nuclear deterrence, n.Definitions

Nuclear deterrence is a conspiracy, in which science and technology radiate their all-powerfulness, and become mystical figures

Nuclear deterrence is an inverted continuation of the total war. It is war pursued by other means.

Nuclear deterrence is a strategy which strips warfare of its contingent aspects. The bomb does not suppress war, it suppresses a certain number of its random hazards while shifting strategic decision making into other categories.

Nuclear deterrence marks the end of the centuries-old alternative between war and peace, the passage of total war to a new and unknown state: total peace.

Nuclear deterrence is not just as a military strategy or doctrine, but also as an ideology which is inseparable from a broader technological and political worldview or belief system.

Nuclear deterrence's logic brings with it nothing less than the end of the distinction between the state of war and the state of peace. Yet the Second World War marks a point where this more general permeability of the two states is radicalized to the point where even the experience of a state of war and a state of peace becomes more radically indistinct. For Virilio the logic of nuclear deterrence brings with it nothing less than the end of the distinction between these two states and signifies 'the end of the centuries-old alternative between war and peace, the passage of total war to a new and unknown state: total peace'. If, hitherto, war was present in peacetime, or subsisted into peacetime in an 'occult state of siege', henceforth the two states fold into each other to form an entirely new military and political form. p.78