Among the horrors of war that are often forgotten is its survival in peacetime through industrial transformations. It is well known – but forgotten – that the barbed wire with which many still fence their fields and properties comes from the trenches of the First World War and is stained with the blood of countless dead soldiers; it is well known – but forgotten – that the inflatable boats that fill our beaches were invented for the Normandy landings during the Second World War; it is well known – but forgotten – that the herbicides used in agriculture are derived from those used by the Americans to deforest Vietnam; and, as a final and worst consequence, nuclear power plants with their indestructible waste are the “peaceful” transformation of atomic bombs. And it is worth remembering, as Simone Weil understood, that external war is always also a civil war, that foreign policy is, in reality, domestic policy. Reversing Clausewitz’s formula, today politics is nothing more than the continuation of war by other means.
Giorgio Agamben: War is peace
Among the horrors of war that are often forgotten is its survival in peacetime through industrial transformations. It is well known – but forgotten – that the barbed wire with which many still fence their fields and properties comes from the trenches of the First World War and is stained with the blood of countless dead soldiers; it is well known – but forgotten – that the inflatable boats that fill our beaches were invented for the Normandy landings during the Second World War; it is well known – but forgotten – that the herbicides used in agriculture are derived from those used by the Americans to deforest Vietnam; and, as a final and worst consequence, nuclear power plants with their indestructible waste are the “peaceful” transformation of atomic bombs. And it is worth remembering, as Simone Weil understood, that external war is always also a civil war, that foreign policy is, in reality, domestic policy. Reversing Clausewitz’s formula, today politics is nothing more than the continuation of war by other means.
Quodlibet, October 23, 2025