War is cinema, and cinema is war
In the very near future, and I stress this important point, it will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means.
Thus it is no longer a Caesar or a Napoleon who decides on the fate of any particular war but a piece of software! In short, the political intelligence of war and the political intelligence of society no longer penetrate the techno-scientific world.
... the blinding Hiroshima flash... literally photographed the shadow cast by beings and things, so that every surface immediately became war's recording surface, its film.
War was my university. Everything has proceeded from there.
Earth is already being integrated into the Pentagon, and the man in the Pentagon is already piloting the world war - or the Gulf War - as if he were a captain whose huge boat would have become his own body. Thus the body simulates the relationship to the world.
The high level of the technologies used during the Gulf War makes this conflict quite unique, but the very process of de-realization of the war started in 1945. War occured in Kuwait, but it also occured on the screens of the entire world. The site of defeat or victory was not the ground, but the screen.
There can be no doubt about this. It even held true for the soldiers involved in the Kosovo War. For the soldiers stayed mostly in their barracks! In this way, polar inertia has truly become a mass phenomenon. And not only for the TV audiences watching the war at home but also for the army that watches the battle from the barracks.
Jean Baudrillard is a friend of mine, I do not agree with him on that one! For me, the significance of the war in Kosovo was that it was a war that moved into space.
I believe that the military-industrial complex is more important than ever. This is because the war in Kosovo gave fresh impetus not to the military-industrial complex but to the military-scientific complex. You can see this in China.
GPS not only played a large and delocalizing role in the war in Kosovo but is increasingly playing a role in social life.
The Gulf War may not have occurred in the actual global space, but it did occur in global time. And this thanks to CNN and The Pentagon.
For instance, the Persian Gulf War was a miniature world war. It took place in a small geographical area. In this sense it was a local war. But it was one that made use of all the power normally reserved for global war.
For me, the Asian financial crisis of 1998 and the war in Kosovo in 1999 are the prelude to the integral accident.
Today, the army only occupies the territory once the war is over.
Nowadays, the tragedy of war is mediated through technology. It is no longer mediated through a human being with moral responsibilities.
Indeed, the truth, the reality of the Kosovo War, was actually hidden behind all the 'humanitarian' faces.
As I have said many times before, I was among the first people to experience the German Occupation of France during the Second World War. I was 7-13 years old during the War and did not really internalise its significance.
It was a total and absolute surprise to find out that what was inside the concentration camps was a sea of skeletons. What is clear to me, therefore, is that while the tragedy of war grinds on, the contemporary aesthetics of the tragedy seem not only confused but, in some way, suspicious.
What is going on now, or should happen in one or two generations, is the disintegration of the world. Real time 'live' technologies, cyberreality, will permit the incorporation of the world within oneself. One will be able to read the entire world, just like during the Gulf War. And I will have become the world. The body of the world and my body will be one.
However, the Kosovo War took place in orbital space. In other words, war now takes place in 'aero-electro-magnetic space'. It is equivalent to the birth of a new type of flotilla, a home fleet, of a new type of naval power, but in orbital space!
For the US, the Kosovo War was a success because it encouraged the development of the Pentagon's 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA). The war provided a test site for experimentation, and paved the way for emergence of what I call in Strategie de la deception 'the second deterrence'.
It will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means.
Let us start with the title of War and Cinema. The important part of the title is not War and Cinema.
If we turn to the war in Kosovo, what do we find? We find the manipulation of the audience's emotions by the mass media.
