Drone warfare leaves the mutual right to kill formally intact but substantively empty.

Evidence

But it must also be agreed that the right is no longer any more than formally mutual. What is the worth of a right to kill one another without crime when only one of the two protagonists can still enjoy the real content of that founding permission? Deprived of its substance, that right no longer has anything but a ghostly existence, as empty of reality as the undiscoverable cockpit of the drone is empty, with no human occupant to target. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 525

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The drone made warfare absolutely unilateral, killing without risk of being killed; Unilateral drone killing makes the legal right to kill merely formal. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 525; Unilateral drone warfare collapses war into a one-sided putting-to-death (+2 more)

Related

• Unilateral drone killing makes the legal right to kill merely formal. (similarity 0.95)
• The drone made warfare absolutely unilateral, killing without risk of being killed (similarity 0.93)
• Unilateral drone warfare collapses war into a one-sided putting-to-death (similarity 0.88)
• Drone warfare creates a new configuration that is neither war nor peace (similarity 0.87)
• Drones are nondiscriminatory because excluding combat erases the combatant-noncombatant distinction. (similarity 0.86)
• Just-cause theorists grant only the just warrior the right to kill (similarity 0.86)
• Armed drones make killing a priori one-directional, converting combat into slaughter. (similarity 0.86)
• Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace (similarity 0.85)
• Legal immunity for wartime killing presupposes that the right to kill is mutual. (similarity 0.85)
• The drone’s impossibility of capture deliberately converts kill into the only option (similarity 0.84)
• The drone reconciles liberal security statehood with unrestricted waging of war. (similarity 0.84)
• Drone-weaponized remote control radicalizes war into one-sided killing from safe zones (similarity 0.84)
• Radical protection from death transforms war into one-sided slaughter or hunting (similarity 0.84)
• Armed drones reshape sovereignty over a state’s own subjects, not just enemies (similarity 0.83)
• Risk-free warfare erodes the legal principles justifying the right to kill in war. (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Unilateral drone killing makes the legal right to kill merely formal. #corroborates (0.90) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 525
• Unilateral drone warfare collapses war into a one-sided putting-to-death #expands (0.70)
• The drone resolved a centuries-old contradiction in the theory of state sovereignty over war #expands (0.60)
• Drones are nondiscriminatory because excluding combat erases the combatant-noncombatant distinction. #expands (0.55) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 490