LMRG WORLD @ WAR 2025: The Gulf War Did Not Take Place [1991], CHAPTERS 1 + 2

TEXT FOR THIS MEETUP: The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, Chapters 1 + 2

LENGTH: 27 pages

LINK: https://archive.org/details/the-gulf-war-did-not-take-place-jean-baudrillard/mode/2up

Hi all and welcome back for instalment two of our Baudrillard reading group! This time we're continuing with chapter 1, since at the last meetup the introduction provided such a rich vein of ideas for discussion we didn't even make it to a full-fledged discussion of the first chapter. Chapter 1 is very short, so it should be a breeze for everyone to get on the same page even if this is your first meetup with us.
For context on the text and the LMRG reading series of which it will be the first of many, here's the background we provided in the description for our last meetup:

We're starting off with Jean Baudrillard's series of essays, collected in 1991 with the provocative title The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Rather than deny the literal reality of the Gulf War, Baudrillard challenged his readers to consider the non-reality of "The Gulf War" as it was then (and is now) known to mass-media consumer audiences in Europe and the Anglophone countries, i.e. as a spectacular, perfect war, over within weeks, in which all the death and destruction was suffered on one side while the other simply kicked back in their air-conditioned control rooms and cockpits, pressing buttons and unleashing hell with impunity. The text addresses questions of technology, media, and spectacle as they relate to modern conflicts; the Gulf War prefigured not only the subsequent US invasion of Iraq but also the entire contemporary model of how high-tech wars, in the minds of military planners and PR/psychological operations specialists, are supposed to go. Even today, decades on, as conventional conflicts rage across the globe, we can see how mass media and social media continue to mediate our relationship with conflict, especially as non-combatants but even (increasingly) as participants. FPV drones for example have not only revolutionised battlefield tactics but, perhaps as importantly, the way recruitment and propaganda materials are filmed.

Our Baudrillard series will be a three-part set of meetups, with the next instalment tackling chapter 3.

Through this series, look forward to readings from the likes of Paul Virilio, Guy Debord, Carl von Clausewitz, Field Marshal Jomini, Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, the British civil defence authorities and many more.

Happy reading comrades and see you soon!