ABSTRACT
In modern society probably most people would agree that ideally war is wrong or at the very least undesirable, and that if at all possible it is something to be avoided. Of course, it can always be argued that it makes all the difference if we are talking about a 'just war'. Normally this would be defined as a war that is initiated to defend others. The sort of thing the British and Americans were said to be engaged in with the Gulf War, though even here there was a mixture of well-intentioned and self-interested motives. The question of means is particularly interesting because it raises the highly contentious issue of what is meant by 'total war'. Perhaps the crime, as the Nuremberg judges agreed in 1945–46, was not only the way in which war was conducted, but the fact that it was initiated at all. This is aggressive militarism at its most dangerous.
