Let us provisionally divide the contemporary era into two stages and consider the first, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which were marked by rapid progress in every field of science and technology, and consequently by the appearance of even more destructive means of armed struggle. Wars came to be accompanied by even greater numbers of casualties, and not only among the direct participants in battle. Losses among the civilian population rose sharply, and enormous economic and environmental damage was inflicted on the territories that lay within the combat zone. This situation gave rise to new ideas concerning the need to limit the ruinous consequences of war.

The military political science of the contemporary era studies how views of war, the army, the state and international relations changed in the period of industrialisation, imperialism, mass armies and world wars.

The principal transition of the epoch:

from the wars of sovereigns' regular armies to the mass industrial warfare of peoples, economies and ideologies.

With the appearance of new means of destruction, views and opinions of this kind gained ever wider currency among public figures and scholars. Attempts were made, through international agreements, to limit or wholly prohibit the use of types of weapons causing unacceptably severe consequences and to prevent the deaths of civilians. Thus, in 1868, on Russia's initiative, the Declaration prohibiting the use of explosive bullets was signed in St Petersburg; it remains in force to this day. In 1898, in The Hague, again on Russia's initiative, a number of declarations and conventions on the laws and customs of war were adopted, including on the prohibition of bombardment from balloons and of the use of bullets that expand in the human body. In 1907 in The Hague and in 1925 in Geneva, conventions were adopted defining the norms of warfare, which prohibit: the treacherous killing or wounding of civilians; the killing or wounding of an enemy who has laid down his arms; the killing or wounding of envoys; the bombardment of undefended towns and the destruction of cultural property and monuments; the deportation of the civilian population from occupied territories; the use of chemical weapons, and others.

Speaking of the rapid progress in military technology, V. I. Lenin noted at the beginning of the twentieth century that modern technology may be applied on such a scale, so destructively and with such energy to the mass extermination of millions of human lives that it could lead "to the undermining of the very conditions of the existence of human society". Such a time arrived as early as the middle of the twentieth century, when nuclear missile weapons were created and began to be improved and built up. Conditions arose in which it became impossible to achieve any positive political aims through the use of modern military means. Whereas in the past weapons were a functional instrument of armed struggle, nuclear weapons have become an instrument of blackmail, threats and pressure. Their use can be spoken of only as the most extreme measure, entailing complete self-destruction. US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote on this subject in 1968: "The paradox of our times is that the gigantic increase in power has undermined the possibility of applying it in politics."

The Cold War era determined the specific character of the formation and development of military-political ideas and views. Two groups of factors above all had a decisive influence on this process. The first group consists of factors connected with the emergence and struggle of two opposing social and political systems and the military-political alliances corresponding to them. The second group consists of factors arising from the revolution in military affairs. Right up to the mid-1980s, relations between the opposing systems were built on military-political and strategic rivalry, in which each side sought political and specifically military advantage. The military-political concepts of that period are well known: "massive retaliation", "realistic deterrence", "flexible response", "direct confrontation" and others.

The earliest doctrine, that of "massive retaliation", was based on the possibility of waging unlimited nuclear war. It was replaced by the concept of "flexible response", which placed the main emphasis on preparing for various types of war: global and local, large and small, nuclear and conventional. It likewise sanctioned a general nuclear war with the unrestricted use of means of mass extermination. An important element of the "flexible response" concept was the strategy of "forward defence", according to which NATO's armed forces were to be ready to wage both a major nuclear war and a "limited" war on the European continent. The doctrine of "realistic deterrence", adopted in the United States in the early 1970s, was oriented towards preparing for and waging various types of war. It emphasised the diversity of possible forms of armed conflict, among them: strategic nuclear war, nuclear war in a theatre of operations, conventional war in a theatre of operations, and conventional "limited" war.

Traditional and nuclear war differ fundamentally, and not only in their material aspect. Nuclear weapons refuted many of Clausewitz's propositions, making it impossible to achieve political aims by military means. Nevertheless, researchers in a number of countries considered war, including nuclear war, from the standpoint of so-called neo-Clausewitzianism. Representatives of orthodox Clausewitzianism (Herman Kahn, Thomas Schelling, Raymond Aron, Wilbur Schramm and others) maintained that the controlled use of weapons in battle secures both political and military superiority for states.

However, military-political concepts of a realist character also developed. Thus, for example, the concept elaborated by the American political scientist Hans Morgenthau was based on the utter futility of military confrontation and demonstrated the untenability of the views of the proponents of the Cold War.

General characteristics of the epoch

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were a period in which war became far larger in scale, more technological and more destructive.

Principal features

Difference from the modern era

From classical war to industrial war

In the modern era, war was understood as an instrument of state policy.
In the contemporary era this idea is retained, but war becomes far more complex.

Classical war
        ↓
Regular armies
        ↓
Industrial production
        ↓
Mass mobilisation
        ↓
Total war
        ↓
Political reordering of the world

What changed?

Imperialism and the struggle of the great powers

In the late nineteenth century the leading powers of Europe and the world actively competed for colonies, raw materials, trade routes and military influence.

The military-political significance of imperialism

Industry
        ↓
Demand for raw materials and markets
        ↓
Colonial expansion
        ↓
Clash of the powers' interests
        ↓
Military-political alliances
        ↓
The risk of world war

Imperialism intensified rivalry between states. War came to be seen as a possible means of redistributing territory, resources and influence.

Nationalism and mass mobilisation

Nationalism became one of the principal political forces of the epoch. States addressed their populations not merely as subjects but as citizens of a nation obliged to defend the Motherland.

The role of nationalism

In brief:

The nation
  ↓
Patriotism
  ↓
Mobilisation
  ↓
A mass army
  ↓
War of peoples

General staffs and military planning

In this period the role of professional military staffs grew. They drew up plans for mobilisation, offence, defence, supply and the movement of troops in advance.

The importance of general staffs

The state
    ↓
The general staff
    ↓
The war plan
    ↓
Mobilisation
    ↓
The front

The technological revolution in war

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries radically transformed military affairs.

New factors in war

The key point:

Technology made war more massive, faster and more destructive.

Thus, already during the period of confrontation between the blocs of opposing social and political systems, military-political concepts appeared that realistically assessed the dynamics of the changes taking place in the means and forms of armed struggle and sought to strengthen the primacy of political methods in resolving interstate contradictions.

Military-political confrontation gradually took on the character of relations based on a balance of national and regional interests. The chief result of the changes that had begun was the removal of the direct military threat in the relations between former adversaries and the gradual evolution of their relations towards strategic partnership. The military-political concepts of the Cold War era gradually lost their relevance.

The sharp reduction in the threat of unleashing a large-scale nuclear missile war as a result of the well-known political events determined the processes of the "demilitarisation" of public consciousness. These positive processes stimulated the appearance, both in the West and in the countries of Eastern Europe, of an extensive literature on the problems of war and peace, on relations between peoples and states in the modern epoch, and on the strategy, aims and means of world politics in the nuclear age.

The First World War as a turning point

The First World War of 1914-1918 was the principal event that revealed the new character of war.

It demonstrated that modern war is not only a clash of armies but a struggle of:

Armies
  +
Economies
  +
Industry
  +
Populations
  +
Ideologies
  +
Diplomatic alliances

Features of the First World War

The principal military-political ideas of the epoch

Thinkers and schools

From a war of armies to a war of societies

The principal military-political shift of the epoch can be represented as follows:

The state
    ↓
National interests
    ↓
The industrial economy
    ↓
The mass army
    ↓
Propaganda and mobilisation of society
    ↓
Total war
    ↓
A new international order

The USA and its allies
      ↓
NATO, the capitalist model, a market economy
      ↓
Global rivalry
      ↑
The USSR and its allies
      ↑
The Warsaw Pact, the socialist model, a planned economy

Nuclear weapons
      ↓
The threat of unacceptable damage
      ↓
Fear of a retaliatory strike
      ↓
Deterrence of the adversary
      ↓
Prevention of direct war between the great powers

A war of aggression
      ↓
Prohibited by international law
      ↓
Permissible self-defence
      ↓
Collective security
      ↓
The role of the UN and international organisations

Global rivalry
      ↓
Support for allies
      ↓
Local conflict
      ↓
Military, financial and intelligence assistance
      ↓
Regional and global consequences

Hybrid warfare =
the army
+ the special services
+ cyberattacks
+ propaganda
+ economic pressure
+ political interference
+ legal and diplomatic struggle

Reconnaissance
  ↓
Data
  ↓
Communications
  ↓
Precision-guided weapons
  ↓
Rapid destruction of targets
  ↓
Political effect

Land
 + Sea
 + Air
 + Space
 + Cyberspace
 + The information environment
        ↓
Multi-domain warfare

The Second World War
        ↓
Nuclear weapons
        ↓
The Cold War
        ↓
Military blocs and deterrence
        ↓
Local and proxy wars
        ↓
The collapse of the bipolar world
        ↓
New threats: terrorism, cyber, hybrid wars
        ↓
Multi-domain warfare of the twenty-first century
        ↓
The struggle for a new international order

The military political science of the contemporary era shows that by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries war had turned into a mass industrial phenomenon.

In brief:

War became the business not only of the army and the government but of the whole of society, the economy, science, industry and ideology.

The summary formula of the epoch:

The industrial state
        ↓
The mass army
        ↓
Nationalism and propaganda
        ↓
Military alliances
        ↓
Total war
        ↓
A change in the world order

The role of European and American research centres in elaborating the philosophical problems of politics, peace and war is widely known. Among them the following may be singled out: the Royal Institute of International Affairs (United Kingdom), the Bundeswehr Institute of Social Sciences, the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (India), the Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies of the Monterey Institute (USA), the Centre for Arms Control (Canada), the Center for Defense Information (USA) and so on. The names of philosophers, political scientists and specialists on these problems have become widely known, such as Johan Galtung, D. Banerjee, Kenneth Boulding, Charles Moskos, W. Schelen, B. Flickenstein, Anatol Rapoport, G. Hagen, J. Eberle and others.

At the turn of the millennium a shift became apparent in the understanding and awareness of the operative military-political realities. The development of military-political views came to be determined by qualitatively new principles of contemporary military-political relations. These include, above all: the interdependence and integrity of the states of the world community; the multiplicity of possible paths of social development and recognition of every people's freedom of socio-political choice; and the need to resolve jointly the global problems of the present day, especially the problems of the proliferation of nuclear weapons and of terrorism.

The state
   ↓
Security and interests
   ↓
Deterrence + technology + information
   ↓
Military, economic and cyber struggle
   ↓
Political outcome