The Year of Dreaming Dangerously by Slavoj Zizek

Author:Slavoj Zizek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

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1 Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood, London: Verso 2007, p. 13.

2 If the basic underlying axiom of the Cold War was that of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), the axiom of today’s war on terror seems to be the opposite: that of NUTS (Nuclear Use Target Selection), that is, the idea that it is possible to destroy the enemy’s nuclear capacities in a surgical strike, while our anti-missile shield protects us from any counter-attack. More precisely, the US adopts a differential strategy: it acts as if it continues to hold to the MAD logic in its relations with Russia and China, while being tempted to practice NUTS with Iran and North Korea. The paradoxical mechanism of MAD inverts the logic of the “self-realizing prophecy” into a “self-stultifying intention”: the very fact that each side can be sure the other side will respond with full destructive force guarantees that no side will start a war. The logic of NUTS is, on the contrary, that the enemy can be forced to disarm if it is assured that we can strike at him with impunity. The very fact that two directly contradictory strategies are mobilized simultaneously by the same superpower bears witness to the fantasmatic character of this entire mode of reasoning.

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