Lecture
The history of humanity is in effect the history of wars. In certain periods of social development, the political fate of many peoples, nations and states was decided by military means. For this reason, a relatively independent component — the military one — has always stood out within the whole body of political thought. Understanding and making sense of the contemporary problems of politics and war is possible only by turning to the global historical and scholarly experience accumulated in the sphere of military policy, and by drawing on the theoretical and methodological foundation created by the finest minds of all times and peoples. Modern military-political theories and concepts are objectively the result of the preceding development of military-political thought in all its diversity, many-sidedness and objective contradictoriness. Recognising this circumstance helps to establish continuity in the development of military-political science and makes it possible to create a methodological foundation for comprehending and practically implementing promising ideas, theories and concepts.
A methodological problem in the history of military political science is determining its periodisation. In accordance with the historical approach, the whole history of humanity is divided into: the Ancient World — from the emergence of civilisation to the fall of Rome under the blows of the barbarians in 476 AD; the Middle Ages — from the 5th to the 15th centuries; the Renaissance — the 15th–16th centuries; the Modern Era — the 17th–19th centuries; and the Contemporary Era — the 20th century. The Renaissance is often interpreted not as an independent epoch but as a late stage of the Middle Ages, or as an early preparatory stage of the Modern Era. The conventional character of such a periodisation is obvious, especially when we consider the history of the countries of the East — Egypt, India, China, Persia, the Arab world: each of them had its own antiquity, its own Middle Ages, its own Renaissance and its own Modern Era.
The epochs listed above in the West and in the East do not coincide with the emerging and developing principal intellectual processes, either in time or in content. Thus the Islamic-Iranian Renaissance, associated with the work of such encyclopaedic scholars as Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Biruni and Farabi, and the poets Rudaki and Ferdowsi, began half a millennium earlier than the European Renaissance and was accompanied by the development of original political theories. Despite this circumstance, the historical approach is the most applicable one for periodising the history of military-political thought, and it allows four main periods to be distinguished within it:
first — the military-political views of the thinkers of the Ancient World, which has two branches: the Ancient East and the Ancient West;
second — the military-political thought of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance;
third — the military-political concepts of the Modern Era;
fourth — the military political science of the Contemporary Era.
In examining the domestic history of military-political thought it appears expedient to apply a country-based approach, since Russia is probably characterised, to a greater degree than other countries, by its own specific features of historical development. This specificity is geopolitical, civilisational, and spiritual-cultural in nature.
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