STRATEGY OF DECEPTION STRATEGY OF DECEPTION MINIMA MORAlIA THE POLITICS OF SEXUALITY IN THE FiElD Reflections on a Damaged Life FRIENDSHIP OF VISION THEOCOR ADORNO JACQUES OERRIDA JACQUElINE ROSE ISBN-13, 978 1 84467 051 2 ISBN-13, 978 1 844670543 ISBN-13, 978 1 84467 058 1 Paul Virilio FOR MARX THE FUNCTION OF THE INFORMATION BOMB LOUIS ALTHUSSER CRITICISM PAUL VIRILIO ISBN-a 978 1 844670529 TERRY EAGLETON ISBN-13, 978 1 84467 059 8 ISBN-13, 978 1 84467 055 0 THE SYSTEM OF OBJECTS CULTURE AND JEAN BAU!lRlllARO SIGNS TAKEN FOR MATERIALISM ISBN-13, 978 1 844670536 WONDERS RAYMOND WILLIAMS LIBERALISM AND On the Sociology of Literary Forms ISBN-13, 978 1 844670604 FRANCO MORETTI DEMOCRACY ISBN-13, 978 1 844670567 THE METASTASES OF NORBERTO BOBBIO ENJOYMENT Translated by Chris Turner ISBN-13, 978 I 844670628 THE RETURN OF THE On Women and Causality POlITICAL SlAliOJ ZIZEK CHANTAL MOUHE ISBN-l3, 978 1 84467 061 1 ISBN-13, 978 1 844670574 LOGICS OF DISINTEGRATION ON THE SHORES OF THEOO!JR ADORNO, WALTER Poststructuralist Thought and POLITICS BENJAMIN, ERNST BLOCH, BERTOLT the Claims of Critical Theory JACQUES RANCIERE BRECHT, GEORG LUKACS PETER OEWS ISBN-13, 978 1 84467 577 7 ISBN-13, 978 1 84467 570 8 ISBN-13, 978 1 84467 574 6 STRATEGY OF DECEPTION INFANCY AND HISTORY LATE MARXISM PAUL VIRIUO On the Destruction of Adorno, Or, The Persistence of ISBN-13, 978 1 84467 5784 Experience the Dialectic GIORGIO AGAMBEN FREDRIC JAMESON POlITICS OF MODERNISM ISBN-a 978 1 84467 571 5 ISBN-a 978 1 84467 575 3 Against the New Conformists POlITICS AND HISTORY EMANCIPATION(S) RAYMOND WILLIAMS ISBN-13, 978 1 84467 580 7 Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx ERNESTO lAClAU LOUIS AlTHUSSER ISBN-13, 978 1 84467 576 0 THE INDIVISIBLE ISBN-a 978 1 84467 572 2 REMAINDER THE POLITICAL DESCARTES VERSO FRAGMENTS On Schelling and Related Reason, Ideology and the JEAN BAUIlRIUARIl Bourgeois Project Matters London • New York SLAVOJ ZIZEK ISBN-13, 978 1 84467 573 9 ANTONIO NEGRI ISBN-13, 978 1 84467 581 4 ISBN-a 978 1 84467 582 1 For Father Patrick Giros First published as S tratigie de fa deception by Editions Galilee 1999 © Editions GaWee 1999 This translation published by Verso 2000 Translation © Chris Turner This edition published by Verso 2007 All rights reserved The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted 13579108642 Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London WIF OEG USA: 180 Varick Street, New York, NY 10014-4606 www.versobooks.com Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-578-4 ISBN-I0: 1-84467-578-5 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Printed in the UK by Bookmarque Ltd, Croydon, Surrey For Father Patrick Giros First published as S tratigie de fa deception by Editions Galilee 1999 © Editions GaWee 1999 This translation published by Verso 2000 Translation © Chris Turner This edition published by Verso 2007 All rights reserved The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted 13579108642 Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London WIF OEG USA: 180 Varick Street, New York, NY 10014-4606 www.versobooks.com Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-578-4 ISBN-I0: 1-84467-578-5 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Printed in the UK by Bookmarque Ltd, Croydon, Surrey The Adantic Alliance is perhaps in the end more a bastard child of the Communists than a child born because we wanted it. Paul-Henri Spaak, Secretary-General of NATO AUTHOR'S NOTE The first three articles reprinted here were written between 19 April and 15 June 1999 during the Kosovo conflict. The first was published on 27 April in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The fourth was completed on 5 July. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE ON THE FRENCH TITLE, STRATEGIE DE LA DECEPTION It is always disappointing to report something lost in translation. In this case, the element lost is that of disap pointment itself, for this is, of course, the everyday meaning of the French word 'la deception'. The term does, however, also have a more recondite military sense, the deception of missiles being the overall process of the deflection of such weapons from their course (this part is, technically, their sMwtion) and their redirection to some other - preferably harmless - target. Virilio uses the term to refer to this bundle of techniques of decoy ing, distraction and disinformation which make up a classically 'deceptive' strategy in the modern English sense. However, in his title he is alluding also, and more directly, to the (possibly intended) disappointment and disillusionment which remains after the massive Allied PAUL VIRILIO military efforts in the former Yugoslavia, where, were we nineteenth-century speakers of English, we might contend (pace Jamie Shea) that 'never was expectation more completely deceived'. 1 1 CHAPTER 'Reason deceives us more often than nature; claimed Vauvenargues.1 However that may be, the nature of the terrain in the Balkans seems to have been totally left out of account in the reasoning of NATO's war leaders. In allowing no tactical distance between their political goals and their chosen means of action, the strategists of the Atlantic Alliance have once again revealed the shakiness of their military conceptions and the fragility of those scenarios in which, since the end of the Cold War, the technical illusionism of the United States has found expression. 1 Luc de Clapiers Vauvenargues, French essayist and moralist, 1 James Mill, The History of British India (1817), voL II, p. 89. 1715-1747. 1 PAUL VIRILIO military efforts in the former Yugoslavia, where, were we nineteenth-century speakers of English, we might contend (pace Jamie Shea) that 'never was expectation more completely deceived'. 1 1 CHAPTER 'Reason deceives us more often than nature; claimed Vauvenargues.1 However that may be, the nature of the terrain in the Balkans seems to have been totally left out of account in the reasoning of NATO's war leaders. In allowing no tactical distance between their political goals and their chosen means of action, the strategists of the Atlantic Alliance have once again revealed the shakiness of their military conceptions and the fragility of those scenarios in which, since the end of the Cold War, the technical illusionism of the United States has found expression. 1 Luc de Clapiers Vauvenargues, French essayist and moralist, 1 James Mill, The History of British India (1817), voL II, p. 89. 1715-1747. 1