Externalizing war risks makes violence the default policy option

Evidence

Hobson warned that all this went hand in hand with a different kind of political danger: “Though reducing the strain of militarism upon the population at home, it enhances the risks of wars, which become more frequent and more barbarous in proportion as they involve to a less degree the lives of Englishmen.” In short, as Lord Salisbury had declared a few years earlier, India could certainly serve Great Britain “as an English barrack in Oriental seas from which we may draw any number of troops without paying for them. It is bad for England because it is always bad for us not to have that check upon the temptation to engage in little wars which can only be controlled by the necessity of paying for them.” — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 583 (#expands, via linked claim)

Whether the risks of war are transferred to natives or to machines, Hobson’s views still hold. The dronization of the armed forces, just like any other procedure that externalizes those risks, alters the conditions of decision making in warfare. Because the threshold of recourse to violence is drastically lowered, violence tends to be seen as the default option for foreign policy. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 586 (#expands, via linked claim)

As soon as the costs of war become an external matter, the very theoretical model that proclaimed the arrival of a democratic pacifism begins to predict the opposite: a democratic militarism. When it came to approving or rejecting going to war, citizens who were now immunized against the vital demands of warfare found themselves in more or less the same position as the shallow sovereign whose irresponsibility Kant deplored. As for their leaders, they at last had a free hand. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 584 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Accepted zero-risk killing would collapse just war theory; Drone use lowers the threshold so violence becomes the default foreign policy option. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 586; Externalizing the human cost of war makes wars more frequent and bloodier. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 583 (+5 more)

Related

• Drone use lowers the threshold so violence becomes the default foreign policy option. (similarity 0.89)
• Externalizing the human cost of war makes wars more frequent and bloodier. (similarity 0.88)
• Externalizing war costs converts democratic pacifism into democratic militarism. (similarity 0.88)
• Low cost of drone warfare removes congressional restraint on military action (similarity 0.84)
• A decision-maker who risks nothing personally will wage war frivolously. (similarity 0.83)
• Drones lower political, economic, and ethical costs of war (similarity 0.82)
• Risk-free warfare erodes the legal principles justifying the right to kill in war. (similarity 0.82)
• Drones deactivate democratic war critique by removing citizens’ exposure to death. (similarity 0.81)
• The drone reconciles liberal security statehood with unrestricted waging of war. (similarity 0.81)
• The drone state aims to replace mobilized citizen bodies with mechanical agents. (similarity 0.80)
• Low-cost warfare makes states more likely to bomb casually. (similarity 0.80)
• Armed drones reshape sovereignty over a state’s own subjects, not just enemies (similarity 0.80)
• Drone assassination reframes war as social defense through preventive security measures (similarity 0.80)
• Eliminating reciprocal exposure to violence makes drones look like cowardly weapons. (similarity 0.80)
• Drone technology erodes the soldier’s defining scorn of death. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Drone use lowers the threshold so violence becomes the default foreign policy option. #expands (0.80) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 586
• Externalizing the human cost of war makes wars more frequent and bloodier. #expands (0.80) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 583
• Externalizing war costs converts democratic pacifism into democratic militarism. #exemplifies (0.70) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 584