non-war

is war that does not proceed from the political will to dominate, but from the will to impose a consensus by deterrence.

As a 'rotten simulation' (GW, 59), the Gulf War, he contends, is a 'non-war' (a reversal of Clausewitz's famous dictum that war is the continuation of politics by other means) because: 'It no longer proceeds from a political will to dominate or from a vital impulsion or an antagonistic violence, but from the will to impose a general consensus by deterrence' (GW, 83). In other words, the protagonist are fighting in the Gulf over nothing more than the 'corpse of war' (GW, 23). They are engaged in 'liquidating any confrontation likely to threaten the hence-forward unified system of control' (GW, 83-4). The end of war is necessary, contends Baudrillard, to 'impose a general consensus by deterrence' (GW, 83) on a global level, to ossify the New World Order as 'an immense democracy governed by a homogenous order which has as its emblem the UN and the Rights of Man' (GW, 83).' (Smith Baudrillard dictionary).

non war, n.Definitions

non war