A good piece by David Wallace-Wells on how growing technological precision in warfare has not actually led to growing precision or limitation in the targeting of warfare. This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about as I revise my undergrad Political Violence class for the fall and thinking about future research areas – the blurring of categories of war (internal/external, criminal/political), the blurring of technologies (drones are now heavily used in African civil wars, for instance) , the blurring distinctions between war and normal politics (how precisely would be categorize pro-Iranian militias in Iraq or the Houthis in Yemen?). Some salient passages:
“All around the world, civilian power supply — technically off-limits, according to international law, wherever that still applies — has become a “frontline target” in a new kind of conflict, four experts wrote in the report, published last month. Electricity plants, substations, transmission grids — military planners have always taken note of these systems, along with hospitals and water systems and other logistical features of civilian infrastructure. But for decades it has been rare for great powers to openly target energy supply, and often a kind of humanitarian outrage followed when anyone did, which meant that a broad expectation of civility prevailed. “Such sanctuary,” the authors of the West Point report wrote, “is over.” Energy infrastructure has become a much more common target, particularly as conflicts drag on in regions temptingly full of power plants and pipelines. “All of a sudden,” says Morgan Bazilian, an energy-systems scholar at the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines and an author of the report, “our distaste for anything outside of the rules of war doesn’t look all that strong.” . . . .
There are more wars than there used to be — worldwide, the number of conflicts has nearly doubled over the last 15 years. These wars are bloodier, too, with the annual death toll more than twice as high in the 2020s as it was in the 2010s and nearly five times as high as in the 2000s. . . . .
In certain ways, drones have made war more precise. But they have also helped widen the scope of conflict. The front may be effectively frozen, but Ukrainian drones are now frequently striking Russian energy targets that not very long ago seemed not simply too far to reach but beyond the pale as well. Between 2022 and 2024, Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy infrastructure roughly doubled. . . .
In Iran, we are seeing something different — not just energy warfare but energy war, a conflict fought over and within energy markets, with military operations designed primarily to shape global prices and global supply of fuel. . . . .”
Paul Staniland 