Death Becomes You: Drones, Part 3

[rock music] As we've already covered, central to classical theories of just war and military morality is a notion of mutual risk.

A soldier assumes the burden of taking life, and in exchange, they accept the risk of their own death.

And with that morality for the people who plan, strategize, and command wars, there comes an attendant ethics about when and how one can or should expose their own soldiers to risk or harm.

There is an element of risk, but to expose soldiers to risk which is avoidable or unnecessary would be unethical, perhaps even immoral.

So, alongside that mutual risk between two warring sides, there is nevertheless an impetus to try and minimize potential risk to one's own soldiers while increasing risk to one's enemies.

The risk is mutual, but that doesn't mean it has to be symmetrical.

And as a matter of fact, in the wars between great powers and insurgent, separatist, or rebel groups that characterized much of the latter 20th century onwards, unequal distribution of both means of violence and vulnerability was typical and common.

But with the transition into the 1990s, according to Chamayou, as exemplified by the actions in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, that pursuit of a symmetry of force and vulnerability entered a phase which would see the use of military force in combat made subordinate to a domestic political imperative, one where invulnerability of a dominant power's troops to the greatest extent possible would be established as the new ethical and political norm.

The background behind this is fairly simple.

Following defeat in the Vietnam War, the United States became afflicted by this so-called Vietnam syndrome, according to which the United States, particularly Congress, was more hesitant about committing to new military engagements.

One of the largest contributing factors to the loss of US soldier morale and a willingness to prosecute the war among US voters, ostensibly, had been the large number of bodies returning home in coffins and the attendant headlines that they generated in the press.

[rock music] A decade and change later, the first Gulf War, in which a US-led coalition swiftly defeated the Iraqi army after they invaded and occupied Kuwait, was said to have helped the US to finally kick the Vietnam syndrome that had long afflicted it.

Only a few years after that, however, US intervention in the civil war in Somalia led to the largest loss of troop life since Vietnam and the downing of three Black Hawk helicopters.

So these experiences ultimately helped to inform that 15,000 feet rule that NATO imposed on pilots during the bombing of Yugoslavia.

The culminating effect was to instantiate a new politico-military rationale, which has continued to obtain throughout much of the 21st century.

Losses of vehicles, materiel, and personnel led to negative headlines and critical coverage in the media and press, which in turn negatively impacted public opinion and so hindered the United States' ability to prosecute military actions.

The solution, reduce losses of personnel and materiel and so sustain one's ability to prosecute war.

But in attempting to minimize negative coverage and domestic backlash, these approaches had troubling implications.

Firstly, it posited a notion that it might be acceptable to risk the lives of civilians in a war zone, even civilians one is claiming to be rescuing in a humanitarian situation, provided it reduced the risk to, quote unquote, "our troops." And this, in turn, implied that the life of a civilian was worth less than that of a military's own pilots or troops.

Air supremacy or superiority can be an immensely determinative factor in warfare.

It's partly why debates over both aerial strikes and no-fly zones have featured heavily in discussions around contemporary conflicts.

But the idea that warfare could be waged entirely without risk- was leading to a development which was deeply troubling to theorists of just war and which now threatened to turn the entire moral tradition on its head.

A novel theory of just warfare was beginning to emerge, rooted not in the principle of mutual risk, but instead in a principle of the total immunity of imperial combatants.

By the time the U.S. military invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, this principle had taken hold and continued to morph.

A 2005 journal article by Alex J. Bellamy found that, quote, In order to protect their own forces, the U.S. military relied heavily on unverified intelligence provided by Afghans for the identification and targeting of mobile targets or so-called targets of opportunity, rather than placing American troops on the ground to search for and verify military targets.

[rock music] As we've already covered, central to classical theories of just war and military morality is a notion of mutual risk.

A soldier assumes the burden of taking life, and in exchange, they accept the risk of their own death.

And with that morality for the people who plan, strategize, and command wars, there comes an attendant ethics about when and how one can or should expose their own soldiers to risk or harm.

There is an element of risk, but to expose soldiers to risk which is avoidable or unnecessary would be unethical, perhaps even immoral.

So, alongside that mutual risk between two warring sides, there is nevertheless an impetus to try and minimize potential risk to one's own soldiers while increasing risk to one's enemies.

The risk is mutual, but that doesn't mean it has to be symmetrical.

And as a matter of fact, in the wars between great powers and insurgent, separatist, or rebel groups that characterized much of the latter 20th century onwards, unequal distribution of both means of violence and vulnerability was typical and common.

But with the transition into the 1990s, according to Chamayou, as exemplified by the actions in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, that pursuit of a symmetry of force and vulnerability entered a phase which would see the use of military force in combat made subordinate to a domestic political imperative, one where invulnerability of a dominant power's troops to the greatest extent possible would be established as the new ethical and political norm.

The background behind this is fairly simple.

Following defeat in the Vietnam War, the United States became afflicted by this so-called Vietnam syndrome, according to which the United States, particularly Congress, was more hesitant about committing to new military engagements.

One of the largest contributing factors to the loss of US soldier morale and a willingness to prosecute the war among US voters, ostensibly, had been the large number of bodies returning home in coffins and the attendant headlines that they generated in the press.

[rock music] A decade and change later, the first Gulf War, in which a US-led coalition swiftly defeated the Iraqi army after they invaded and occupied Kuwait, was said to have helped the US to finally kick the Vietnam syndrome that had long afflicted it.

Only a few years after that, however, US intervention in the civil war in Somalia led to the largest loss of troop life since Vietnam and the downing of three Black Hawk helicopters.

So these experiences ultimately helped to inform that 15,000 feet rule that NATO imposed on pilots during the bombing of Yugoslavia.

The culminating effect was to instantiate a new politico-military rationale, which has continued to obtain throughout much of the 21st century.

Losses of vehicles, materiel, and personnel led to negative headlines and critical coverage in the media and press, which in turn negatively impacted public opinion and so hindered the United States' ability to prosecute military actions.

The solution, reduce losses of personnel and materiel and so sustain one's ability to prosecute war.

But in attempting to minimize negative coverage and domestic backlash, these approaches had troubling implications.

Firstly, it posited a notion that it might be acceptable to risk the lives of civilians in a war zone, even civilians one is claiming to be rescuing in a humanitarian situation, provided it reduced the risk to, quote unquote, "our troops." And this, in turn, implied that the life of a civilian was worth less than that of a military's own pilots or troops.

Air supremacy or superiority can be an immensely determinative factor in warfare.

It's partly why debates over both aerial strikes and no-fly zones have featured heavily in discussions around contemporary conflicts.

But the idea that warfare could be waged entirely without risk- was leading to a development which was deeply troubling to theorists of just war and which now threatened to turn the entire moral tradition on its head.

A novel theory of just warfare was beginning to emerge, rooted not in the principle of mutual risk, but instead in a principle of the total immunity of imperial combatants.

By the time the U.S. military invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, this principle had taken hold and continued to morph.

A 2005 journal article by Alex J. Bellamy found that, quote, In order to protect their own forces, the U.S. military relied heavily on unverified intelligence provided by Afghans for the identification and targeting of mobile targets or so-called targets of opportunity, rather than placing American troops on the ground to search for and verify military targets.