Unilateral drone warfare collapses war into a one-sided putting-to-death

Evidence

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 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace; The drone’s impossibility of capture deliberately converts kill into the only option — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 544; Drone warfare creates a new configuration that is neither war nor peace — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 1 (+17 more)

Related

• Armed drones make killing a priori one-directional, converting combat into slaughter. (similarity 0.94)
• Drone-weaponized remote control radicalizes war into one-sided killing from safe zones (similarity 0.94)
• The drone made warfare absolutely unilateral, killing without risk of being killed (similarity 0.93)
• Radical protection from death transforms war into one-sided slaughter or hunting (similarity 0.90)
• Unilateral drone killing makes the legal right to kill merely formal. (similarity 0.88)
• The drone’s impossibility of capture deliberately converts kill into the only option (similarity 0.88)
• Drone warfare creates a new configuration that is neither war nor peace (similarity 0.88)
• Remote weapons make war unilateral with deaths confined to the enemy side (similarity 0.88)
• Drone warfare leaves the mutual right to kill formally intact but substantively empty. (similarity 0.88)
• Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace (similarity 0.87)
• Drone war turns strategic evaluation into disconnected body counts. (similarity 0.85)
• Drone warfare establishes a norm neither war nor peace via imperial immunity (similarity 0.85)
• Drone warfare pits unburdened machines against bodies bound by physical limits. (similarity 0.85)
• Eliminating reciprocal exposure to violence makes drones look like cowardly weapons. (similarity 0.84)
• Drones resolve the guerrilla problem by depriving insurgents of any target to attack. (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Armed drones make killing a priori one-directional, converting combat into slaughter. #corroborates (0.90) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 111
• The drone made warfare absolutely unilateral, killing without risk of being killed #corroborates (0.85)
• Remote weapons make war unilateral with deaths confined to the enemy side #corroborates (0.82)
• Drone warfare pits unburdened machines against bodies bound by physical limits. #corroborates (0.70) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 705
• Drone war turns strategic evaluation into disconnected body counts. #expands (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 282
• Drone warfare replaces combat’s duel with a hunter-prey hide-and-seek structure #expands (0.60)
• Drones lower political, economic, and ethical costs of war #expands (0.55)