War’s immunity from murder prosecutions rests on mutual reciprocity

Evidence

The right to kill with impunity in war thus seems to be based upon a tacit structural premise: if one has the right to kill without crime, it is because that right is granted mutually. If I agree to confer upon another the right to kill me or my people with impunity, that is because I count on benefiting from the same exemption if I myself kill. The decriminalization of warrior homicide presupposes a structure of reciprocity. The killing is allowed only because it is a matter of killing each other. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 522 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Samuel von Pufendorf explains, “The custom of nations holds that the belligerents mutually in a formal war are upon an equal footing so far as concerns the justice of the war, when they make peace,” and so “the damage caused by either side is forgiven, as if it had been done by agreement.” This is the thesis that there exists between belligerents some kind of war pact. “A similar agreement is entered into by those who leave the decision of their disputes to the outcome of duels … inasmuch as each of them, willingly and by agreement, entered a combat the law of which was either to kill or be killed.” Of course, this is a legal fiction, but the law is, in its very essence, founded upon such fictions. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 521 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The current use of drones, in its own way, falls into place in the continuous line of such “asymmetrical wars” involving machine guns marshaled against spears or rusty old guns, in “little wars” that are already no longer heroic or even really “wars” in the same sense that a Westerner who saw himself as a Greek warrior would give to that word. If there was any repugnance felt at the use of ignoble means, it was present only in situations where the conflict was between equals, rather than simply a matter of putting down inferiors. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 339 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Modern jus in bello rests on combatants’ equal right to kill, not on punishment; Co-presence can be unilateral, breaking presumed reciprocity between combatants; Right to kill depends on readiness to expose own soldiers (+12 more)

Related

• Legal immunity for wartime killing presupposes that the right to kill is mutual. (similarity 0.91)
• Right to kill depends on readiness to expose own soldiers (similarity 0.90)
• Remote killing removes reciprocal constraints that traditionally shaped warrior morality. (similarity 0.85)
• Wartime impunity rests on a fictional war pact granting equal footing to belligerents. (similarity 0.85)
• Unilateral drone killing makes the legal right to kill merely formal. (similarity 0.82)
• Modern jus in bello rests on combatants’ equal right to kill, not on punishment (similarity 0.81)
• Drone warfare creates a new configuration that is neither war nor peace (similarity 0.81)
• The drone made warfare absolutely unilateral, killing without risk of being killed (similarity 0.81)
• Radical protection from death transforms war into one-sided slaughter or hunting (similarity 0.80)
• Moral limits on weapons apply only where adversaries are equals (similarity 0.80)
• Co-presence can be unilateral, breaking presumed reciprocity between combatants (similarity 0.80)
• Risk-free warfare erodes the legal principles justifying the right to kill in war. (similarity 0.80)
• Drone warfare leaves the mutual right to kill formally intact but substantively empty. (similarity 0.79)
• Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace (similarity 0.78)
• Just-cause theorists grant only the just warrior the right to kill (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Legal immunity for wartime killing presupposes that the right to kill is mutual. #corroborates (0.90) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 522
• Wartime impunity rests on a fictional war pact granting equal footing to belligerents. #corroborates (0.80) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 521
• Moral limits on weapons apply only where adversaries are equals #corroborates (0.70) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 339
• Remote killing free from retaliation creates a moral hazard problem #corroborates (0.60)
• Invisibility from retaliation confers power to act with impunity. #corroborates (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 342
• Dominant powers codified their own practical invulnerability as the overriding war norm #complicates (0.50)