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==''In a Mad World, the Logic of MAD Still Works''==
On August 2, [[France]], [[Britain]] and [[Germany]] announced that they might cut off negotiations with [[Iran]] and pursue punitive sanctions if the country followed through on its [[threats ]] to resume its uranium enrichment program. The announcement came a day after the <i>Washington Post</i> reported that American intelligence [[agencies ]] believe the country is a decade away from producing a [[nuclear weapon]] - an assessment that differs with earlier timetables cited by Bush administration officials, who estimated that Iran was only five years away from such a weapon. Responding to the <i>Post</i> story, State Department spokesman Tom Casey dismissed the divergent timetables, noting that both the [[United States]] and [[Europe]] have concluded that Iran’s nuclear ambitions pose "a [[threat ]] for the entire [[international community]]."
But are nuclear arms in the hands of Iran's rulers really a threat to international peace and security? To answer the question properly, one has to locate it in its [[:category:politics|political]] and [[:category:ideology|ideological]] context.
Every [[power structure]] has to rely on an underlying [[implicit threat]], i.e. whatever the oficial [[democracy|democratic]] rules and [[law|legal]] constraints may be, we can ultimately do <i>whatever we [[want]]</i> to you. In the 20th century, however, the [[nature ]] of this link between [[power]] and the [[invisible threat]] that sustains it changed. Existing power [[structures ]] no longer relied on their own [[fantasy|fantasmatic]] [[projection]] of a potential, invisible threat in [[order ]] to secure the hold over their [[subjects]]. Rather, the threat was externalized, [[displaced ]] onto an [[Outside ]] [[Enemy]]. It became the invisible (and, for that [[reason]], all-powerful and omni-[[present]]) threat of this enemy that legitimized the existing power structure’s permanent [[state of emergency]]. [[Fascism|Fascists]] invoked the threat of the [[Jewish conspiracy]], [[Stalinism|Stalinists]] the threat of the [[class]] enemy, [[United States|Americans]] the threat of [[Communism]] - all the way up to today’s "[[war on terror]]." The threats posed by such an invisible enemy legitimizes the [[logic ]] of the [[preemptive strike]]. Precisely because the threat is [[virtual]], one cannot afford to wait for it to come. Rather, one must strike in advance, before it is too late. In other [[words]], the omni-present <i>invisible</i> threat of [[Terror ]] legitimizes the all too <i>[[visible]]</i> protective measures of defense - which, of course, are what pose the <i>[[true]]</i> threat to [[democracy]] and [[human rights]] (e.g., the [[London ]] police’s [[recent ]] execution of the innocent [[Brazil]]ian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes). Classic power functioned as a threat that operated precisely by never actualizing itself, by always remaining a threatening <i>gesture. </i> Such functioning reached its climax in the [[Cold War]], when the threat of [[Mutually Assured Destruction|mutual nuclear destruction]] <i>had</i> to remain a threat. With the "[[war on terror]]", the [[invisible threat]] causes the incessant actualization, not of the threat itself, but, of the measures against the threat. The nuclear strike had to remain the threat of a strike, while the threat of the terrorist strike triggers the endless series of <i>preemptive</i> strikes against potential [[terrorism|terrorists]]. We are thus passing from the logic of [[Mutually Assured Destruction|MAD]] ([[Mutually Assured Destruction]]) to a logic in which ONE SOLE MADMAN runs the entire show and is allowed to enact its [[paranoia]]. The power that presents itself as always [[being]] under threat, [[living]] in [[mortality|mortal]] [[danger]], and thus merely defending itself, is the most dangerous kind of power - the very [[model]] of the [[Nietzsche]]an <i>[[ressentiment]]</i> and [[morality|moralistic]] [[hypocrisy]]. And indeed, it was Nietzsche himself who, more than a century ago, in <i>Daybreak,</i> provided the best [[analysis]] of the [[false]] [[moral]] premises of today’s "[[war on terror]]": <blockquote> No [[government]] admits any more that it keeps an [[army]] to [[satisfy]] occasionally the [[desire]] for conquest. Rather, the army is supposed to serve for [[defense]], and one invokes the [[morality]] that approves of [[self]]-defense. But this implies one’s own morality and the [[neighbor]]’s [[immorality]]; for the neighbor must be [[thought]] of as eager to attack and conquer if our [[state]] must [[think]] of means of [[self-defense]]. Moreover, the reasons we give for requiring an army imply that our neighbor, who denies the desire for conquest just as much as our own state, and who, for his part, also keeps an army only for reasons of self-defense, is a hypocrite and a cunning criminal who would like [[nothing]] better than to overpower a harmless and awkward [[victim]] without any fight. Thus all states are now ranged against each other: they presuppose their neighbor’s bad disposition and their own [[good]] disposition. This presupposition, however, is inhumane, as bad as [[war]] and worse. At bottom, indeed, it is itself the challenge and the [[cause]] of wars, because as I have said, it attributes immorality to the neighbor and thus provokes a hostile disposition and act. We must abjure the [[doctrine]] of the army as a means of self-defense just as completely as the desire for conquests.</blockquote>
[[Category:Articles by Slavoj Žižek]]