Conventional weapons are generally presented as controllable, proportionate and morally acceptable, unlike weapons of mass destruction. It is this assumption that is challenged by research conducted by Julien Pomarède at the Centre for the Study of War and Violence at the University of Liège, based on American and French military archives. The findings demonstrate that the massive levels of devastation observed throughout the 20th century, and still today, did not occur in spite of the rationality that defines the use of these weapons, but because of it.