Drone warfare creates a new configuration that is neither war nor peace

Evidence

In Chamayou’s razor-sharp telling, drones fundamentally transform the psychic, moral, and physical space and art of killing. But it is his theory of the drone that is even more chilling. It demands that we consider the emergence of a new ethical and political norm of war that is neither war as we know it—nor peace. The ‘principle of immunity for the imperial combatant’ rests on a twisted logic: On the one hand is the achieved capacity of the drone operative (one of many newly installed masters of ‘lethal surveillance’) to move throughout a day between killing fields and coffee breaks, between combat zones and home. On the other hand is the enlisting of a citizenry to accept the ‘moral obligation’ to kill. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 1

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s opening framing of ‘neither war as we know it nor peace’ and the twisted logic of impunity. — connects to: Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace; Modern drone asymmetry is a continuation of colonial weapons double standards; Unilateral drone warfare collapses war into a one-sided putting-to-death (+14 more)
• SEED: Article angle: how ‘immunity for the imperial combatant’ depends on persuading a domestic citizenry to accept a moral obligation to kill.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 1

Related

• Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace (similarity 0.96)
• Drone warfare establishes a norm neither war nor peace via imperial immunity (similarity 0.94)
• The drone made warfare absolutely unilateral, killing without risk of being killed (similarity 0.91)
• The drone reconciles liberal security statehood with unrestricted waging of war. (similarity 0.89)
• The armed drone resolves a centuries-old tension in political sovereignty. (similarity 0.88)
• Unilateral drone killing makes the legal right to kill merely formal. (similarity 0.88)
• Unilateral drone warfare collapses war into a one-sided putting-to-death (similarity 0.88)
• Modern drone asymmetry is a continuation of colonial weapons double standards (similarity 0.88)
• Armed drones reshape sovereignty over a state’s own subjects, not just enemies (similarity 0.87)
• Drone warfare leaves the mutual right to kill formally intact but substantively empty. (similarity 0.87)
• Armed drones make killing a priori one-directional, converting combat into slaughter. (similarity 0.87)
• Remote weapons make war unilateral with deaths confined to the enemy side (similarity 0.86)
• The drone’s impossibility of capture deliberately converts kill into the only option (similarity 0.86)
• Eliminating reciprocal exposure to violence makes drones look like cowardly weapons. (similarity 0.86)
• Drone warfare adopts assassination ethics while refusing assassination’s self-sacrifice (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• Drone warfare establishes a norm neither war nor peace via imperial immunity #corroborates (0.85)
• Drones undermine the tacit geographic limits built into the laws of war #corroborates (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 851
• Unilateral drone warfare collapses war into a one-sided putting-to-death #complicates (0.55)
• Drone-weaponized remote control radicalizes war into one-sided killing from safe zones #complicates (0.55)
• Drone warfare is a war without losses and without victory #complicates (0.50)
• The drone resolved a centuries-old contradiction in the theory of state sovereignty over war #expands (0.45)