If in Frederick the Great's time to win was to advance, for the supporters of deterrence it is to retreat, to leave places, peoples and the individual where they are-to the point where dromological p rogress closely resembles the j et engine's reaction propulsion, caused by the ej ection of a certain quantity of movement (the product of a mass times a velocity) in the direction opposite to the one we wish to take.
In this war of recession between East and West-contemporary not with the illusory limitation of strategic arms, but with <sub>the</sub> <sub>limitation</sub> <sub>of</sub> <sub>strategy</sub> <sub>itse</sub>lf-the power of thermonuclear explosion serves as an artificial horizon for a race that is increasing the power of the vehicular implosion. The impossibility of interrupting the progress of the power of penetration, other than by an act of faith in the eneriy, leads us to deny strategy as prior knowledge. The automatic nature not only of arms and means, but also of the command, is the same as denying our ability to reason: Nicbt raisonniren! Frederick the Second's order is perfected by a deterrence that leads us to reduce our freedom not only of action and decision, but also of conception. The logic of arms systems is eluding the military framework more and more, and moving toward the engineer responsible for research and development-in expectation, of course, of the system's self sufficiency. Two years ago Alexandre Sanguinetti wrote, "It is becoming less and less conceivable to build attack planes, which with their spare parts cost several million dollars each, to transport bombs able to destroy a country railroad station. It is simply not cost-efective. " This logic of practical war, in which the operating costs of the (aerial) vector automatically entail the heightening of its destructive capability because of the requirements of transporting a tactical nuclear weapon, is not limited to attack planes; it is also becoming the logic of the State apparatus . This backwardness is the logistical consequence of producing means to communicate destruction. The danger of the nuclear weapon, and of the arms system it implies, is thus not so much that it wil explode, but that it exists and is imploding in our minds.
The State of Emergency
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