Drone assassination reframes war as social defense through preventive security measures

Evidence

On the face of it, the drone appears as the solution to the central contradiction of the discourse of protective sovereignty: wage war without endangering the lives of one’s own subjects, preserve without loss, always protect. But here comes the bad news: the promise to preserve national lives goes hand in hand with the increased social vulnerability and precariousness of many of those lives. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 607 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

This citizenship of exposable lives has constituted an important—albeit not the sole—basis for a democratic critique of the power to wage war, not only in the institutional manner forecast by Kant, namely suffrage, but also as a vector of extraparliamentary mobilization in the antiwar movements of the twentieth century, However, the dronization of the armed forces, inasmuch as it reduces the military exposure of national lives to zero, tends to somewhat deactivate that critical attitude. It would nevertheless be a mistake to believe that an “aversion to losses” is the only possible motive and the cost/benefit calculation the only relevant rationality for the development of a critical voice in the face of state violence. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 575 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Armed drones reshape sovereignty over a state’s own subjects, not just enemies; Drone-weaponized remote control radicalizes war into one-sided killing from safe zones; Drone warfare establishes a norm neither war nor peace via imperial immunity (+8 more)

Related

• Protecting national lives through drones increases their social precariousness. (similarity 0.92)
• Drones deactivate democratic war critique by removing citizens’ exposure to death. (similarity 0.91)
• Protecting national lives in war increases those lives’ social precariousness (similarity 0.90)
• Drone warfare deactivates the democratic critique rooted in exposable lives (similarity 0.89)
• The drone state aims to replace mobilized citizen bodies with mechanical agents. (similarity 0.89)
• Drones’ necroethics embody a nationalism of self-preservation (similarity 0.88)
• The drone reconciles liberal security statehood with unrestricted waging of war. (similarity 0.88)
• Armed drones reshape sovereignty over a state’s own subjects, not just enemies (similarity 0.88)
• Drone technology erodes the soldier’s defining scorn of death. (similarity 0.86)
• Drones create a moral hazard that shifts risk onto others. (similarity 0.85)
• Drones lower political, economic, and ethical costs of war (similarity 0.85)
• The drone resolved a centuries-old contradiction in the theory of state sovereignty over war (similarity 0.85)
• Eliminating reciprocal exposure to violence makes drones look like cowardly weapons. (similarity 0.84)
• Drone warfare establishes a norm neither war nor peace via imperial immunity (similarity 0.84)
• Drone warfare adopts assassination ethics while refusing assassination’s self-sacrifice (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Protecting national lives through drones increases their social precariousness. #contradicts (0.70) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 607
• Drones deactivate democratic war critique by removing citizens’ exposure to death. #expands (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 575
• Drones are morally justified by preventing one’s own casualties #expands (0.50)