ABSTRACT
The historical evolution of visual war tracks – but is not wholly determined by – new technologies of representation. From the first use of cameras in the Crimean, US Civil and Franco-Prussian Wars, visual war has been part of official war-making. A combination of hard and soft technologies of power, warware operates – or at least is designed to operate – as a system of systems for a world of random and unpredictable events with non-linear and emergent effects produced by multi-variant and multi-versal causes. Virilio's analysis of the shifting technological aspects of visual war offers the best update of Clausewitz. Visual war, peculiarly preconceived, as Clausewitz would have it, is on the rise. This kind of reiterative and emergent violence does not lend itself to the assumptions of rational action, methods of linear regression or hopes for a progressivist future that drive much of international relations thinking today.
