Practical War
Hoorah! No more contact
with the vile earth!
\- Marineti, 1905
I N 1 9 1 4, the military high command in Europe was still following Clausewitz or Napoleon. It concentrated on exerting its will in a ground war of rapid penetration, of short and decisive battles. The advantage of this type of conflict was that it skirted around the problems posed by the military distribution of territories, since the logistical efort required would be of little importance, and especially of little constancy-a war, in a sense, with no terrain, or at best having little to do with it!
We are still in the mentality of the Vienna Congress; the European monarchic powers that feel the end coming give a final sign of life. Like Clausewitz in Vom Kriege, they try desperately to draw a line between absolute and total war. Total war is omnipresent; it is first waged on the sea because the naval glacis naturally presents no permanent obstacle to a vehicular movement of planetary dimensions. Nonetheless, this type of totalitarian conflict can be realized on the earth only on condition of setting up infra structures that are durable in ubiquity. As Vauban remarks, we should be able to superimpose war onto all the inhabitable parts of the universe.
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