I was intrigued by both Deb’s article and the Reuters podcast that highlighted the use of drone warfare in the Russo-Ukrainian War. I found the normalization of the guerrilla-ification of modern warfare, introduced by the necessity of civilian interception in responding to drone strikes, to be especially interesting: when $400 drones hold the kind of firepower that can neutralize 400-million-dollar tanks, the nature of conflict is centered on a competition for the powers of mass-production (of both the number of drone interceptors and the drones themselves.) If you fire tons and tons of cheap drones, the opponent will eventually run out of interceptors to neutralize them, or vice versa.

But I think drones are much easier to mass-produce than warfare-savvy civilians, compensated mostly by their own patriotism and a small check from the government in exchange for putting their lives on the line. I then wonder whether this is, for one, a sustainable method of warfare: the Ukrainian government is effectively hiring non-military, non-trained mercenaries to support its defenses. Can that method be sustained, financially or politically, in the long run? I also wonder whether the increasing tendency for war to become a game of production globally will render secondary the importance of patriotic conformism and nationalism as a feature of its fighting constituents, which for centuries have been at the crux of many militaries’ absolutist traditions. Although I would believe that many of these non-military Ukrainian civilians are fighting for the love of their country and people, they also operate outside of the bureaucratic structure of the military and its rigid culture.

That question of the in/decreasing importance of ideology in war also made me think critically about “A Faith Under Siege.” The American evangelicals who decide to fly to Ukraine are effectively there for purely ideological reasons: to protect Christians from their persecutors, to fight against a war they see as a greater fight against ‘good and evil’ (an exhausted trope in the absolutist traditions of many militaries.) I found myself rolling my eyes at what I saw as a selective and not-so-Christian inclination to fight a foreign war for the sake of defending a religious ideology (and not to protect and preserve the lives of all civilians in general, which I see as the more obviously Christian aim). I also don’t hear about Americans flying to Sudan or Nigeria to fight against extremist militants that have persecuted and killed Christians in the area.

But, in tandem with the idea of war’s changing nature as a mass-production competition, this made me very intrigued by the idea that an individual’s decision to partake in a war (in their own or another’s country) on a purely ideological basis might become a privilege. Which is to say, if our modern methods of warfare are putting increasing pressure on the general public to partake in fighting regardless of their ideological inclinations, those who can afford that pure commitment to ideology may belong to a privileged class (whether that might be because war is not a tangible concern to the individual or their nation’s productive capabilities — of both people and weapons — are more than abundant.)