According to one recent poll, Joe Biden leaves office as the most unpopular president in modern history. Although he was blamed for everything from inflation to the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden’s presidency was a cipher. It’s rather hard to pinpoint decisions for which Biden is directly responsible. Instead of blaming Biden for the past four years, we should consider an alternative thesis: Like the Gulf War, the Biden administration did not take place.
When Jean Baudrillard wrote his infamous 1991 polemic The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, his point was not to deny the existence of the conflict in the Persian Gulf. It was, rather, a reflection on the changing character of war. The primary arena of military power, Baudrillard argued, had shifted from the use of actual force to the control of the information space. That meant that the use of force was now mediated and understood through the agents that produce information. Information technology and those who controlled it—the media and the military—had captured reality. They could define an event before it happened, thereby influencing subsequent events. Reality could be pre-programmed. The Gulf War, Baudrillard concluded, revealed this new kind of power.
The Biden administration likewise revealed the changing character of Western politics. Its actions did not proceed from the political will of the executive. It was, instead, a non-administration, an experiment that aimed to put an end to politics, and to all political threats to a unified system of control.