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each other but instead fight each other indirectlythrough each other's allies, as was the case with theUnited States in Vietnam. Thomas M. Franck hasdescribed proxy wars as "wars of agitation, infiltration,and subversion carried on by proxy through nationalliberation movements.""Each of these types of war can develop either orboth of the two features associated with the conceptof total war. The first feature of total war — extensivemobilization of the warring nations — is accomplishedin several ways, including the conscription of citizensto serve in mass armies, the use of propaganda tomaintain morale and support for the war, and theexploitation of large sectors of the national economyfor the war effort. The second feature of total war — anextremely high level of death and destruction in generaland deliberate targeting of civilians in particular— reflects both advances in weapons technology anda steady expansion in the types of targets consideredlegitimate by military and political leaders. ~The actual term "total war" was invented in 1918and inspired by the Napoleonic wars of the late 1700sand the early months of World War I, both of whichfeatured mass armies raised by conscription and theapplication of science to develop highly destructiveweapons." No recent war, even World Wars I and II,has been completely "total" in the sense that all of theavailable resources of the combatant nations have beendevoted to the conflict or that the destruction of theenemy has been complete. Rather, as Marjorie Farrarhas suggested, "totality can be interpreted as oneextreme in a spectrum of possibilities. Distinction isthen made among degrees of totality. .. war is total inthe degree to which it approaches the extreme oftotality. " Thus, in practice, the term "total war" isapplied to conflicts in which extensive societal involvementand/or indiscriminate destruction are evident.While many wars in history have been characterizedby one or both dimensions of total war, a numberof features of modern war have created an especiallystrong tendency in the direction of totality. In his studyof historical and modern war, Quincy Wright emphasizedthe following trends in modern war: the increasedsize of military force, primarily as the result of conscription;the mechanization of society in general andwarfare in particular, with the latter resulting inescalating destructiveness of weapons; and the breakdownof the distinctionbetween soldiers and civilians."The lethality of weapons has increased tremendouslyduring the modern era. Whereas in World WarI, about three people were killed by each ton of bombsdropped on London by German airplanes, during WorldWar II, the American use of fire bombs against Japanraised the deaths per ton to about fifty. By the end ofWorld War II, the invention of the atomic bomb raisedthe rate far higher, up to "about 10, 000 persons killedper ton of normal bomb load for the B-29 that madethe raid. "" According to sociologist Hornell Hart, "Thefive centuries from 1346 to 1875 saw several times asmuch increase in explosive power as had been achievedin the previous million years. The seventy years from1875 to March 1945 saw several times as muchincrease in explosive power as the previous fivecenturies. ""Also, the targeting of population centers with verydestructive weapons, for example the Nazi bombardmentof London and Belgium with V-1 buzz bombsand V-2 ballistic missiles, and the British and Americanincendiary bombing campaigns against German andJapanese cities during World War II, greatly heightenedthe risk to civilians. In World War I, civilians account-ed for only one in twenty deaths; by World War II,in contrast, approximately two-thirds of the deaths wereof civilians." This trend has continued and increasedsince 1945. According to Sivard, "By the 1970s,civilians accounted for seventy-three percent of wardeaths; thus far in the 1980s, civilians have accountedfor eighty-five percent of war deaths. ""The destructive power of modern weapons,combined with the fact that many people are crowdedinto cities, can mean that even when efforts are madeto avoid direct attacks against civilians, many noncombatantsmay nonetheless be killed or injured. A casein point is the recent Persian Gulf War of 1991, inwhich the United States and about thirty other nationsfought against Iraq in order to end the Iraqi occupationof Kuwait and destroy the Iraqi projects to develop anddeploy nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons ofmass destruction. Although the U. S. and allied forcesasserted a clear policy of targeting only military targets,many civilians were killed when bombs went off courseand when nearby buildings, including homes, weresmashed and burned. The U. S. Air Force, as reportedin the New York Times, estimated that seventy percentof bombs dropped missed their targets. ~No official U. S. estimate of the number ofcivilians killed has been announced to date, but oneunofficial estimate put the toll at between 5, 000 and16, 000 Iraqi civilians killed during the war and anadditional 4, 000 to 6, 000 who died in the monthsimmediately following the war as the result of untreatedwounds and the lack of medical attention." So greatwas the destruction of the capital city, Baghdad, andother cities, that a United Nations report issued inMarch 1991 described the damage as "near apocalyptic"and stated that Iraq had been moved back to a "pre-industrialage. "'4 Further evidence of the toll on civilianswas gathered in May 1991 by a medical team fromHarvard University that visited several Iraqi cities.They estimated that the destruction ofhospital facilitiesGenocide and Modern War 123