Before, during and after the 1991 Gulf War, French philosopher Jean
Baudrillard wrote three essays asserting that it 'will not take
place', 'is not really taking place', and 'did not take place'.
At the time, Baudrillard was dismissed as a particularly pretentious
example of post-modern academia. Of course the war was taking place -
bombs were falling, tanks were moving, people were dying, Saddam was
surrendering.
But in spite of his pretentiousness, and his typically post-modern
hyping of symbols, Baudrillard had some key insights into a new kind
of war - a war that is not really a war at all. As the current Gulf
conflict seems to be drawing to a close, parts of Baudrillard's
essays seem more pertinent than ever.
Proper war, as Baudrillard would have it, is a conflict between
adversaries, each fighting for their own political or economic goals.
Each side stakes men's lives and ammunition in an attempt to overcome
the other side. The aim of the war is to force the other side to
submit to their demands - such as new trade agreements, a new
division of territory, or a new arrangement of government. As each
side attempts to attain its goals, there is a tendency for the level
of force to escalate, for the conflict to become more and more
violent.
The 1991 Gulf War, argues Baudrillard, was not driven by these
principles. It claimed to be a war, it was talked about as if it were
a war, it used the methods of warfare (armies, guns and bombs) - but
it was not a conflict between adversaries.
For a start, there was no contest - the war's outcome, a coalition
victory, was decided in advance. But there was also no real conflict
of interest; neither side was trying to achieve political or economic
goals. Modifying the Prussian military philosopher Carl von
Clausewitz's dictum that war is 'the pursuit of politics by other
means', Baudrillard claimed that the new war is 'the absence of
politics pursued by other means'.
According to Baudrillard, when the logic of war is missing - when
there is no real reason for the war to exist - you get a virtual war.
War becomes a spectacle of force managed by the dominant side. The
1991 Gulf War was waged with high-precision weaponry and 'surgical
strikes'. The war was less a conflict between adversaries than a
demonstration of American power.
Of course, American weapons had real and devastating results, but
they were not deployed with the aim of achieving these results. They
were deployed more as a show of force than as force aiming to achieve
concrete results on the ground.
These features of a new kind of war appear even more vividly in the
current conflict.
Virtual war
In the current war, virtual warfare has become an explicit part of
military strategy. Take the much-discussed 'shock and awe' strategy
of the Americans (also talked about as 'effects war' by the British).
This, in the words of one commentator, is primarily 'an attack on the
mind - a presentation of overwhelming force and an unwavering sense
of inevitability. The message to Iraq is loud and clear: surrender or
die, because we're coming' (1).
The aim of shock and awe is actually to avoid confronting the enemy -
to avoid, in effect, having a proper war. The idea is that you
demonstrate your power, and they give up. There need be no battles as
such. It is this idea that has led some to predict a day of
completely 'clean', casualty-free wars.
The coalition forces' invasions of Baghdad and Basra have deployed
force more for its psychological effects than for its strategic
outcomes (see Power trips, by Brendan O'Neill). According to one
report, the first 'daring and dangerous raid into the centre of
Baghdad' was not done to 'gain terrain, as is traditional in wartime,
but just to prove to the Iraqis that they could'. If they showed that
they could take Baghdad, was the assumption, then the Iraqis would
submit without the coalition forces actually going through the
business of taking it - of winning the battle for each street and
each building.
No reasons for war
There has been no conflict of interest underlying the current
conflict in Iraq. The coalition's stated aim for war is to get rid of
Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Others claim that the coalition
wants to gain control of Saddam's oilfields. Both of these reasons
for going to war - because Iraq is a strategic threat, or in pursuit
of American economic interest - are 'real' reasons. If either were
true then the war would have a logic and a reason to exist.
But they are both patently untrue. America has shown no signs of
attempting to profit from or control Iraq's oil wealth. All the
oilfields that have been seized, the Americans keep emphasising, will
be 'kept in trust for the Iraqi people'.
And the wildest of imaginations could not conceive of Iraq as a
strategic threat to the world's only superpower. Iraq's so-
called 'weapons of mass destruction', if they exist, are chemical and
biological weapons like mustard gas and anthrax that have limited
military effectiveness. That the war has itself turned into a frantic
search for these weapons is telling. Because it is not being driven
by war aims, these have to be constructed artificially as the war
goes along (see Propaganda defensive, by Brendan O'Neill). The actual
process of war becomes an exercise in justifying that war.
The outcome is decided in advance
As prime minister Tony Blair and President George Bush keep telling
us, 'the outcome of the war is not in doubt'. The defeat of the
Iraqis was inevitable from the beginning, and because of this there
was no conflict, no contest. As Baudrillard said, the behaviour of
both sides is conditioned by this knowledge: 'We will never know what
an Iraqi taking part with a chance of fighting would have been like.
We would never know what an American taking part with a chance of
being beaten would have been like.' Because both sides knew what the
result of the conflict would be, there is little point in the
conflict ever really getting going. There is little point in staking
lives on a loaded die.
One consequence of a predetermined war, argues Baudrillard, is that
the war collapses into a single moment, rather than progressing in a
series of stages. 'At every phase of this war', he wrote, 'things
unfolded as though they were virtually completed'. Rather than
existing as a series of battles or engagements, where one leads on to
the next over a period of months or years, the war is imagined ending
at the first shot.
In the current conflict, debates began about how to reconstruct Iraq
before the war had even begun - the buildings were rebuilt before
they were even knocked down. And after only a few days of hostilities
the Western press was full of impatient speculation asking 'when is
it going to end?'. The battles that it would take to get to the end
were seen as a burdensome and unnecessary trial.
Nor does the war even have a clearly defined beginning or end. There
is no declaration of war to mark the kick-off and no surrender to
mark the conclusion. What there is, is a gradual build-up and gradual
diminution of American military action - and at two points along this
progression, Bush makes a statement that indicates that a particular
moment should be seen as a 'beginning' or an 'end'.
No engagement with the enemy
In the current war, there has been no real engagement between Iraqi
and coalition troops. The adversaries have never confronted each
other in battle - there has been bombing and sniping ('minor
skirmishes', as the press describe it), but no engagement. At any
point when it looks like there might be a battle, America has called
in its war planes.
Like the 1991 Gulf War, the coalition casualties are comparatively
low (in 1991, more soldiers would have died in car crashes had they
remained at home than died on the battlefield). Coalition forces
managed to take massive areas of ground without taking any casualties
at all - and those casualties they did suffer were often the result
of accidents or friendly fire. The Iraqis, it seemed, did not even
mount a defence - failing to blow up bridges or defend strategic
points. Iraqi resistance has appeared in the farce of Iraq's
information minister - who continually talks about battles that are
not happening, and denies the fact that American troops are posted
underneath his window.
As Baudrillard argued, this lack of engagement between the two sides
gives the enemy an unreal quality. In 1991, he said, the Americans
and the Iraqis 'never saw each other: when the Americans finally
appeared behind their curtain of bombs the Iraqis had already
disappeared behind their curtain of smoke'. The result is that 'it is
impossible to determine whether or not [the enemy] is dead'.
In this conflict, it has been very difficult to work out where the
enemy is - or even if he exists at all. The Republican Guard, long
whipped up as Saddam's supreme fighting force, melted away when
coalition forces began their assault towards Baghdad. Perhaps they
were killed, perhaps the divisions broke up and returned home.
As for Saddam, he is approaching Osama bin Laden's status as the half-
living half-dead adversary. Perhaps he died on the first day of the
war, perhaps he died four days ago, perhaps he is not dead at all…
right now, it is impossible to tell. The taking of Saddam's palaces
by coalition forces has assumed such an importance because this seems
to be one way of getting close to him, of assuming dominance over
him. The press has been full of pictures of soldiers and journalists
lounging in his chairs and sitting in his bathroom.
But the Iraqis also doubted the existence of the Americans. Reports
from Baghdad before coalition troops actually arrived noted
an 'everyday nonchalance'. The mood was calm and relaxed; many people
seemed not to actually believe that coalition forces would one day
arrive.
Waiting for the climax
While the pattern of a traditional war is for hostilities to
escalate, argued Baudrillard, the pattern in new wars is the de-
escalation of violence. Because the war has no drive of its own, no
conflict to keep it going and take force exercised by both sides to
ever-greater extremes, the battle is always threatening to peter out.
In the current war, there has always been a sense that we are about
to reach a climax, that hostilities are about to start for real, but
this is always indefinitely postponed. The 'big battle' was promised
first of all when American troops began the march up to Baghdad, then
when they began to take the airport, then when they began their
assault on the city; now it is promised when coalition forces chase
Saddam's henchmen up to his homeland in northern Iraq [nope, never
happened].
Now, we are faced with the question of what victory is supposed to
look like - how will we know when the war is over? Saddam is not
around to surrender, minor skirmishes are likely to continue for many
months.
Ultimately, it is down to Bush to draw his line in the sand, and
declare the Second Gulf War closed.
Created By: Padraig L Henry