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PureWar
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Happy Fourth Of July! Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
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last edited
by BillSeitz
on
Jul 1, 2009 5:30 am |
Concept used by Paul Virilio in comparison to [Simple War] and [Total War].
Curtis White summarizes : Virilio argues that the history of western societies is really the history of their militaries. The social hardly counts at all for him except as a consequence of the military. According to Virilio, we have moved on from a time in which we had [Simple War] which was limited and tactical. War was once something that happened outside of the moat or city wall or Maginot Line, on this side of which civilian life went its way with its own priorities. War gave way to [Total War], which overwhelmed the entirety of the social system as well as the economic and industrial capacity of the state because of its need for ever faster and more powerful war technology and its need to supply the logistical demands of its dispersed military presence. [Total War] is about logistics, not battlefield tactics. The American Civil War inaugurated [Total War] and the two World Wars fulfilled it. Beyond Total War is PureWar. In PureWar the state is on an implicit war footing even in times of "peace." (I suppose we know this condition best as the ColdWar.) Technology, the media, industrial production, the economy and certainly politics are first about a war so diffuse and ubiquitous that few people even recognize it for what it is.
Bill Seitz, fluxent at gmail dot com, Weblog