The fears were exemplified by the h

The fears were exemplified by the horrors of the First and Second World Wars which killed approximately 8.5 million and 55 million people respectively (see Bourne 2005, Overly 2005). Although few contemporary wars come close to matching the scale and intensity of these conflicts, the longevity of the idea of total war is evident in the continued use of the terminology of ‘limited war’ to refer, for instance, to the wars in Korea (1950-1953), the Falklands/Malvinas (1982), and the Gulf (1991).