Tourists or Vagabonds? Space and Time in the War on Terror

Abstract

It is commonly argued that time is the defining element in modern warfare. Whether one looks to military strategy, or to critical academia, the analysis is often the same: time and speed, not mass and space, are the essentials of warfare. In the 'Global War on Terror' this is the case for both the Western high-tech militaries and their asymmetrical terrorist opponents. This article attempts to qualify the current relation between time and space in war. By heuristically applying Zygmunt Baumann's concepts of the tourist and the vagabond, this article claims that, although new technologies of time have changed the relationship between space and time, space has not lost its importance. Paradoxically, by employing new temporal means, the making of space becomes the central issue in current globalized warfare.

MAD theory: nuclear deterrence and the thanatopolitical limits of Empire

“…Space itself, moreover, is no longer central to the conduct of warfare because military technologies largely transcend any spatial limitations. Communications and surveillance combine with the global reach of weapons systems to ensure that geographical distances are erased in military thought (Kristensen , p.252). Rather than war operating in terms of geostrategic borders and front lines, a revolution in military affairs means that any enemy can be targeted and destroyed anywhere on the globe once its location is known.…”

Immigrants and refugees, tourists and vagabonds: why and how they integrate differently

“…However, the former moves out of desire and the latter out of necessity as the fences, boundaries and rules limit their movement. In the transformation from solid space to liquid space, some social agents can manipulate the space by traversing it in time because they are in positions to using time this way (Kristensen, 2008). As the use of time and space requires certain capacities and resources, it is not only differentiated, but in terms of ethnicity, race, and social class, differentiating experience.…”