measured (only estimated) as it is intangible. Once a state has learned the enemy's strength of resistance it can review its own means and adjust them upwards accordingly in an effort to gain the advantage. As the enemy will also be doing this, it too becomes reciprocal (the third reciprocal action), creating a third push towards an extreme. Confusion with Total War The recognition of total war since the start of World War I has arguably created a degree of confusion for many scholars, who may have failed to understand the differences between it and the concept of absolute war, often using the terms interchangeably and blaming Germany's conduct of "total war" on the writings of Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. In reality, however, Clausewitz neither coined nor used the term "total war," and "absolute (or ideal) war," it is argued, is quite a different concept. Total war is essentially a war in which the home front (that is, a state's political system, society and economy) is mobilised to a massive degree for the continuation and expansion of the war effort—it implies the subordination of politics (internal and external) to the goal of purely military victory (a notion that Clausewitz would have regarded as nonsensical). It is characterised by civilian infrastructure and civilians themselves becoming highly involved in war as part of the military's logistical support system. Ideal war on the other hand, is a theoretical ideal in which war reaches its logical extremes (as mentioned above), which free it from the moderating effects that are imposed on it by politics and society, not to mention the practical constraints of time and space. As wars cannot run themselves and require politics and society to exist, Clausewitz held that ideal war was impossible because political and military leaders cannot avoid these influences. Much of the confusion over "absolute war" is the result of Clausewitz's personal intellectual evolution: the book was unfinished at the time of his untimely death and there are important contradictions between some of his earlier thinking and the most advanced elements, the latter being represented by the last half of Book VIII, Book I (the only part of Clausewitz's unfinished draft that he considered to be in finished form), and the "Note of 1827." He never had the opportunity to bring the discussion of absolute war into accord with these later writings. Thus "absolute war" reflects an