The recently published memoirs of Obama's first defense secretary, Robert Gates, show the US president as a zealous commander-in-chief. Any military operation is reviewed and discussed by the president and his close circle of advisors, none of whom have ever served in the military. In the case of drone strikes, the White House is consulted by the CIA on possible targets and the conditions under which the operation can be carried out. Obama reviews the target files one by one and decides which ones can be attacked and which ones cannot. Obama has probably seen the photos of each of the terrorists killed in bombings carried out in Yemen, Somalia or Pakistan. With the exception of Lyndon B. Johnson, no other president has carried out such excessive micromanaging with regard to military operations.

This can only be understood if one analyzes the liberal view of war, a school that has dominated the thinking of successive Democratic administrations in Washington. First, it consists of an innate distrust of the military, and particularly its top commanders. The course of a military campaign left to the generals is always suspected of leading to a costly and protracted war.

The liberal vision understands armed conflict as a flame, which, if not carefully controlled, can start a fire. Only leaders who abhor the military can lead a military campaign. Their lack of enthusiasm is the guarantee that the war will be conducted in a correct and limited way. Even if Obama is the commander-in-chief, he is still a liberal politician. And as Ernst Jünger would say, a liberal can never know war as such, because its essence excludes him from all warlike elements.

Liberal war is always a defensive war, waged with reluctance. The supreme justification of war, attack, is automatically excluded from the liberal mentality. The only possible war is one waged in self-defense, or at best, in defense of humanity. This particular subject of war necessarily excludes the traditional ingredient of all war: patriotic exaltation.

Liberal warfare is always conducted discreetly, on the margins of the population and with a notorious absence of fiery speeches about the need to fight. No flags nailed to the ground won from the enemy or victory celebrations. Liberal warfare is efficiently carried out with a business mentality. The important thing is to achieve the proposed goal with the minimum possible cost in money and human lives. Once the goal is achieved there is no need for patriotic ostentation or gloating over the vanquished. The war is taken as a cost-benefit relation in which there is no place for the heroic deed or the epic and where the soldiers are no more than mere civil servants performing their task.

No other example better reflects the liberal conception of war as a surgical operation than drones. Drones represent the emotional detachment final from military action. With unsurpassed precision, an aircraft controlled from thousands of miles away performs the function that previously required the movement of troops. The threat is eliminated through a screen and collateral damage is minimized. The malignant tumor is removed in situ without resorting to massive intervention. Cleanliness and efficiency at minimum cost.

Ultimately, what the liberal conception of war seeks to accomplish is to harmonize reason and a sense of justice with the exercise of arms. It is a new mode of operation that dispenses with the state of sentimental agitation. Enthusiasm for one's own cause and hatred of the enemy is no longer necessary. The liberal war implies a rationalization of the fact that in the last term entails a cooling and distancing: the goal is eliminated with a minor explosion and the only sign of the author is the distant hum of an airplane leaving the scene.

The author is researcher of Institute for Culture and Society. University of Navarra