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3

Integrated World Capitalism

(From the simulation of global war to the reality of

globalization)^1

The early 1980s

While President Reagan, the incarnation of the imaginary of Holly-

wood, initiated among glitz and glamour the frenetic simulation of

Star Wars, on the other side the cadaverous Brezhnev regime thun-

dered against Afghanistan and grimly threatened the workers’ revolt of

Gdansk with tanks,^2 but without having the courage to confront it

directly.

A few years before, in one of his extraordinarily insightful essays,

Zbignew Brzezinski had discussed the power of simulations in inter-

national politics.

The internal system of armed dissuasion between the two nuclear

powers always was a giant game of simulation. At the start of the

1980s, this game reached its high point. The installation of Soviet

SS20s, and the parallel installation of American Pershing missiles along

the European border that divided the two blocs, produced a formidable

ideological effect (or maybe it would be better to say a psychological

effect, or psycho-chemical, or psycho-social). The imaginary energies,

which had in the preceding decades been directed toward the progressive

transformation of the political equilibrium toward an opening of new

social perspectives, were all completely and suddenly shut down and fell

back onto war. Military expenses increased in an unprecedented manner.

After all, the Hollywood President directly represented the interests

of economic groups that were invested in the military industry, and

the living cadaver of Brezhnev based his power on the social force and

productivity of the war apparatus.

One geopolitical bloc played its simulation against the other geo-

political bloc. But behind the geopolitical game another game was being

played, which was the real game.

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