Absolute military speed inverts modern war into premodern guerrilla tactics.

Evidence

If the “total war of acceleration” (totale Beschleunigungskrieg) toward the end of the twentieth century is thus so fast and destructive that it can only be waged at the price of one’s own annihilation, then in the transition to the twenty-first century there suddenly develop forms of warfare that are at once old and new, that in many respects operate with the weapons and strategies and the speed of premodern or early modern times: in many regions of the world, wars are once again fought with conventional weapons, rifles, and even machetes and knives, and combatants more and more frequently follow terroristic or guerrilla strategies of momentary ambush (with the greatest possible radius of diffused fear) and rapid withdrawal instead of the modern military logic of comprehensive occupation of closed territories. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 542

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does the war-on-terror era of drone and special-ops warfare bear out this 2000s-era claim of ‘new-old’ premodern warfare, or has late-modern war re-accelerated?
• XREF: Echoes Rosa’s earlier observation that individual withdrawal into slowness carries prohibitive obsolescence costs, and Giddens/Virilio debates on speed and political sovereignty. — connects to: Absolute weapon speed erases the distinctions that made rational political decision possible. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 541; Modern air power paradoxically makes ground infantry resemble pre-industrial guerrilla fighters — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 345; Guerrilla power derives from the whole population, not weaponry (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Modern air power paradoxically makes ground infantry resemble pre-industrial guerrilla fighters #corroborates (0.95) — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 345
• Extreme asymmetry in vulnerability transforms war into hunting or slaughter #expands (0.80) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 332
• Guerrilla power derives from the whole population, not weaponry #qualifies (0.75)