widely attributed to Nikita Khrushchev, "The living will envy the dead". During the Cold War, the two superpowers sought to avoid open conflict between their respective forces, as both sides recognized that such a clash could very easily escalate, and quickly involve nuclear weapons. Instead, the superpowers fought each other through their involvement in proxy wars, military buildups, and diplomatic standoffs. In the case of proxy wars, each superpower supported its respective allies in conflicts with forces aligned with the other superpower, such as in the Vietnam War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. During the Yugoslav Wars, NATO conducted strikes against the electrical grid in enemy territory using graphite bombs. NATO claimed that the objective of their strikes was to disrupt military infrastructure and communications. It can be argued that the Russian Invasion of Ukraine can be seen as the first total war since the end of World War II. See also The bomber will always get through Conventional warfare Economic warfare Industrial warfare Roerich Pact Total defence War crime War economy War of annihilation World war References Notes Bibliography Barnhart, Michael A. Japan prepares for total war: The search for economic security, 1919–1941 (Cornell UP, 2013). Barrett, John G. "Sherman and Total War in the Carolinas." North Carolina Historical Review 37.3 (1960): 367-381. online Black, Jeremy. The age of total war, 1860–1945 (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010). Broers, Michael. "The Concept of Total War in the Revolutionary – Napoleonic Period." War in History 15.3 (2008): 247–68. Craig, Campbell. Glimmer of a new Leviathan: Total war in the realism of Niebuhr, Morgenthau, and Waltz (Columbia University Press, 2004), Intellectual history. Fisher, Noel C. "'Prepare Them For My Coming': General William T. Sherman, Total War, and Pacification in West Tennessee." Tennessee Historical Quarterly 51.2 (1992): 75-86. Förster, Stig, and Jorg Nagler. On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871 (Cambridge University Press, 2002). Hewitson, Mark. "Princes’ Wars, Wars of the People, or Total War? Mass Armies and the Question of a Military Revolution in Germany, 1792–1815." War in History 20.4 (2013): 452–90. Hoffman, Christopher S. Major General William T. Sherman's total war in the Savannah and Carolina campaigns (US Army Command and General Staff College, School for Advanced Military Studies Fort Leavenworth, 2018) online. Hsieh, Wayne Wei-Siang. "Total War and the American Civil War Reconsidered: The End of an Outdated" Master