Baudrillard made a prediction that the Gulf War would not take place on the eve of the start of the war. He believed that the simulations played out by the generals of both sides would show that to proceed would be a mistake. The simulations would have replaced the 'real' war where actual people were killed or maimed. His belief that simulations had replaced would have been dramatically proved. However it could be argued that this, as with all simulations, was a specific case. There is little doubt that simulations that were played out during the Cold War to ensure that the launching of nuclear missiles would result in the annihilation of the initial aggressor enforced an uneasy peace at the global level. At the smaller conflict level this was not the case and the number of conflicts where the superpowers, through proxies, fought for domination in a particular area of the world were a constant part of the latter part of the 20th Century.
Baudrillard ignores the personalities of those involved (the military can only justify its existence through involvement in battle so have a pre-conditioned response to any perceived threat and the politicians know that to win a war is to ensure increased chances at the polls so the major deciders have an interest in going to war). In a world where logic and clear thinking rules war would be impossible - it is the vagaries of the human population that seems intent at some point in time in destroying itself. That Baudrillard was wrong was proven the very next day.
Having lost the first argument he then moved on to suggest that what was happening was not a war and that the Americans were not fighting to win a quick and decisive battle but to demonstrate to onlookers there considerable might. His argument is based on the lengthy air war before the ground war began. Although bombs were being dropped and cruise missiles were destroying their targets together with anyone in the area what was happening was no doubt real to those in the firing line the Americans were not really fighting so spectators were experiencing a simulation.
It is necessary to first accept that the Americans were not really fighting but this is to misunderstand the nature of modern war. Baudrillard argues that the relatively small numbers of casualties compared with previous wars made it difficult to see this war as a real war. He does not state what level casualties have to reach to make something real because to do so would make obvious the weakness of his argument - is 500,000 death enough or must it exceed say a million. Does the death of one individual mean less than the death of hundreds of thousands? By Baudrillard's standards the Second World War was not a war because by comparison with the 1st World War the number of deaths was small. Generals in the 1st World War saw the death of thousands of men in one day as an unavoidable price to pay to make the most paltry of gains. Seen as a totally unacceptable view, Generals in the 2nd World War tried to reduce the number of casualties by dominance of the air and preventing the enemy from mounting an appropriate response. Heavy reliance was placed on technology and fighting at a distance and this can be seen in other conflicts.
Aware of the unpopularity of the War at home the American Generals used their supremacy in the air to ensure that when the ground battle began casualties would be as low as possible. They were successful but they had still fought a war - not least because war had been declared.
I find it difficult to take Baudrillard seriously despite his earlier work on simulations. He took up more and more extreme positions - even to the extent that he proposed that in future there would only be simulations and that simulations can never be detected - and when challenged by events such as the Gulf War invented his own simulated world in which he was never wrong. However one should never throw the baby out with the bath water and he has a great deal to say on other topics that seem well grounded in the real world or perhaps I only see the simulation.
A major source of information for this piece was the article at
http://www.socresonline.org.uk/9/2/raffel.html
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