Risk-free warfare erodes the legal principles justifying the right to kill in war.

Evidence

But the offensive is also and perhaps above all pushing into the field of legal theory. “Warfare without risk,” in which the drone is probably the most effective instrument, critically undermines the meta-legal principles that underpin the right to kill in war. Against a background of fundamental destabilization such as this, formulas for redefining a sovereign power over life and death are being introduced. The aim is to accommodate the right to “targeted assassination” even if, in the process, the rights typically associated with being in armed conflict go up in smoke. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 128

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated interest in the principle of impunity for imperial combatants and its twisted logic. — connects to: Some advocates propose a new legal regime of unconstrained lethal self-defense; Accepted zero-risk killing would collapse just war theory; Radical protection from death transforms war into one-sided slaughter or hunting (+13 more)

Related

• Accepted zero-risk killing would collapse just war theory (similarity 0.92)
• Just-cause theorists grant only the just warrior the right to kill (similarity 0.89)
• Outlawed combatants lose all incentive to obey war’s rules (similarity 0.88)
• Unilateral drone killing makes the legal right to kill merely formal. (similarity 0.87)
• The drone made warfare absolutely unilateral, killing without risk of being killed (similarity 0.86)
• Legal immunity for wartime killing presupposes that the right to kill is mutual. (similarity 0.85)
• A legal hybrid of war and policing grants a global license to kill (similarity 0.85)
• Some advocates propose a new legal regime of unconstrained lethal self-defense (similarity 0.85)
• Radical protection from death transforms war into one-sided slaughter or hunting (similarity 0.85)
• Laws of war should grant equal right to fight, not equal arms (similarity 0.84)
• Zero-risk warfare implies radical inequality in the value of lives (similarity 0.84)
• Remote killing removes reciprocal constraints that traditionally shaped warrior morality. (similarity 0.84)
• A decision-maker who risks nothing personally will wage war frivolously. (similarity 0.84)
• Remote killing free from retaliation creates a moral hazard problem (similarity 0.83)
• Drone warfare leaves the mutual right to kill formally intact but substantively empty. (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Externalizing war risks makes violence the default policy option #expands (0.80)
• Remote weapons make war unilateral with deaths confined to the enemy side #complicates (0.60)