To me, considering to do it does not yet count. Actually doing it will. My bigger question is when the leadership may be separated from the civilians. In other words, are there salvageable parts under the technology in consideration.


If you have no way to separate the leadership from the soldiers, you have to regard whoever you kill as collateral damage. I don't disagree. But if your technology allows you to do so, and you choose to destroy the leadership together with the civilians, I have a problem with that.

While the war is indeed politics by other means, what is the intended politics? The politics could be genecide. If that is the case, there is no collateral damage, as everyone is an intended target. I think the politics here is not that.

In the same WWII example, do you have a way to separate the German people from its leadership? A change of German government should be able to do it. If on the other hand, Poland were invaded by Martians, and we have no technology allowing us to make a change to Martian government, then we will have to kill every Martian as collateral damage.

On a deeper level, if the politics is "never cooperate with the Germans", we will kill all of them even if we had the technology allowing a change in German government.

Soldiers become civilians when they are separated from the leadership. Sometimes, you have no way to separate them. But not always.

If the underlying politics is "we wish to cooperate with you under a differnt set of circumstances", the politics demand an effort to separate those who should not be killed.

When Rand was using the CK in his insanity, he is just too powerful, and I am not sure he is even capable of pursuing a politics of cooperation at all. It is too blunt an instrument and effectively, his politics is reduced to "to genecide or not".