Lecture
«War» and «military conflict», as categories of military political science, are at times interpreted rather ambiguously, and not only in everyday consciousness but in the scholarly literature as well. This is connected above all with a broadened understanding of the more general category of «armed conflict», by which is meant an extremely acute form of resolving contradictions between states, social groups and social movements through the use of armed violence.
The concept of «armed conflict» is used in both a broad and a narrow sense. In the broad sense it denotes any political action involving the use of armed force. This may be a war of any intensity and duration between different states, or a one-off use of weapons, whether on the international stage or in domestic political struggle. In the narrow sense it is one of the varieties of armed clash, consisting in the short-term use of fairly limited force within a relatively limited space.
In the world's scholarly and journalistic literature the term «military conflict» is encountered more often. The notions «military» and «armed» are homogeneous in the context of the problem at hand; however, for further analysis a clearer differentiation between them is required.
The principal difference between them lies in the fact that in the course of a military conflict the main instrument of its conduct is the regular armed formations of states on both sides. A struggle, for example, of political parties for state power using armed structures that lack lawful state status, and the use against them of legitimate state power structures, including the armed forces, is not classified as a «military conflict». The same applies to armed conflicts within individual political formations or between two or more non-state political associations. This is an armed domestic political conflict.
A natural question arises as to how civil wars should be classified, when state military structures are opposed by what would also seem to be «men in uniform» — the troops of the opposition, sometimes even superior to the state's forces in training, armament and even numbers (an example: the civil war in Soviet Russia of 1918–1922, when the White Guard armies surpassed the Red Army in many respects; the Chechen formations in 1994–1996 possessed, in certain sectors of combat engagement, more modern weapons than the regular Russian units). The answer to this question is contained in the norms of contemporary international law and in the principles governing the functioning of modern civilization. According to these norms, only one state entity may fully lawfully function on a single territory. Consequently, there can be only one set of legitimate state armed formations on that territory. Therefore a civil war is not a «military» but an «armed conflict».
Nor is a conflict between different parts of the armed structures of one and the same state classified as «military». In the course of a military mutiny, for instance, part of the army (or all of it) ceases to observe the operative constitutional norms of the state and accordingly cannot be classified as a state armed formation. Therefore the resulting conflict is «armed», not «military». From this follows the conclusion that in the course of a military conflict both sides pursue state interests, and that the concept of «military conflict» applies only to international conflicts.
A certain difference between the concepts under consideration also emerges from an analysis of the methods by which weapons are employed. An armed conflict necessarily presupposes the direct use of weapons. A military conflict, however, may also proceed with the indirect use of weapons by the opposing armed forces. Frequently in such cases the conflict is not even called «military», since the opposing political forces (states) merely threaten each other with the use of military force. But in essence this is already a military conflict. For example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis of the early 1960s the Armed Forces of the USSR and the USA were brought to full combat readiness. Yet no direct contact between them on the battlefield occurred. The ruling circles of both countries, having realistically weighed the capabilities of the sides and the possible consequences of an armed clash, channelled the resolution of the crisis situation into a «peaceful course».
It should be noted that the indirect use of weapons (armed force) — that is, the threat of their use — is in modern conditions inherent in virtually every political conflict. Each of the conflicting parties, even in the course of a peacefully unfolding conflict, assesses both its own power capabilities and the analogous capabilities of its rival.
The indirect use of military violence has many forms of implementation. Among them: the introduction of troops onto the territory of another state without the direct (at any rate, mass) use of weapons (the Anschluss of Austria and Germany in March 1938, the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the combined forces of the Warsaw Pact in August 1968); bringing the armed forces to full combat readiness; the creation of military bases near an adversary's borders (the American military base at Guantánamo on the territory of the island of Cuba) or the concentration of large troop formations; the direct military presence of a particular contingent on the territory of a foreign state; the conduct of large military exercises and troop manoeuvres; the provision of direct military assistance (the training of military personnel, the sale of weapons, etc.) to a state that stands in confrontational relations with the opposing party to the conflict; the conduct of military intelligence operations, and others.
The concept of «military conflict», in turn, also has a double meaning — a «narrow» and a «broad» one. In the «broad» sense this concept is analogous to the «broad» understanding of armed violence — it is any clash between two or more armed structures that possess state status and that pursue legitimate state interests in this action.
To clarify the understanding of military conflict in the «narrow» sense, it is necessary to differentiate concepts that share a common basis — the «military». These are the «military incident», the «military provocation», the «military conflict» and «war». To carry out this differentiation, its criterial foundations must be identified. Most often, indicators of scale are put forward as such. It is held that if forces of up to and including a battalion take part in a military clash, then it is a «provocation» or an «incident», whereas the participation of larger forces makes it a «military conflict» or a «war». Some authors regard the scale of loss of life as the main criterion: from 1,000 persons — a military conflict, more than that — a war. Indicators of scale and duration undoubtedly play a significant role in this differentiation. However, these criteria are used mainly by the military sciences. For political science analysis, the determining indicators are those that reflect the social foundations of society's life activity and their dynamics in the course of the conflict's emergence and development and as a result of its settlement. These include:
the political premeditation of the actions;
the depth of the military-political aims of the armed actions;
the character of the influence of military violence on the military-political and socio-economic condition of the country during its application;
the character of the influence of the outcomes (results) of the use of military violence on the further political and socio-economic development of the country (the region, the world as a whole).
Thus, all armed military clashes that are not the consequence of premeditated actions by political forces, but have occurred through a coincidence of circumstances, including accidental ones, and that do not lead to the restructuring of the life of at least part of the country onto a war footing, belong to the category of military incidents (they are sometimes called «casus wars»). Their occurrence is as a rule conditioned by subjective factors in the actions of military structures and installations belonging to different states while on combat duty, at sea, in flight, on border patrol, and also in the course of exercises and operational training (an accidental error in the actions of a combat crew, for example). In addition, military clashes are possible for reasons independent of human beings. These may include, in particular, possible malfunctions in computerized combat equipment and the like. It is precisely for this reason that the timely identification of a military incident prevents its escalation into a military conflict, and sometimes into a full-scale war.
A military provocation, by its very essence, already presupposes specially organized aggressive actions by the ruling circles of a state involving the (direct or indirect) use of military force in order to elicit responsive actions and to use their consequences as a pretext for intensifying conflict interaction, unleashing aggression, justifying the aggravation of the international situation, testing the combat readiness of the enemy's troops (forces), and so on. Many military conflicts and wars begin with provocations. A classic example is the military provocation staged by Nazi Germany on the Polish border, which became the pretext for the invasion of Poland by Nazi troops and for the further unleashing of the Second World War.
The differentiation of the concepts «military conflict» and «war» must be carried out comparatively. First, the theoretically comprehended historical experience of past centuries has shown that the main difference between these varieties of armed military interaction of the sides lies above all in the depth at which the causes of their emergence manifest themselves. Military conflicts arose mainly by virtue of relatively particular causes, such as territorial, regional, national-ethnic, class and other contradictions. War, however, is an armed conflict of a special kind. In it, as a rule, the whole aggregate of these specific and particular causes manifests itself, necessarily reinforced by deeper economic causes and by acute political, ideological and other contradictions between states and their coalitions.
Second, military conflicts are usually less large-scale than wars. The aims pursued by the sides in conflicts are fairly limited, including in terms of time and of the means employed.
Third, unlike a conflict, war is a condition of the whole society taking part in it. It is a complex socio-political phenomenon, representing not only a clash of armed forces but also the full mobilization of all social forces and reserves for the struggle of classes, states, coalitions and social systems. In this case armed struggle becomes the principal, decisive means of achieving particular political aims. Other forms of struggle are also employed: economic, ideological, psychological, diplomatic, and so forth.
Fourth, war and military conflict, by their course and their outcomes, exert unequal influence on the subsequent development of the participating countries, on the international military-political situation and on the whole life of the world. Conflicts do not entail a profound restructuring of the social systems of the belligerent sides, whereas war necessarily (at least for one of the sides) brings about significant changes in subsequent life activity. Take, for example, the two world wars of the last century, whose outcomes determined radically new directions of development (compared with the pre-war period) not only for the participating countries but for the entire world community.
Fifth, there are substantial differences between war and military conflict in terms of political and legal norms as well:
a state of war is officially declared, whereas a conflict is registered and subsequently settled;
war presupposes the introduction of general or partial martial law, whereas a conflict does not require this;
in a military conflict, as things stand today, the norms of international humanitarian law applied upon the declaration of a state of war do not operate.
At the same time, it should be noted that the differentiation set out above is to a certain degree relative, something that became especially apparent in the second half of the twentieth century.
Let us analyse this using a concrete example. The bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO aviation and their delivery of preventive strikes from the air belong, according to the classification given above, to the category of «military conflict» by virtually all criterial grounds — scale, time frame, the limited nature of the causes and aims of the conflict, and others. But, on the other hand, more than a dozen states took direct part in the conflict itself. The use of the most modern means of armed struggle, in less than two months, claimed the lives of more than a thousand civilians and inflicted damage that is hard to repair on the economy of Yugoslavia and on the ecology of the entire Balkan region. Major changes in world international relations resulting from these bombings are evident — the world in effect split in half depending on support for NATO or for the Yugoslav side; the military-political situation grew markedly more heated and was assessed at the time by some analysts as the possible beginning of a new world military catastrophe, and so on. Accordingly, this conflict could be classified as a war. Practically the same may be said with regard to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq by NATO troops.
That is to say, on certain criterial points much depends on the subjective attitude and assessment of events on the part of the interested political forces. Moreover, we are entitled to speak of differing assessments of the intensity of a conflict's course and outcome depending on the degree of significance for the belligerent sides of its causes and consequences, on the involvement in it of social forces and resources, and so on. Accordingly, we may assess the Balkan events as a «war» for Yugoslavia, and as a «military conflict» for the USA and its NATO allies. Similarly, for the Afghan people the events of 1979–1989 were undoubtedly a war, whereas for the USSR it was a military conflict.
The relationship set out above between the concepts «armed conflict» and «military conflict», and «military conflict» and «war», does not yet reflect in full the rich classificatory spectrum of armed political conflicts. In the world's literature on conflict studies there exist many classifications differentiating military conflict on other criterial grounds. In particular, in Western political literature back in the years of the «Cold War» a classificatory system was adopted that came to be known as the «spectrum of conflict», and which included conflicts of high, medium and low intensity.
Conflicts of «high intensity» included all large-scale wars between the world's major (leading) powers and their coalitions. At the time this system was created, these included possible wars between the USA and the USSR, and between NATO and the Warsaw Pact (the Warsaw Treaty Organization). That is, these are wars that we may assign to the category of «world» wars, including nuclear ones.
Conflicts of «medium intensity» included external local operations against adversary states that do not fall under the categories of «high» and «low» intensity conflicts. That is, these are armed interstate clashes of a regional and local character. According to our differentiation, these are military conflicts proper.
Conflicts of «low intensity» include all armed actions of an «internal type», that is, guerrilla and counter-guerrilla operations, counter-terrorist operations, peacekeeping operations and the like. This category also includes external conflicts with an adversary known in advance to be weaker, an armed clash with whom will be short-lived and without any particular intensity in the use of weapons and combat equipment.
At first glance it is evident that the «spectrum of conflict» is rather arbitrary and is based to a greater extent on the territorial and scale characteristics of conflicts. In this connection, the concept of «medium intensity» conflicts (being the most arbitrary in character) was, first and foremost, subjected to critical assessment and further refinement. In its place, from 1993 onwards, the concept of the «major regional conflict» was adopted. According to this concept, a major regional conflict comprises the external combat operations of internationally recognized states possessing a strength of armed forces personnel and a level of technical equipment specified by the concept. But once again, the numerical indicators of the «major regional conflict» concept can be matched by the technical equipment and composition of no more than a dozen countries in the world, including the USA and Russia. Accordingly, virtually all armed conflicts occurring today and realistically forecast for the future fall into the category of «low intensity».
Taking the foregoing into account, let us emphasize that, given its predominantly territorial and scale-based character (numerical, temporal, spatial), the «spectrum of conflict» and its further theoretical development are better suited to analytical work in the field of the military sciences, which are concerned not only with studying conflicts that have already occurred but also with planning and forecasting possible armed conflicts. And second, this system, adopted in Western political science, above all American, corresponds to a greater extent to their military-political position, to the political situation as a whole as it has changed over recent decades, and to the specific contemporary conflict-generating situation that has taken shape.
Contemporary Russian political science has developed its own approaches to the classification of military conflicts, which have accumulated the experience both of the former Soviet approach and of modern Western concepts. According to the view most widespread in Russia, all armed conflicts are divided on three grounds: socio-political; legal; strategic.
On the first ground they are distinguished:
by their relation to national interests: those corresponding to national interests and those not corresponding to them;
by the type of contradiction: political, economic, territorial, national-ethnic and religious;
by the socio-political composition of the sides: interstate, national liberation and civil;
by the character of their political aims: those pursuing predatory aims, those aimed at restoring (maintaining) international peace, and those in defence of sovereignty and territorial integrity.
On the second ground they are divided into two kinds: those violating international law and those waged in accordance with international law.
On the third ground military conflicts are distinguished:
by scale: military actions, local wars, world wars, swift wars, protracted wars, coalition wars and bilateral wars;
by the method of conducting combat operations: offensive, defensive, manoeuvre-based, positional;
by the means employed: nuclear and those using conventional means of destruction;
by intensity: high, medium and low intensity.
One of the most important and complex aspects of the analysis of wars and military conflicts is the question of the sources, the causes and, ultimately, the culprits responsible for unleashing them. Moreover, each researcher, depending on the historical epoch of his work, on the socio-political and ideological allegiance conditioned by his social position, and on the worldview he has formed, sees its solution differently.
Literally from antiquity to the present day, for many thinkers war appears as the consequence of an unknowable mystery of the historical process, at the basis of which lies the manifestation of certain «transcendental» forces, including divine ones. It is obvious that the authors of such conceptions, having adopted objective-idealist positions, are seeking rather to absolve the true culprits behind the unleashing of wars and military conflicts of responsibility than to uncover their causes. Attempts at a natural-biological explanation likewise do not cease — all conflicts, including wars, are the consequence of human aggressiveness, inherent in the entire animal world. Within the framework of «independence from human reason» there also fall such explanations of war as the inability of people to withstand the pressure of certain technological factors; the length and imperfection of borders; incomplete information; the possibility of automatic systems escaping human control; the quantitative and qualitative growth of armaments, and so on.
Fairly widespread has become the explanation of war as a consequence of the policy of a certain «personified reason of the state». In accordance with it, stereotypes appear and are then imposed on public consciousness, such as: «The United States unleashed the war», «Russia is defending its interests in Chechnya», and the like. But in this case too, a clear evasion is evident of assigning responsibility to concrete socio-political forces and of pointing to the actual cause of mass bloodshed.
In contemporary political literature relatively new approaches to explaining wars and military conflicts are appearing. According to one of them, which has come to be called «pluralistic» (there also exists a scarcely different «limited-pluralistic» approach), the cause of wars and military conflicts is a constantly changing aggregate of economic, social, anthropological, biological, cultural, confessional and other factors, which express the differences in the life of human communities.
These differences cannot be eliminated, and accordingly wars are inevitable. The «monistic» approach regards as the cause of wars some «exceptional factor», by which is meant the type of society, or the character of its culture, or its way of life, and so on. At the same time, both the first and the second approaches overlook one of the most important factors — the interests of the concrete socio-political forces that dominate society at the given moment and establish the political regimes corresponding to those interests.
Each of the approaches mentioned above undoubtedly has certain grounds for its application both in theory and in practice. At the same time, every social act has its principal subject, whose fundamental interests determine the further social process. Therefore wars and military conflicts are prepared and unleashed not by gods and not by «technogenic demons», not by humanity with its psychological peculiarities, and not by states as such, but by entirely definite social groups dominant in the given historical period, who pass off their own interests as general, statewide, and at times even nationwide ones.
In accordance with this proposition, by the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries Russian military political thought linked the cause of wars and military conflicts to the course of real socio-political processes and their concrete subjects. Somewhat later, developing this premise and analysing wars from the standpoint of dialectics and historical materialism, V. I. Lenin came to the conclusion that they are not a consequence of the policy of the state in general, but «…the continuation of the policy of the given, interested powers and of the various classes within them — at the given time», «…the continuation by violent means of the very policy which the ruling classes of the belligerent powers had pursued long before the war». The state thus becomes an instrument in the hands of these social groups, and war a specific means of carrying out their policy.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s works appeared in world political literature whose authors sought to prove that the chain «policy–war–policy» no longer operates with the appearance and spread of weapons of mass destruction, since the consequences of a nuclear war are unpredictable and lead to the destruction of all life on Earth. Such reasoning seems somewhat premature. First, war, irrespective of the weaponry employed, remains the continuation of the policy of particular social forces; and second, the modern tactic of waging «limited wars» with the use of «precision strikes», even nuclear ones, will continue to shape post-war policy for a long time to come.
Thus, in the dialectical interrelation between the policy of particular social forces and the specific means of its implementation — in this case various forms of military violence — the dominant element is policy. This manifests itself in the following aspects: first, in the causal dependence of armed struggle and of war on the policy of the concrete social forces dominant in society; second, in policy's determination of the social content and the socio-historical and moral meaning of a war, which, depending on its political orientation, may be progressive or reactionary, forced or aggressive, liberating or predatory, and so on; third, in policy's determination, depending on the aims and character of the war, of the fundamental bases of military strategy, in accordance with which wars may be offensive or defensive, aimed at the destruction of the enemy or merely at his suppression.
Alongside this, a reverse influence of war on policy is also possible. Policy may change its orientation depending on shifts in the military-political situation, the outcome of a battle, the position at the fronts, and so forth. In addition, in the course of a war the balance of socio-political forces within the country changes. On the one hand, the powers of state authority and of the security and law-enforcement structures are strengthened, while the role of civil society is simultaneously reduced. On the other hand, the calamities and privations of the people that are inevitable in wartime intensify their dissatisfaction with the policy of the ruling circles and invigorate the activity of the opposition. Moreover, such a turn of events may be observed not only in countries suffering defeat but also in those waging a victorious war, as has been observed repeatedly in the course of human history.
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