The State of Emergency
Speed is the essence of <sup>war.</sup>
<sup>-</sup> Sun Tzu
THE REDUCTION OF distances has become a strategic reality bearing incalculable economic and political consequences, since it corresponds to the negation of space.
The maneuver that once consisted in giving up ground to gain Tim e loses its meaning: at present, gaining Time is exclus ively a matter of vectors . Territory has lost its significance in favor of the p roj ectile. In fact, the strategic value of the non-place of speed has definitively supplanted that of place, and the question of possession of Time has revived that of territorial appropriation.
In this geographic contraction, which resembles the terrestrial movement described by Alfred Wegener, the binomial "fire movement" takes on a new meaning: the distinction between fire's power to destroy and the power to penetrate of movement, of the vehicle, is losing its "validity. " 1
With the supersonic vector (airplane, rocket, airwaves) , penetration and destruction become one. The instantaneousness of action at a distance corresponds to the defeat of the unprepared adversary, but also, and especially, to the defeat of the world as a field, as distance, as matter.
1 49