Remote Warfare and the Retooling of American Primacy

ABSTRACT

This paper argues for the utility of remote warfare as a means of analysing the geopolitics of American primacy. Through the use of new technologies and surrogate forces to address security challenges with a minimal military footprint, remote warfare (re)imposes political distance between the United States and the sites of its military interventions. Its constitutive modalities of intervention range from drones and Special Operations Forces to Private Military Security Companies, security cooperation programmes and emerging technologies associated with Artificial Intelligence. As public support for large-scale overseas interventions has dwindled and strategic competition with China has intensified, remote warfare represents a means of ‘retooling’ US primacy, which is both a structural condition and a strategic orientation. As a strategic approach to the use of force, remote warfare enables the American state to project military power in a more flexible and sustainable manner. This has supported the maintenance of US primacy as Washington’s strategic focus has shifted from counterterrorism towards a renewed emphasis on great power competition.

Notes

1. On occasion, cyberwarfare has been discussed as one component or expression of remote warfare (see for example Ohlin 2017). As demonstrated by David Sanger (2018), the realm of cyber security is characterised by high levels of uncertainty and confusion, with cyber-attacks constituting a sui generis weapon. In our understanding, the cyber domain represents a distinct venue for conflict. We thank the anonymous reviewer for bringing this point to our attention.

2. There are two notable exceptions to the secrecy that has cloaked SOF operations: the 2011 raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan; and the 2019 raid that resulted in the death of ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria.

3. Politically, AWS could conceivably heighten the deniability of the use of force (Haner and Garcia 2019, 332). Likewise, by eliminating the risk of both physical and psychological harm to Western military personnel, AWS could further erode public oversight and accountability (Krieg and Rickli 2019). As Ohlin notes (2017, 35–6), when situated within the larger arch of weapons development, AWS threaten to provide the ‘ultimate degree of remoteness’ from the physical risks of organised violence: human agents would not only be distanced from frontline fighting, but removed entirely.