Political power, technology, and total war: Two French views

Abstract

Total war and limited war are part of our daily vocabulary, and policy-makers and scholars are trying to identify the conditions under which the latter, rather than the former, can be made the framework of armed conflict between the major powers, should war erupt. Two of the most important French political thinkers, MM. Raymond Aron and Bertrand de Jouvenel, have been preoccupied by the colossal warfare of the last half-century. M. de Jouvenel was inspired by revulsion against the destruction of World War II to engage in fundamental considerations of political philosophy and the attempt to develop the beginnings of a pure political theory. M. Aron's writings are much more closely related to what he calls the conjuncture-the convergence of forces upon the international scene-and the relation between war and politics is a more central and unifying concern for him than it is for M. de Jouvenel. But both men have contributed views on the nature of warfare