ABSTRACT
War defined the 20th century. World War I and World War II witnessed the birth of contemporary warfare characterized by mechanized militaries and strategies of total war that involved the deliberate targeting of civilian populations and attempts at achieving wholesale death and destruction. The Nazi Holocaust against Jews and Gypsies, the dropping of the nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the fire bombing of cities such as Dresden in Germany are the more notable and widely discussed events of this kind. Following World War II, the Cold War stand-off between the Soviet-led East and the U.S.-led West was accompanied by protracted and equally destructive conflicts in countries such as Vietnam and Afghanistan. By the beginning of the 21st century, although the nature of war appears to have changed, political conflict continues to shape the world. The so-called “humanitarian” interventions of the 1990s and the “war on terror” have reshaped, to some extent, the forms of war that now prevail, but violent conflict remains as much a part of the 21st century as it was a part of the 20th. Along with the emergence of contemporary warfare have been exponential advances in communication technology. The late 19th century brought us the ability to communicate instantaneously via the telegraph, which was followed by the emergence of broadcast media and culminated in the profound connectivity of individuals around the world through the Internet.
