combat indifference to killing spread to accept civilian deaths by mistake #expands (0.50)
• The combatant-to-militant shift expands the right to kill indefinitely #expands (0.50)
• Remote killing free from retaliation creates a moral hazard problem #expands (0.50)
• Zero-risk warfare implies radical inequality in the value of lives #expands (0.50)
• Global war on terror is better understood as manhunting than combat #corroborates (0.50)