LAUSR

Utilising the United States’ (US) pursuance of remote warfare and its network of partnerships as a site for examination, and a three-part typography of the ‘civilian’ encompassing legal protections, protections via sovereign power and the use of frames to underpin civilian status, this article will show the devastating and eroding impact of remote warfare on the civilian. Civilian status and protections are not only easily subverted in the name of military necessity in the context of remote warfare, but fundamental to its strategic ends and continuance. Taken together, though not exhaustive, these three areas will outline what makes a civilian visible and deserving in the eyes of the international system—and so worthy of protection. By using the interdisciplinary idea of ‘undoing’ and its simultaneous ‘generative–destructive’ impact to link the impacts of remote warfare as both phenomenon and experience, this article hopes to contribute to broadening scholarship in this area.