Lecture
The experience of the twentieth century, and especially of the two world wars, shows that political equilibrium is one of the most important conditions for preventing wars and armed conflicts, in a bipolar as well as in a multipolar world. A disturbance of the equilibrium harbours a threat to the security not only of those who find themselves weakened, but also of those who have attained superiority in force. States begin to close ranks against the strongest in order to restore the disturbed equilibrium. States appear that set themselves the goal of surpassing the strongest by any means. The struggle grows fiercer, peace is destabilised, and the prevention of war becomes more difficult and may become unattainable.
Many scholars around the world believe that in maintaining equilibrium in the future, as the factor of external force gradually weakens, the role of the balance of ecological, scientific-technical and spiritual-cultural potentials will grow. Scientific forecasting of future wars, however, is comparatively young. Russian scholars - philosophers, economists and military specialists - began to engage in it actively from the end of the nineteenth century. Whereas the latter concentrated on the next imminent major war threatening the state, the philosophers sought to peer deeper into the misty distance of history and to forecast the influence of new military clashes on the destiny of all humankind. Thus V. Solovyov held that the fateful struggle between East and West, around which, as he believed, the whole of human history revolves, would in the end lead to the division of the world into two great halves and to a war between them in the twenty-first century. «This coming armed struggle between Europe and Mongol Asia will, of course, be the last, but all the more terrible, a truly worldwide war», he wrote. Such a war, whose vicissitudes he set out in considerable detail, was to lead to the formation of a world state, a single culture of humankind, and the cessation of wars. At the same time, the outstanding Russian thinkers N. Berdyaev, I. Ilyin and others predicted that the clash of Asia and Europe might be followed by a war of Eurasia with America.
Today, when the political essence of wars is under discussion, the world's leading political scientists and experts have in mind the following:
the assessment of the parties' actions from the standpoint of the concepts of «aggressor» and «victim of aggression» enshrined in the UN Charter and in international law;
the socio-political aims of the opponents and the consequences of their realisation for the development of particular countries and of all humankind;
the determination of what is just or unjust in the actions of the belligerent parties from the standpoint of the norms of universal human morality (on the principle that no one eats with impunity from the tree of immorality, and that justice and injustice cannot be placed on the same footing);
the damage inflicted: loss of human life, of material and cultural values, degradation of the economy, etc.;
the policy and the aims (proclaimed and real) of the parties;
the assessment of the parties' actions from the standpoint of international law and the norms of universal human morality;
the vector of the war's impact on the life of peoples, states and humankind in comparison with the tendencies of the epoch;
the outcome of the war and its long-term consequences.
Practice shows, however, that uncovering the true political essence of the actions of one side or the other can be extremely difficult even in the case of wars long past. It is still harder to foresee what the actions of the parties will look like in future wars: who will be the instigator and the guilty party, what the aims will be, who will be the defender of justice and of recognised legal and moral norms, and so on. All the more so since genuine aims may be deliberately masked and obscured by declaratory ones. Under these conditions, in the opinion of O. V. Zolotaryov, it is important to uncover the «genetic code» in the real policy of states in order to grasp their true aims in possible future wars and armed conflicts.
The «genetic code» of the political content of a war on the part of each participant lies in its policy, taken in the broadest sense. In doing so one must proceed from the principle: «he who does not see the past in the present will not understand the future».
Thus, for example, in analysing the present state of world security one should first of all mentally survey the attitude towards Russia, the CIS countries and the countries of the former Warsaw Pact on the part of those states which, throughout the greater part of the twentieth century, waged the «Cold War», practised intimidation and suppression, and conducted indirect military operations (displays of force, the imposition of an exhausting arms race, subversive operations, exercises and manoeuvres near the borders, the creation of threats at vulnerable points, and so on). Has this content disappeared from the currently proclaimed policy of «partnership», «alliance» and «de-ideologised» relations that has supposedly replaced the old one? History shows that a whole complex of military-political processes initiated by the West in the 1990s testifies to the contrary.
Contrary to expectations of a wave of «regional aggressions», already at the beginning of the 1990s the centre of regional armed confrontation shifted towards clashes more limited in scale and intensity, such as the ethnopolitical conflicts in Central and East Africa (the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia), South-East Asia (Indonesia, Myanmar), the Middle East (Afghanistan), the former Yugoslavia and the former USSR. Thus, whereas 1992 was described by the experts of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) as «the year of the highest upsurge of international efforts to prevent and settle regional conflicts», already in 1993-1994 a series of serious failures in the regulation of local and regional conflicts befell the «international community» not only in «third world» countries (the collapse of the multinational operation in Somalia, the bloody inter-tribal clashes in Burundi, Rwanda and Zaire, the growth of internal instability in Haiti, the aggravation of the situation in Afghanistan and Angola), but also in the centre of Europe (on the territory of the former Yugoslavia).
According to UN estimates, as of the beginning of 1995 some 82% of the international peacekeeping operations conducted since 1992 were connected with the settlement of regional conflicts arising out of intra-state contradictions. In accordance with the conflict classification system developed at SIPRI, already in 1994 it was precisely intra-state contradictions that lay at the basis of all «major armed conflicts» (31 conflicts in 27 regions of the world), although some of these conflicts (for example, in Nagorno-Karabakh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Tajikistan) also had an inter-state aspect. According to the calculations of the experts of Uppsala University's Civil Wars Project, of the 103 armed conflicts that occurred in 1989-1997, 97 were intra-state in character. Moreover, the most widespread type of intra-state conflict in the 1990s was either a struggle for power within a single state (a «civil war» proper) or a territorial (extraterritorial) redivision in the zone where some states disintegrated and others arose in their place.
Of course, the number and political character of possible wars and conflicts is more varied. The majority of them are connected with the disintegration of the single body of Russia. I. Ilyin already warned that the dismemberment of Russia would be a political adventure unprecedented in history, with ruinous consequences for all humankind for a long time to come. «Russia will turn into a gigantic «Balkans», into an eternal source of wars, into a great breeding ground of turmoil». The powers of the whole world (European, Asian and American) will invest their money, commercial interests and strategic calculations in the newly arisen small states; they will compete with one another, seeking predominance and «strongpoints», and will encroach on the direct or covert «annexation» of these new formations. To a considerable degree this prevision of the great Russian thinker is being realised in the policy of the Western powers towards Russia and the other CIS countries. For example, whereas in the second half of the 1990s the USA proposed to buy our Siberia for 3 trillion dollars (while the real value of its resources alone is 100 times greater), at the beginning of the twenty-first century they already simply intend to take it by force. Thus in the American magazine "GQ" there appeared an article under the title: "We shall buy you. And thereby save you". A map was printed alongside it. A thick yellow line, cutting in two a Russia painted in a searing red "Soviet" colour, ran up the Yenisei from north to south, crossing Lake Baikal west of Irkutsk, and ended at Mongolia. Everything to the left of the line was called "Russia", and to the right - "American Siberia". The article was accompanied by an appeal: "Let's buy Siberia!". A sum was then named: "For a mere three trillion dollars we can save Russia, add seven stars to our flag and provide an entire generation with unprecedented prosperity". (The stars are seven new American states with the names Siberia, Western Yakutia, Eastern Yakutia, Amur Buryatia, Khabarovsk, Primorye and Bering.)
In this situation Russia's principal political task appears to be to recover its integrity and to regain its might. Then no one will dare even to think of courting war with it. Only a strong Russia is the guarantee of the security and tranquil life of its people. The actions of the West are hardening the mood of the Russian masses. The proportion of citizens who see NATO and the USA as their main adversaries grew between 1992 and 1997 from 25% to 40%, while the proportion of citizens who do not believe in the goodwill or neutrality of the West as a whole rose to 70%. Of interest here, however, are the data from the monitoring of public opinion concerning Russia's real and desirable allies. Thus, the question about Russia's real allies showed that Russians consider the CIS countries to be allies first and foremost (15%); the USA (15%), China (9%) and Germany (4%) are then regarded as real allies. Answers to the question about Russia's desirable allies gave a somewhat different picture. The USA leads by a wide margin as a desirable ally (27%), followed by China (14%), the CIS countries (12%) and Germany (11%). It is thus evident that the ambiguously assessed idea of rapprochement with the countries of the West and with the USA has considerable potential in Russian society.
An analysis of the contemporary military doctrines of the leading world powers (the USA, Great Britain, Germany and others) shows that they proceed, as a rule, from the priority of the peacekeeping functions of the armed forces, and contain no former references to «enemies», «potential adversaries» or specific countries as sources of military danger. Most often they speak of nameless (unaddressed) military risks, challenges and threats. The propagandistic purpose of these verbal innovations does not cancel out the real changes in the policy that stands behind them. This is attested, in particular, by the intensive development of interrelations between armies - a kind of «military diplomacy» - and by plans and special institutions of cooperation, including in the training of military personnel, the conduct of exercises and so on. The guiding documents of the USA and NATO emphasise the growing role of armies in combating terrorism, crime and the drug trade, in responding to natural disasters and man-made catastrophes, in carrying out humanitarian operations, in improving the environment and so forth. As is well known, the official celebrations marking NATO's fiftieth anniversary in Washington in April 1999, which took place against the background of military aggression against sovereign Yugoslavia, concluded with the adoption of a new NATO strategic concept. Henceforth the efforts of the USA and NATO are directed towards the anticipatory shaping of a favourable strategic environment conducive to the attainment of the alliance's political and economic goals in regions vitally important to them - and this is practically the whole world (editor's note). Grounds for military intervention are held to be: "the oppression of peoples; ethnic conflicts; economic disasters; the collapse of the political order; the proliferation of WMD; the disruption of the flow of vitally important resources".
At the same time, proceeding from the basic provisions of the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, the military security of the state is to be ensured through: non-military means, nuclear weapons as a deterrence factor, entry into collective security systems, the traditional Armed Forces and other troops. Such an ordering of priorities undoubtedly makes it possible to ensure a high level of the state's military security without increasing military expenditure at the expense of development. In practice, however, this system does not work, even though it was adopted by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation as far back as November 1993 and subsequently refined in 2000. Each of its elements functions autonomously, not infrequently coming into conflict with the others. The situation is analogous in other matters as well.
Thus, an analysis of world experience shows that the bulk of the world's armies are moving counter to the needs and tendencies of world development and intend to maintain this course until 2020-2030. The introduction of new military technologies serves the purpose of exterminating considerably more people and causing greater destruction than in previous wars. In the headquarters, research centres and military academies of the NATO countries, scenarios of future wars are being played out, and the political foundations of possible major wars, including a world war, are being laid. Thus, in particular, at the present rates of reduction the strength of armies will by 2030 stand at 13-15 million men, almost as before the Second World War. At the same time the destructive potential of armies will grow by a factor of 40-50 as a result of the transition of the arms race from a predominantly quantitative to a qualitative one.
Since the mid-1990s, however, the process of reducing armaments and armies has been slowing down. The leading Western countries are continuing their military preparations with an emphasis on qualitative shifts. The USA sets itself the task of possessing military might unattainable by others and of becoming the leader of the world. Substantiating the special role of the USA as an «interregional coordinator», the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General C. Powell, in his foreword to the book «From Globalism to Regionalism», names four «islands of constancy in a sea of change»:
the United States of America will remain the world leader («America's home is the entire world community»);
the persistence, despite the changes that have occurred, of a real threat of global scale from Russia's nuclear forces («since I became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, not a day has passed without my thinking about Russian nuclear might, which can destroy us in 30 minutes»);
in the coming years the highest priority in international policy will be given by the US leadership to the solution of domestic economic problems, which are closely bound up with the problems of the world economy;
the situation in the world will remain dangerous, uncertain, unstable, poorly controllable at the regional level, and crisis-ridden («we are not present at the «end of history»; in the two years alone since my appointment to this post I have had to respond to 14 crises of varying degrees of danger in different regions of the world»).
At present the USA is in essence acting as the initiator of yet another and entirely unnecessary arms race. It has set in motion a new revolution in military affairs based on the use of information technology and precision-guided weapons. The current arms race has been launched not as a response to some concrete military threat to the USA or its allies, but as an American initiative of the leader, independent of anything. This is all the more perplexing in that its chief rival, to use the language of American politicians - Russia - is carrying out staggering reductions of armaments.
Since the beginning of the 1990s the output of its defence complex has fallen by a factor of 6, and that of weapons by a factor of 11.5. The new rearmament of the USA is pushing other countries onto a militarist path. For example, the militarisation of a number of regions of the Middle East, South Asia and the ASEAN countries is sharply increasing. The volume of the arms trade is growing, and in it the USA (55%) and the European Union (30%) are the leaders. Whereas in the 1980s about 38% of the world arms market belonged to the USSR and 20% to the USA, by 2000 the USA accounted for some 60% and Russia for 5-8%. In the spring of 1996 the USA lifted restrictions on its own arms exports to the CIS countries, establishing military cooperation with the former Soviet republics. Third world countries that had relied on the support of one of the superpowers have now been deprived of assistance and are arming intensively.
Meanwhile the Western corporations producing weapons receive the highest profits, which not infrequently reach 200%. The Western model of economic management and democracy provides maximum incentives for military production. The arms trade, which has expanded by 20% over ten years and absorbs 32 billion dollars, enables developing countries that had no armies of their own before the second half of the twentieth century to make them high-technology forces at once. Everywhere military muscle is being pumped up. Into the countries of South and South-East Asia, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region there flows an increasing stream of armaments from the USA, France, the FRG, England, Russia, South Africa and others. In the «third world» the arms race threatens to exceed all conceivable bounds. Where at the beginning of the century only spears and bows were known, warring factions now employ missile and artillery systems against one another (Somalia, Liberia and others). The saturation with weapons of territories once free of them contributes to the emergence of new centres of military danger, including for the states that sell the armaments, and to the spread of violence and terrorism.
In particular, the East Asian region currently accounts for 32% of the armed forces of the entire world: first, this is the world's largest army, that of the PRC (2.9 million men), and second, the armies of the DPRK, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand and other countries of this region, which by numerical strength are among the world's 15 largest military powers. A number of countries have noticeably increased their military expenditure over the past 3-5 years: Iran by 42%, Pakistan by almost 20%, India by 12% and so on. In addition, the capacity of the armies of the leading states for large-scale operations and participation in major wars is reinforced by multi-million contingents of reservists, trained men liable for military service, who can be placed under arms within a matter of hours and days (about 750-800 million people). Without them regular armed forces are incapable of waging major wars. And the fact that in the USA, Canada and the European countries these contingents are being built up speaks volumes. The eastward enlargement of NATO gives a new impetus to military preparations. It should also be noted that by the end of the twentieth century the activity of anti-war movements had sharply weakened.
The idea of demilitarisation cannot be realised so long as the overwhelming majority of people retain a militarist mentality. History shows that in the twentieth century no substantial changes occurred in the socialisation of the human being, which is aimed, as in the past, at forming in him a participant in present and future wars. Such an orientation of human socialisation is pursued through all forms of instruction and upbringing, and permeates science, culture, literature and art. The raising of the question of anti-war education was and continues to be rejected, although it is precisely this that ought to replace the spiritual militarisation that has been carried on for many centuries and millennia. Demilitarisation cannot be accomplished by people who worship militarism.
As for the fate of the armed forces as a whole, the majority of scholars and politicians believe that they will be needed for ever. Without them, supposedly, humankind would plunge into an abyss of chaos, as would happen to the matter of the Universe if the forces of gravitation were removed from it. In this they proceed from the socio-political essence of the army. It is precisely this essence of the army that, when socio-political stability is disturbed and a conflict situation is brewing, allows the state to rely on the armed forces in order to change the political situation both within its own society and in solving the tasks of securing the state against external adversaries. The army is thereby drawn into the political struggle and, accordingly, experiences an intensification of political influence upon it. Others, however, consider that in our epoch armies have become the antipode of peace and are incompatible with the interests of security, and that they should be abolished almost at a single stroke - and that humankind would suffer nothing at all from this. The truth lies, as always, midway between these extremes. A world without armies is probable, but its attainment is a matter for the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries.
In this situation it should be noted that a view not infrequently exists among political scientists to the effect that armies and weapons do not in themselves constitute a threat and are not the causes of wars, which arise not from them but from political contradictions leading to the use of weapons. This ignores the impact of armies and armaments on policy. By their enormous might the armed forces push politicians towards using them, and feed political adventurism. The existence of super-powerful armies ready for large-scale and sudden offensive operations sows distrust and increases the possibility of accidental wars and conflicts. Moreover, the tendencies of the twentieth century indicate that the wars of the future will become still more destructive of the civilian population as well.
The expansive interpretation of the functions of the armed forces, and the delegation to them of the tasks of other specialised institutions (the police, rescue, environmental and other services), is in fact merely a pretext for justifying the strengthening and use of armies at a time when the objective need for them is diminishing and when the role of violence ought to be declining. A search is under way for ways of involving armies in «constructive» affairs, which at present look predominantly like the «construction» of a uniform world in the image and likeness of the world leader.
An unjust world order, under which the countries of the «golden billion» prosper while the already backward countries degrade, the power of a single superpower is asserted, and military force acts as the «stabilising» factor - such an «order» cannot be stable and secure; it harbours within itself the possibility of new wars and conflicts. The experience of Russia graphically demonstrates how dynamically structural dangers can arise. Only 15-20 years ago there was in it no socio-political basis for social antagonisms, still less for an internal civil war. The change of the social order, of the state-political mechanism, of the social structure and of the economic system was accompanied by a growth of confrontation within society, and by the mid-1990s a socio-political basis for civil war had taken shape. Only the exceptional self-restraint and patience of the people saved the country from this calamity. But it now stands constantly at this fateful brink. To a decisive degree this is conditioned by the character of the authorities, of policy, of social relations and of living conditions.
Throughout history politics has developed its ability to prepare for and wage wars far more rapidly than its ability to prevent them and to ensure the strengthening of peace and security. The militarist art of politics achieved an unprecedented rise in the twentieth century, which proved to be the most warlike and bloody. The politics of the twentieth century connected with the resolution of questions of war and peace was justly called by R. Nixon, in his book «1999: Victory Without War», a «politics of organised madness».
At present two tendencies have clearly emerged in policy on questions of war and peace, inspiring optimism and alarm at the same time. The positive shifts of the 1990s in relations between states give rise to expectations of a «peaceful epoch» and widen the possibility of overcoming such an evil as war. Yet the great powers, instead of seizing this favourable opportunity and moving to decisive demilitarisation, are preserving predominantly traditional approaches to military development, approaches especially characteristic of the height of the «Cold War». If one looks at the military life of states, it is marked by a feverish activity in introducing new types of weapons and equipment and in perfecting organisational structures - activity perhaps even greater than before the First and Second World Wars. There is a danger that the twenty-first century may prove bloodier and more warlike than its predecessor. Under these conditions questions arise: what accounts for the bellicosity of world politics and for the dominance within it of power-based approaches, on the one hand, and for the monstrous lag in its capacity to preserve and strengthen peace, on the other; to what extent does science bear responsibility for this «distortion» in politics, and what is required of it in order to help overcome militarism in policy, political thinking, political relations and institutions?
Throughout most of history scholarly thought investigated predominantly the role of politics as a factor generating wars, as the «director» of states' military activity, of the formation of their military strength, and of the preparation and conduct of wars. It concentrated on substantiating the purpose and methods of employing the military might of states as one of the means (instruments) of policy. But in the twentieth century ideas arose about a policy called upon to «kill» war as a social evil. With the appearance of nuclear weapons, the argument grew that nuclear war must not be a means of policy, since there is no goal for the sake of which it could be unleashed. Such a war would be the death of all politics and of humankind itself. The development of conventional armaments brought them close in destructive properties to nuclear weapons, and «conventional» war close to nuclear war. Under these conditions science substantiated the necessity of excluding any war from the means of policy, of renouncing war as a way of resolving any contradictions whatsoever.
Having drawn such fundamental conclusions, science lagged behind in elaborating concrete ideas and projects concerning the political institutions and mechanisms capable of implementing them, concerning the ways and means of eliminating the ferments of war from the social organism and of overcoming backward political thinking and the militarist «culture» that weighs upon the leaders of states, upon societies, peoples and citizens. Research into the impact of wars on society, and the identification of what negative residue of this persists and remains at work, is especially topical now, when, despite all the difficulties, a unique opportunity to enter a peaceful epoch has opened before humankind. Without this it is impossible to have a policy that would ensure peace and security for Russia in the twenty-first century.
The political countenance of the projected wars of the twenty-first century may today be characterised as follows:
an aggressor will attack only when he has a guarantee of success;
political goals will be attained not in the course of prolonged wars but in the course of a prolonged «indirect», non-military struggle, above all in the informational and socio-political spheres;
war proper against those socio-political structures that have retained their capacity to function after the «indirect actions» will last for a short period of time;
armed struggle will be waged at any point of the country, mainly by aerospace forces and assets;
the main objects of strikes will be the systems of state and military command and control, of the information resource, and of social welfare;
a comprehensive destructive impact on the adversary's personnel and weapons will be ensured by the simultaneous and coordinated conduct of information and psychological warfare.
Thus, wars have existed, do exist, and are forecast to appear in a new guise in the twenty-first century. If one were mentally to imagine a set of scales, placing on one pan the benefit and on the other the damage from all the wars humankind has lived through, the weight of the second would be many times greater than that of the first. Moreover, those wars without which progress would have been impossible constitute a very small share of the total mass of wars throughout history. Consequently, the criterion of «progressiveness» is inapplicable to the wars of the epoch of the latest scientific and technological revolution, which has generated weapons of inconceivable power and has turned war into an element of universal annihilation and destruction, into an inadmissible means of resolving any disputes.
The principal political causes of the inevitable wars of the twenty-first century may be named as follows: first, the differences between the states of the contemporary world are not merely real, they are the most fundamental. Second, the world is becoming ever more crowded. This leads to a growth of civilisational consciousness and to a deepening understanding of the differences and contradictions between civilisations and of the commonality within them. The growth of civilisational self-awareness, in turn, leads to the aggravation of disagreements and hostilities that reach far back into history.
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