Why "War" Is Obsolete But "Warfare" Isn't

 A Digression:

Bucky Fuller believed war was obsolete.
If by "war" is meant the harnessing, ordering, marshaling, and devoting the preponderant amount of a Nation's resources, treasure and personpower to the accomplish the total defeat of an antagonist and the capture of their lands and property (e.g. Shepherd, 1996)--as it was for about 15,000 years--then Bucky was right. "War" in that way is obsolete.

But the warring impulse hasn't been dimmed, nor has it diminished. "War" has become a wholly filled metaphor if we do not blanch at it being applied to poverty, crime and drugs.

Here, I believe, a new discursive distinction between "war" and "warfare" would be useful, inasmuch as "war" in the traditional sense is pretty much impossible anymore w/out MAD, of one sort or another.

That is, the US doesn't go to "war" anywhere anymore. It arbitrarily conducts Imperial warfare at the fringes of Empire to remind our antagonists that we still can, and our friends that we're still willing, and the uncommitted to step warily.