The drone reconciles liberal security statehood with unrestricted waging of war.

Evidence

But the opposite may well be true, for if a liberal security state found a way of doing without the sacrifices of warfare, it might, pace Hegel, claim to have finally and without apparent contradictions realized its announced program. And it is precisely this that tends to justify the dronization of the armed forces. One can thus grasp what is politically at stake here: reconciling the neoliberal restriction of the aims of state power to security matters with the maintenance of its prerogative to wage war. Waging war, but without sacrifices. Freely exercising war-waging sovereignty, but within the internal political conditions of sovereign security and protection. Abolishing the contradiction. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 565

Categorization

• XREF: Core payoff for the reader: drones let the state war without sacrifices, preserving the protectorate’s internal logic — ties to the reader’s impunity concern. — connects to: Armed drones reshape sovereignty over a state’s own subjects, not just enemies; The drone resolved a centuries-old contradiction in the theory of state sovereignty over war; The Afghanistan war instantly validated drones as central to future US military strategy. (+6 more)
• SEED: Potential essay: how the drone abolishes the citizen’s Hegelian contradiction, leaving citizens as passive objects of security rather than sacrifice subjects.

Related

• Armed drones reshape sovereignty over a state’s own subjects, not just enemies (similarity 0.95)
• The drone resolved a centuries-old contradiction in the theory of state sovereignty over war (similarity 0.94)
• The armed drone resolves a centuries-old tension in political sovereignty. (similarity 0.92)
• Drone warfare creates a new configuration that is neither war nor peace (similarity 0.89)
• Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace (similarity 0.88)
• Drone assassination reframes war as social defense through preventive security measures (similarity 0.88)
• The drone state aims to replace mobilized citizen bodies with mechanical agents. (similarity 0.87)
• Drone warfare establishes a norm neither war nor peace via imperial immunity (similarity 0.87)
• Drones deactivate democratic war critique by removing citizens’ exposure to death. (similarity 0.86)
• Drones lower political, economic, and ethical costs of war (similarity 0.86)
• Armed drone projects were framed as solving Vietnam’s political contradictions (similarity 0.86)
• Eliminating reciprocal exposure to violence makes drones look like cowardly weapons. (similarity 0.86)
• Drones’ necroethics embody a nationalism of self-preservation (similarity 0.86)
• Armed drones make killing a priori one-directional, converting combat into slaughter. (similarity 0.86)
• Drone warfare adopts assassination ethics while refusing assassination’s self-sacrifice (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• The armed drone resolves a centuries-old tension in political sovereignty. #corroborates (0.85) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 556
• Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace #expands (0.60)
• Drone warfare creates a new configuration that is neither war nor peace #expands (0.55) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 1
• Drone assassination reframes war as social defense through preventive security measures #qualifies (0.50)
• Drone warfare establishes a norm neither war nor peace via imperial immunity #corroborates (0.50)