Are we in a pre-war state? Undoubtedly yes, and what further complicates the picture is that the threat of global war is combined with two other threats: the ecological catastrophe and the domination of Artificial Catastrophe. So how are we to react to this threat? The first thing to abandon is the pragmatic “realist” view (we still have choices…) and accept that it is necessary that there will be a global catastrophe, our entire history moves towards it, AND that it is necessary that we act to prevent it. In a collapse of these two superposed necessities, only one of them will actualize itself, so that in any case our history will (have) be(en) necessary.

As I put it earlier: “There are no alternative possible futures since the future is necessary. Instead of exclusive disjunction there is a superposition of states. Both the escalation to extremes and the absence of one are part of a fixed future: it is because the former figures in it that deterrence has a chance to work; it is because the latter figures in it that the adversaries are not bound to destroy each other. Only the future, when it comes to pass, will tell.”

Our ultimate horizon is what Dupuy calls the dystopian “fixed point,” the zero-point of nuclear war, ecological breakdown, global economic and social chaos, etc. Even if it is indefinitely postponed, this zero-point is the virtual “attractor” towards which our reality, left to itself, tends. The way to combat the future catastrophe is through acts that interrupt our drifting towards this “fixed point.”[1] The only ethico-political imperative is thus a negative one: the plurality of today’s crises makes it clear that things cannot go on the way they are now. How we proceed is a matter of risk and improvisations.

In an interview in September 2023, the Russian General Vladimirov described one of such “fixed points”:

“Nuclear war is the ‘inevitable’ conclusion of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a Russian general who wrote the nation’s ‘war bible’ has warned. The chilling forecast came from retired Major General Alexander Vladimirov, who penned Russia’s three volume book called the ‘General Theory of War’. ‘For the transition to the use of weapons of mass destruction, only one thing is needed – a political decision by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief [Vladimir Putin],’ the veteran commander warned in an interview with journalist Vladislav Shurygin. ‘The goals of Russia and the goals of the West are their survival and historical eternity. And this means that in the name of this, all means of armed struggle available to them will be used, including such a tool as their nuclear weapons.’ He warned: ‘I am sure that nuclear weapons will be used in this war, inevitably, and from this neither we nor the enemy have anywhere to go.”

Vladimirov’s option should absolutely not be dismissed as a strategic threat in the ongoing Ukrainian war. Even if it is meant like that, it possesses its own logic which can push agents to actualize what they thought was only a threat. Here we are beyond the MAD (mutually assured destruction) logic which functioned well to prevent the nuclear catastrophe in the period of the Cold War: mutual destruction is simply presented as inevitable since “neither we nor the enemy have anywhere to go”… One should note further the claim that “the goals of Russia and the goals of the West are their survival and historical eternity.” This is why Vladimirov doesn’t speak about Russia’s justified defense against the Ukrainian attack, and even uses the expression “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”: it is not a question of who is guilty since we are dealing with Fate, with a struggle to death where such minor questions like “who started it?” become insignificant.

So, again, what is to be done in such a situation? The only way out is a redoubled disavowal (Verleugnung). The predominant ideological stance today is disavowal: we know very well… (that we are confronting catastrophic threats), but nonetheless… (we are not ready to take it seriously, life is just going on). I propose a different formula: we know well that the situation is desperate, that what awaits us is a catastrophe, but nonetheless we should act with full engagement to prevent it. How can this apparently irrational strategy work? Because the knowledge contained in “we know very well” is not neutral: its objectivity is already biased. What we “know very well”, what is “obvious”, what is accepted as a matter of course, is not written in stone, but in shifting sand; it is a socially-constructed shared hegemonic opinion that obfuscates its owns cracks and inconsistencies in order to seem immutable, and our task is to change it. The point is not to provide “alternate facts,” but to undermine the framing that makes us select some facts and ignore others. This is why we are not dealing here with the usual disavowal but with a courageous act of taking a risk and ignoring our apparent limitations. In such a situation where apocalypse is on the horizon, one should bear in mind that the standard logic of probability no longer applies, and this brings us back to Dupuy:

”The catastrophic event is inscribed into the future as a destiny, for sure, but also as a contingent accident /…/ if an outstanding event takes place, a catastrophe, for example, it could not not have taken place; nonetheless, insofar as it did not take place, it is not inevitable. It is thus the event’s actualization – the fact that it takes place – which retroactively creates its necessity.”[2]

This, according to Dupuy, is also how we should approach the prospect of a military catastrophe: not “realistically” to appraise the likelihood of the catastrophe, but to accept it as our fate, as unavoidable, and then, on the basis of this acceptance, mobilize ourselves to perform the act which will change destiny itself and thereby open up new possibilities within the situation. Instead of saying “the future is still fluid, we still have time, time to act and prevent the worst,” one should accept the catastrophe as inevitable and then act to undo the destiny which is already “written in the stars”.

Notes:

[1] Jean-Pierre Dupuy, The War That Must Not Occur, Redwood City: Stanford University Press 2023 (quoted from the manuscript).

[2] Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Petite metaphysique des tsunami, Paris: Seuil 2005, p. 19.

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