Radical protection from death transforms war into one-sided slaughter or hunting

Evidence

Using new means, the drone procures for its operators an even greater sense of invulnerability. Today as yesterday, the radical imbalance in exposure to death leads to a redefinition of relations of hostility and of the very sense of what is called “waging war.” Warfare, by distancing itself totally from the model of hand-to-hand combat, becomes something quite different, a “state of violence” of a different kind. It degenerates into slaughter or hunting. One no longer fights the enemy; one eliminates him, as one shoots rabbits. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 332 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

However, “projection of power” is also a euphemism that obscures the facts of wounding, killing, destroying. And to do this “without projecting vulnerability” implies that the only vulnerability will be that of the enemy, reduced to the status of a mere target. Underlying the palliative military rhetoric, as Elaine Scarry detects, the real claim is that the “successful strategy is one in which the injuring occurs only in one direction… . Thus, the original definition, which seems to posit noninjuring against injuring, instead posits one-directional injuring against two-directional injuring.” By prolonging and radicalizing preexisting tendencies, the armed drone goes to the very limit: for whoever uses such a weapon, it becomes a priori impossible to die as one kills. Warfare, from being possibly asymmetrical, becomes absolutely unilateral. What could still claim to be combat is converted into a campaign of what is, quite simply, slaughter. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 111 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The hunter-state model redefines armed violence around pursuing prey rather than fixed territory.; Accepted zero-risk killing would collapse just war theory; Global war on terror is better understood as manhunting than combat (+16 more)

Related

• Drone-weaponized remote control radicalizes war into one-sided killing from safe zones (similarity 0.92)
• Armed drones make killing a priori one-directional, converting combat into slaughter. (similarity 0.91)
• Unilateral drone warfare collapses war into a one-sided putting-to-death (similarity 0.90)
• Extreme asymmetry in vulnerability transforms war into hunting or slaughter (similarity 0.90)
• Global war on terror is better understood as manhunting than combat (similarity 0.89)
• The drone made warfare absolutely unilateral, killing without risk of being killed (similarity 0.89)
• Remote weapons make war unilateral with deaths confined to the enemy side (similarity 0.88)
• Accepted zero-risk killing would collapse just war theory (similarity 0.88)
• Zero-risk warfare implies radical inequality in the value of lives (similarity 0.86)
• The hunter-state model redefines armed violence around pursuing prey rather than fixed territory. (similarity 0.86)
• The drone’s impossibility of capture deliberately converts kill into the only option (similarity 0.85)
• Unilateral drone killing makes the legal right to kill merely formal. (similarity 0.85)
• Hunting, unlike combat, defines violence by the prey’s location (similarity 0.85)
• Risk-free warfare erodes the legal principles justifying the right to kill in war. (similarity 0.85)
• Remote killing removes reciprocal constraints that traditionally shaped warrior morality. (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• Extreme asymmetry in vulnerability transforms war into hunting or slaughter #corroborates (0.95) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 332
• Armed drones make killing a priori one-directional, converting combat into slaughter. #exemplifies (0.90) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 111
• Drone-weaponized remote control radicalizes war into one-sided killing from safe zones #corroborates (0.85)
• Unilateral drone warfare collapses war into a one-sided putting-to-death #corroborates (0.85)
• Remote weapons make war unilateral with deaths confined to the enemy side #exemplifies (0.80)
• Risk-free warfare erodes the legal principles justifying the right to kill in war. #expands (0.70) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 128
• War’s immunity from murder prosecutions rests on mutual reciprocity #qualifies (0.60)