ABSTRACT
The fear of death, the most fearsome of all fears, is closely related to the fear of war, which combines all the insecurities and threats of annihilation and the elimination of social and cultural ties. Yet even wars are subject to changes. They also adapt, in the same way as fear, to the times and the reasons for progress, and not only on the basis of new technologies. In the space of no more than half a century there has been a drastic change in the conception of war. The two opposing poles can be considered the Second World War, unleashed by Hitler, and the confl ict in Vietnam, undertaken by the United States, which gave rise to a series of military operations, considered non-invasive and often camoufl aged by strategic reasons; then followed the wars in the Gulf and Iraq (1991 and 2003), Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1991-95), and Afghanistan (since 2001).
