ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the critical role that technology and strategy play in global politics. It describes how technological and strategic change made his fears a reality. The chapter traces the expansion of war after the eighteenth century, in particular during the two world wars of the twentieth century and the impact of technological change on the conduct of those wars. Clausewitz believed that the rise of nationalism and the use of large conscript armies could produce absolute or total war, that is, wars to the death rather than wars waged for precise and limited political objectives. Beginning in the nineteenth century, as a consequence of the industrial age, a great expansion of war and a rapid evolution of military technology took place, climaxing with the development of weapons of mass destruction in the next century. Large-scale strategic bombing was a central feature of World War Two and was a step toward Clausewitz’s much feared absolute war.
