Technologies promising shorter wars can extend violence across ecological time

Evidence

However, they typically continue to overlook the way the specific technologies that purport to shorten a conflict may delay, disperse, and therefore extend “precision” warfare’s ecological impact. Such technologies, when they compromise the environment, morph into long-term killers, creating landscapes that inflict lingering, off-camera casualties. Time itself becomes the ultimate cover-up, a dependable ally in camouflaging “smart” warfare’s sprawling toll. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 624

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharp formulation of slow violence’s core paradox applied to precision warfare: brevity rhetoric conceals temporal extension.
• XREF: ‘Time itself becomes the ultimate cover-up’ dovetails with Nixon’s ch.9 point on fiction dramatizing time’s occlusions, and with ch.1’s reframing of fear toward long-horizon risks. — connects to: Uncounted slow-violence casualties skew how wars are remembered and planned — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 44; The Gulf War’s virtual immediacy masked its slow environmental and epidemiological aftermath — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 593; A weapon’s true kill range spans ecological and genetic time, not just space — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 633 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Social competition environments evolve in tandem with weapons, unlike fluctuating physical environments #exemplifies (0.85) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 182
• Power works by temporalizing violence into avoidable future events rather than present force #complicates (0.80) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 24
• Populations adapt to pervasive violence until it seems ordinary #complicates (0.72)