What Is War? 269national resources. Thus, for Austria- Hungary, World War I began as a limited war
in which it sought to punish Serbia for its presumed support of the assassination of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Yet by the end of August 1914, what had begun as a lim-
ited war had escalated into a total war, involving goals as ambitious as the complete
conquest of adversaries (marked by their unconditional surrender) and the use of all
national means available.
The Korean War (1950–53) is an excellent example of limited war. In the Korean
War, U.S. and then UN forces were mobilized to prevent the outright conquest of
South Korea by the North (the Demo cratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK).
This goal made the war a limited one from the UN perspective. However, because both
sides tended to view material outcomes as representative of the validity of their respec-
tive ideologies, the war between the communist North and the non- communist UN
contained power ful incentives for escalation.
After the stunning success of General Douglas MacArthur’s Inchon landing, for
example, the DPRK’s military collapsed, and its remnants were forced to retreat all the
way to the country’s frontier with the newly communist People’s Republic of China
(PRC). Mac Arthur and many in the United States and U.S. government viewed this
victory as an opportunity to unify Korea under non- communist rule— a much more
ambitious goal. So what began as war for limited aims on the UN side briefly escalated
into a war of complete conquest. Then, in the winter of 1950, China intervened. The war
could now only be thought of as “limited” in comparison to the real possibility that it
might escalate to include the Soviet Union as well. U.S. president Harry S. Truman and
his advisers deci ded to settle for a return to the status quo of 1950. China’s leadership
grudgingly agreed, effectively leaving the Korean peninsula divided. Although the United
States possessed nuclear weapons and could have mobilized and deployed many addi-
tional combat forces, the fear of escalation to another— perhaps nuclear— world war led
to an armistice instead of an outright victory.
In limited wars, because the aims of war are relatively modest, belligerents do not
unleash all available armaments. In these two cases, conventional weapons of warfare
were used— tanks, foot soldiers, aircraft, and missiles. But, despite their availability,
nuclear weapons were never deployed.
There is no better illustration of limited war than the Arab- Israeli disputes from
1973 onward. Israel has fought six interstate wars against its neighbors— Egypt, Syria,
Jordan, and Lebanon— and strug gled against repeated Palestinian uprisings in the
West Bank and Gaza. Since the conclusion of the 1973 Yom Kippur War (limited from
the Egyptian perspective, total from the Israeli perspective), none of the opposing
states have sought the complete destruction of their foes, and the conflict has blown
hot and cold. Both sides have employed some of the techniques described later. With
the increased destructiveness of modern warfare, limited war has become the most
common option for states contemplating vio lence against other states.