The idea is “folk. Causes of war Wars and believed that
(This is a draft, it turned out to be a bit long, then I’ll re-read it, cut it, add pictures. Don’t be too harsh for now.)
I was surprised recently to discover that most people consider war to be unnatural to human nature.
Let me go a little, one might say briefly (sarcasm), through the history of mankind and its wars.
My personal, not very important opinion is that war is the natural state of man. And even quite an important tool natural selection. This statement reeks of Nazism, but don’t rush to label me - I think this was true in the past, but now, fortunately, everything has changed a lot. In addition, it is important to consider all phenomena as a whole. We can just as well say that the ability to process stone is a tool of natural selection for our ancestors. It just somehow happened in our time that there is a way of dividing into black and white, but the world is full of a variety of colors. And red is an important part of the spectrum.
Apparently (I can only guess) people were of the opinion that in the Stone Age people lived in some kind of analogue of the Garden of Eden. Unity with nature, healthy food without GMOs, lack of private property. A typical example is the Bushmen tribes, which have survived in this state to this day.
Well, let's take the Bushmen and scratch them.
One of the first books about the Bushmen!hong (exclamation mark means a clicking sound), written by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, was called The Harmless People. However, despite all the attractiveness of this people, they cannot be called harmless. When it was studied by Richard Lee (a much less biased ethnologist, with a good dose of cynicism, which is useful in science), the strife died down, but rock paintings and historical documents show how common war was among the Wu!Hong.
The Bushmen are constantly at war with their neighbors, the Bantu herders, every now and then stealing their cattle and fighting off their pursuers with poisoned arrows. The Cape Bushmen resisted the invasion of the Boers, who had modern weapons and cavalry, for 30 years until the Boers prevailed in numbers
In terms of internal strife, the Wu!Hong murder rate, as calculated by Lee, is 29.3 per 100,000 people per year, about three times that of the United States.
Discord in!Hong communities goes through three clearly distinguishable stages: argument, fight, and deadly fight. At the stage of dispute there are three stages. The exchange of arguments gives way to verbal skirmishes, followed by harsh personal insults that refer to the realm of sexual intercourse. The exchange of insults soon leads to physical aggression. At this moment or a little later, poisonous arrows are used.
A person wounded by such an arrow immediately cuts the wound and sucks out the poisoned blood and lymph: the chances of survival are 50:50. Puzzled by the use of such deadly weapons in domestic conflicts, Lee naively asked why not use ordinary arrows in skirmishes. “To this,” he writes, “one of the informants gave an eloquent answer: “We shoot poisonous arrows because we have warm hearts, and when we shoot, we really want to kill the enemy.”
A survey he conducted about the hunting abilities of the tribe's members helped Li to understand more about the Wu!Hong's methods of conflict resolution. After asking four hunters how many giraffes and antelopes each of them had killed, Lee "suddenly decided to add: 'How many people have you killed?'
“Without blinking an eye, the first hunter,!Chtoma, stuck out three fingers and announced: “I killed Debe, N!lu and N!casey.” I carefully wrote down the names and turned to Bo, the second hunter: “How many did you kill?” “I was shot in the back! It’s bad, but she survived,” Bo answered. Next was his younger brother Samxau: “I wounded old Kan!l in the leg, but he survived.” I turned to the fourth, old Kasha, a good-natured old man approaching seventy, and asked: “How many have you killed?” “I didn’t kill anyone,” Cachet replied. Not giving up, I continued asking: “Well, how many did you wound?” “No one,” he answered regretfully. “I always missed.”
This needs to be read in context, Lee often refers to this old guy as some kind of outsider's perspective. In primitive tribes the truth “old = wise” works very well. Apparently Lee is hinting that the old man is smart enough not to leave witnesses.
For those who speak English - Richard Borshay Lee, The IKung San, p. 399. The odd symbols represent different kinds of click.
Recently, an incredibly charming cartoon about the Polynesian tribes “Moana” was released - another brick in the wall of public confidence in the good nature of primitive tribes. For those who haven’t watched it, I recommend it, it’s a pleasant and kind cartoon. In general, the usual way of life of Papuans is to chew coconuts and eat bananas. Everyone is cheerful, naked and kind. Like in Soviet cartoons. Evil is impersonal, etc. etc.
In fact, Maori are one of the most feared peoples in the world. Only the North Ossetians can compete with them in terms of severity, but Ossetians can argue with anyone, so it doesn’t count.
For example, a couple of sailing ships with cannons in a Japanese port were enough to force the Japanese into an unpleasant position.
And the Maori captured such sailing ships, and they robbed the European colonies.
And how they cut each other is a separate conversation, impressive even for an anime fan with dismemberment.
But let's return to the war as such.
We are about 100,000 years old as a species. About 50,000 years ago, certain artifacts appear that indicate the emergence of a culture and self-awareness in our species similar to our modern one. These are decorations, first and foremost. Something that no other species does.
About 5,000 years ago history begins - written evidence, first of all. What is known with at least some degree of certainty.
And, of course, in these written sources the massacre of little men by men is literally continuous.
Nevertheless, for some reason, in history textbooks, and in the general consciousness, the inhabitants of the Stone Age, about twenty thousand before our time, appear in the consciousness precisely as hunter-gatherers or primitive farmers. They are busy with peaceful labor, or slaughtering a mammoth.
Modern ethnologists, with rare unanimity, agree that a good, if not the best illustration of the life of people for tens of thousands of years (I repeat, tens of thousands of years, an order of magnitude longer than the entire known history of mankind) can be the life of tribes in New Guinea. Let's take a look behind the scenes of the “tropical paradise”.
All Papuan populations in this region practice patrilocal marriage, that is, men always remain with their clan, and wives move into their husband's clan. Most, if not all, New Guinea tribes practiced polygamy, at least until the arrival of the first missionaries. For example, among the Dani, 29% of men had more than one wife, and the number of wives varied from two to nine, and 38% of men had none.
War was common in most Papuan societies until the second half of the 20th century, Stoneking's team notes, and mortality in war was high: approximately 29 percent of Dani men died in battle, according to anthropologist Karl Heider. The rate of male military losses among chimpanzees and the South African Yanomamö is almost the same, and the motive for both is presumably the same: the reproductive advantage that a successful warrior gains for himself and his clan.
Hunter-gatherer skirmishes don't seem all that bloody compared to the meat grinder of modern warfare. The battle that had started could be stopped, just as a football match is stopped due, for example, to rain or a serious injury to one of the players. Haider, like many anthropologists, initially believed that the war was not such a tragic situation for the tributes. After his first fieldwork in New Guinea in 1961, he wrote a book emphasizing the peaceful nature of the tribe. However, after numerous new trips and careful reconstruction of pedigrees and causes of death, Hyder saw how many men actually died in battle. If you have to fight weekly, even with a small number of losses, the loss over time will be gigantic.
Like the Bushmen, the Dani fight to the death. They have not learned to poison arrowheads with the venom of the leaf beetle, but instead of poison they use excrement so that the wound becomes infected. Like many other human tribes and the chimpanzees of Kasakela ("Gombe"), the Dani know that killing only a portion of their enemies gives the survivors a reason for revenge and is therefore more effective at wiping out their enemies without leaving a trace.
“On the plateau, about 30 percent of autonomous groups disappear every century after military defeat,” writes archaeologist Stephen LeBlanc about tribal feuding in New Guinea. – Tribes are slaughtered entirely or die in battle; those who survive after great bloodshed are saved by allies or distant relatives. The last of the places untouched by civilization turned out not to be a peaceful pasture, but an ongoing battlefield” (Steven A. LeBlanc, Constant Battles, p. 151.)
But still, the Papuans were studied and described relatively long ago. I want to introduce you to a relic of the ancient world that is being intensively studied right now. Meet the Yanomamo.
The Yanomamo are a group of tribes living in the jungle on the border of Brazil and Venezuela. Until recently they kept traditional image life, which was not influenced by missionaries or other newcomers from the civilized world. The Yanomamo live in villages and engage in agriculture; their main source of food is plantations of pizang, large vegetable bananas. The jungle provides a variety of delicacies, such as armadillos and the delicious mouse-sized larvae that the Yanomamö extract from under the bark of palm trees and fry.
Providing food takes only three hours a day.
I repeat, 3 hours a day.
No, you did not understand. Feel it.
Three hours, three o'clock.
Yes, this is communism. This is what all liberals on the planet strive for; this is exactly the kind of working day that the futurists will promise us.
So let's see how the Yanomamo, who are statistically identical to us in psychology and physically, brighten up their leisure time.
Yanomamo men fill their long leisure time with the use of hallucinogenic drugs prepared from various plants, and shamans spend their time in a trance, communicating with spirits and telling stories.
Well, perhaps we can add that the Yanomaman villages are in a state of almost constant hostility with each other and with other tribes. They form alliances, sealed with gifts and ritual celebrations, to strengthen themselves against the enemy. But often the festivities turn out to be traps and end in a bloodbath for the invited guests. Such constant war does not come cheap. According to anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, who has been studying the Yanomamo for several decades, about 30% of the deaths of adult men in this tribe are violent. Chagnon found that 57% of Yanomamo over 40 had two or more close relatives - children, parents, brothers - who died at the hands of others.
The Yanomamo way of life is in no way similar to that of most people in developed economies. And at the same time they have all the key public institutions, including warfare, trade, religion and a clear division of gender roles. Where did these institutions come from? Do they have biological roots or are they purely cultural phenomena? What mechanisms primarily ensure the integrity of the human community?
All these questions are answered by a hypothesis - although not confirmed by direct evidence - according to which all forms of human social behavior are in one way or another rooted in the genetic matrix inherited from our primate ancestors and adapted through evolution to the prevailing living conditions.
One of these adaptations was probably the active expansion of chimpanzees' sense of territory and aggressiveness towards members of their own species. At the same time, man has acquired a special set of completely different forms of behavior that allow him to effectively interact with his neighbors in large and complexly organized communities. In chimpanzee groups, most males are related: their shared genetic interest is the “glue” that holds the group together. People have developed forms of behavior that allow them to treat even strangers as relatives, and the entire urban culture rests on this. It is soft forms of behavior, which are as much a part of human nature as the tendency to kill and violence, that provide social cohesion through which civilization develops.
Speaking of chimpanzees.
It is believed that the branches at the ends, of which we are on one side and chimpanzees on the other, separated about a million years ago.
There is the same amount of difference between a brown bear and a polar bear. In addition to the fact that we are clearly evolving faster, it can also be assumed that similar traits in chimpanzees and humans were inherited from a distant common ancestor.
Let's compare.
Chimpanzee society apparently developed with the goal of ensuring its members maximum reproductive success. Their social structure is carefully adapted to their conditions, just as the radically different structure of bonobo society is tailored to their conditions. In human communities there is also a wide range of different structures, each of which can be seen as a solution to a particular problem. The egalitarian morals of hunter-gatherers are an adequate response to the problem of variable hunting luck. And for trade and distribution of surpluses, the hierarchical structure of a sedentary society is better suited.
The patterns of social behavior of chimpanzees and humans are very similar in the main thing: with regard to the defense of territory and the desire to radically solve the problem of hostile neighbors by completely exterminating them. But in other important respects they differ. People have developed completely different relationships between the sexes, based on the institution of the family, and not on the separation of male and female hierarchies. The family requires much more trust between men: they need to unite for important purposes, such as fighting a war, without fear of their wives being kidnapped. Moreover, in all human groups there exist institutions unknown to chimpanzees. This includes property rights, ceremonies, rituals and religions, an elaborate system of exchange and trade built on the universal principle of reciprocity.
Chimpanzee groups, like primitive human societies, are built on kinship ties, and the evolutionary meaning of this approach is quite clear. But kin groups cannot overcome certain numbers limits. People who acquired the gift of language developed ways to create large groups not bound by blood ties. One of these unifying forces is religion, which most likely appeared almost simultaneously with language.
The richness of human culture makes it difficult to discover the genetic basis of our social behavior. It is much easier to observe behavioral patterns determined by genetics in our wild relatives. Chimpanzees have been studied in the wild for about 45 years; this work was started by Jane Goodall, who worked in Gombe National Park (Tanzania), and Toshisada Nishida (Mahale Nature Reserve, Tanzania) and continued by their followers. Only in recent years, as a result of enormous work, scientists started Some general picture emerges. Today, biologists can explain many of the fundamental features of chimpanzee social structure and know how its individual parts function. The mechanics of chimpanzee society have the most direct connection with the much less obvious strategy of human sociality.
Initially, Jane Goodall believed that the chimpanzees in Gombe lived in one big and happy commune, but then, with the help of Nishida’s experiments, it turned out that everything was exactly the opposite. Chimpanzees are divided into packs of up to 120 individuals, each with its own territory and aggressively defending it.
The whole flock never gathers together. Its members move around the territory in groups of variable composition of about 20 animals: specialists in the study of primates call this a fission-fusion society. A female with cubs often eats alone or in a small group with other females with offspring. A surprising parallel with human customs: chimpanzee communities are patrilocal, that is, males remain in their territory, and females move to mates in neighboring areas. Typically, female chimpanzees at the age of puberty leave their native communities and join strangers, where the males like them more than the local “brides.”
Most hunter-gatherer societies are also patrilocal - the wife goes to live with her husband's clan. The biological reason is insurance against inbreeding, a problem that all social animals face. But in the world of primates, another solution has become almost universal - matrilocality, when females remain in place and males leave when they reach puberty. Patrilocality is an exception, and it arose, apart from humans and chimpanzees, presumably only in four species of primates
Therefore, if you don’t have an apartment, and you don’t want to give her a car so that she can move freely, then you’re an asshole, you don’t deserve to reproduce.
Another unusual feature of chimpanzee sociality - also characteristic of humans - is the tendency to organize bloody raids on neighbors. Males do not just guard the boundaries of their territory: they constantly attack foreigners, often killing them. This circumstance surprised many biologists and sociologists, who were accustomed to thinking that war is a phenomenon of exclusively human sociality.
Why do groups of chimpanzees stick to their territory and defend it? Why do they kill each other? Scientists believe they have reconstructed the fundamental logic of chimpanzee sociality, at least in general terms. Chimpanzee society, as it turns out, is shaped by the need to obtain food for themselves - mainly through collecting fruits. Trees bear fruit only from time to time. They are scattered throughout the forest and savannah and cannot provide food for a large flock. It is more convenient for female chimpanzees, who need not only to survive themselves, but also to feed their young, to hunt on their own. They feed in an area of several square kilometers and rarely leave it. The size of the plot is extremely important. According to Jennifer Williams and Anne Pusey, who studied the chimpanzees of Gombe Park, the larger the area, the shorter the female’s birth interval, i.e., the more offspring she brings.
As for the strategies of males, each of them strives for reproductive success, protecting one female. However, it seems more rational for males to unite in groups and protect the territory where many females graze. One reasonable explanation for this strategy is that under conditions of patrilocality, males tend to be related to each other, and by protecting a group of females, each male chimpanzee fights not only for his own reproductive success, but also for the success of the clan. After all, the genes of relatives are largely similar to his genes. As biologist William Hamilton, who proposed the doctrine of inclusive fitness, notes, helping a blood relative pass on genes is practically the same as passing on one’s own. Therefore, in species with blood-based sociality, genes that encourage altruism are fixed. The same logic explains the cohesion of ant and bee communities, in which workers are genetically closer to their sisters and brothers than to the offspring they might bear. Because of this, working individuals refuse the opportunity to reproduce and are happy with the fate of infertile nannies for the children of the queen queen.
In chimpanzee communities, males and females generally do not tend to spend time together, except during mating. The two sexes are each organized into their own social hierarchy. Any adult male demands respect from any female and immediately resorts to violence if the female is not ready to obey. For all our differences, both in humans and in chimpanzees, society solves the same problem: to provide males and females with a suitable way to gain a personal reproductive advantage.
At the head of the male hierarchy is the alpha male, who maintains his status through physical strength and, no less important, through alliances with other males. “The alpha lives in constant danger of male conspiracy and must continually reinforce his status through conspicuous belligerence,” writes John Mitani
A leader's test of strength, which scientists sometimes ironically call elections, can happen at any moment. Losing an election is not a pleasant prospect for chimpanzees. The loser is often simply torn off his reproductive organ and left to die. A long reign does not guarantee a peaceful retirement. The chimpanzee Ntolgi from Mahale was the alpha male for 16 years, and then the conspirators overthrew him and killed him.
What is the benefit of being an alpha male if you have to risk your power every day, and the only procedure for renouncing it is violent death? Whether chimpanzees think about it or not, evolution shows that a high position in the male hierarchy gives a male the opportunity to mate more often and leave more offspring.
This connection was not immediately discovered by scientists. During ovulation, a female chimpanzee demonstrates her readiness to conceive: a large pink bump appears on her bottom. At this time, females become very sociable and try with all their might to mate with every male in the flock, copulating on average 6–8 times a day.
With such a seemingly chaotic mating system, how do high-ranking males receive the rewards due to their status? First, they mate more often, although they usually share partners with other males. Secondly, let us remember such a phenomenon as sperm wars. If a female has a large number of partners, the advantage will be with the male who can produce more sperm and “flood” his rivals. Therefore, evolution selects for male chimpanzees with testicles that are huge relative to their body. But it was not clear whether these males benefited from their rank until modern DNA paternity testing techniques became available. A team of scientists led by Julia Constable recently released the results of a 20-year study of chimpanzees from Kasekela (Gombe). Scientists have found that in 36% of pregnancies the father is the ruling alpha male, and if you do not count his close relatives, with whom conceptions should be avoided, then all 45%
Female chimpanzees also have their own hierarchy. Not as clear as in males, because females spend most of their time in solitude, feeding in their areas, and do not, like males, be in constant interaction, but in females, place in the hierarchy significantly affects reproductive success.
Historians explain dynastic wars among people with various complex reasons: the desire for glory, the seizure of territories, the planting of religions. The intentions of chimpanzees, not obscured by such speculation, can be understood by the results of their actions. All wars are fought for reproductive advantage. Each participant tries to leave as many offspring as possible. Males strive to take a higher rank in the hierarchy in order to mate more with different females. Females search for the best feeding areas to give birth and raise as many young as possible. The ultimate goal is simple, but in a complex society, in order to achieve it, an individual has to implement very complex behavior scenarios.
Raiding is the main form of warfare practiced by primitive human societies. The Yanomamo also carefully plan their raids and try to minimize the risk. “The purpose of a raid is to kill one or more enemies and escape unnoticed,” writes Napoleon Chagnon (Steven A. LeBlanc, Constant Battles, p. 151.)
War is an activity that separates chimpanzees and humans from all other living creatures on earth. “Very few species live in patrilineal, male-bonded societies, where females traditionally go off to find a mate in another clan to avoid inbreeding,” write Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson. “And only two of these species ensure patrilineality through male-initiated constant territorial aggression, including bloody raids on neighbors to surprise and kill. Of the 4,000 species of mammals, of the 10 million or more other species of animals, only chimpanzees and humans share this behavioral combination.”
Chimpanzee-human war, at least in communities like the Yanomamö, is driven by the same key motivation. Chimpanzees protect female feeding areas for their own reproductive advantage.
The Yanomamo are guided by the same program. The capture of women is rarely their main purpose in raiding, but is always assumed as part of military success. The captured woman is raped by all the participants in the raid, then by all the men in the village, after which she is given to one of them as a wife.
But the real reproductive benefit of participating in a raid is the status that accrues to anyone who kills an enemy. To prevent the soul of the murdered from taking revenge, the warrior who killed the person must undergo ritual purification - the unokaimou ritual. Men who undergo this ritual receive the title of unokai, and the whole village knows about it. Unokai, Napoleon Chagnon found, had on average 2.5 times as many wives as non-killing men and more than three times as many children.
Chagnon's many years of work are unusual in their duration. But for all the painstaking work of his work, the scientific community was in no hurry to accept the researcher’s conclusions, resisting the idea that violence could be reproductively justified. One critic, Marvin Harris, suggested that the Yanomamo hostility was caused by a protein deficiency. Chagnon describes how the Yanomamo themselves perceived this idea. "I explained to them Harris' views: 'He says you fight for game and meat, and he doesn't believe the war is for women.' They laughed and rejected Harris's theory in these words: "Yahi yamako buhii makuwi, suwa kaba yamako buhii barowo!" (“We, of course, love meat, but we love women much more!”)”
By the way, a little about feminism. The size proportions of males to females in chimpanzees are much higher than in humans. Anthropologists believe that over the past 10-5 thousand years, women have increased in height. On average, an ancient man was 15-25% larger than a woman, now it is 10-15%. So feminism seems to be evolutionarily justified. Well, that's just for the peppercorn.
If you have the idea that a cultured and highly developed person, thanks to culture and morality, has long risen above all this, then I will support you in the best traditions of Internet disputes. To quote from a recognized authority:
A man acquires property for himself and leaves it to his children; Thus, within the same nation, the children of rich people receive advantages over the children of poor people, regardless of their physical or mental superiority. But the inheritance of property in itself is far from being an evil, for without the accumulation of capital the crafts could not flourish, and yet the civilized races, primarily thanks to them, gained and continue to gain the upper hand over others, taking the place of the lower races. Moderate accumulation of wealth does not interfere with the selection process. When a poor man begins to prosper, his children take up trade or trade, in which competition flourishes, and the most capable in body and spirit always succeeds more than others.
Charles Darwin. Human origins and sexual selection
Of course, culture, morality, reason - greatly changed the situation in the world.
Now, dear reader, get up and go to the mirror. Look into the eyes of your reflection. Behind this look of well-fed and calm eyes, maybe even slightly blind and hidden by glasses, are hidden all those who passed on their genes to you. Your ancestors. And behind a hundred generations who knew about Christian morality, and behind a thousand generations who accepted culture as a series of social conventions necessary for survival, tens of thousands of generations of your ancestors of both sexes lurk in the darkness. And they are all successful and successful killers.
Don't let them down.
War is a personal hostility between politicians - states, tribes, groups, etc., occurring in the form of armed confrontation, military (combat) actions between their armed forces.
War has one goal: imposing one's will. One or a group of people forces another person, group to renounce their freedom, ideology, property rights, give up resources: territory, water area, etc.
According to Clausewitz’s formulation, “war is the continuation of politics by other, violent means,” that is, war occurs when politicians, group leaders, etc. cannot agree. Total war is armed violence taken to extreme limits, that is, the destruction of ((all)) people. The main weapon in war is the army.
Armed conflicts between the strong and the weak are called pacifications, military expeditions, or the exploration of new territories; with small states - interventions or reprisals; with internal groups - uprisings, rebellions or internal conflicts (civil war).
The absence of war is called peace.
Classification of wars
According to their scale, wars are divided into global and local (conflicts).
The division of wars into “external warfare” and “internal warfare” is also important.
Air war- this is a war that is waged in the air with the help of ((any)) aircraft.
Naval warfare is a war in which any floating means are used.
A local war is a small war, a so-called “limited war,” among small states or a large and small state, wars that are often short in time, so that it would be easier to understand, they fought and went home.
Nuclear war - well, this is understandable to many, a war in which nuclear weapons are used: missiles, portable bombs, contamination of the territory with nuclear waste, and so on.
Colonial war - the goal of this war is to conquer or keep a colony in one’s hands, that is, a people, a state.
Small war - the goal of this war is to break the enemy to provide an advantage to the main troops for the decisive battle.
Information war– influencing the population (military too) of the enemy through the dissemination of (all kinds of) disinformation, the goal is to influence the will of the enemy.
Network-centric warfare - the essence of this war is to increase the combat capabilities ((promising)) of formations in modern wars and armed conflicts, by achieving ((information superiority)), uniting combatants into a single network.
Psychologists, for example E. Durban and John Bowlby, argue that aggression is inherent in humans by nature. According to this theory, the state creates and maintains a certain order in local society and at the same time creates the basis for aggression in the form of war. If war is an integral part of human nature, as many psychological theories assume, then it will never be completely eradicated.
Sigmund Freud considered aggressiveness to be one of the basic instincts that determine the psychological “springs”, direction and meaning of human existence, and based on this position, S. Freud even refused to participate in the peace movement, since he considered wars an inevitable consequence of periodic outbreaks of human aggressiveness.
Some militarists, such as Franz Alexander, argue that the state of the world is an illusion.
Periods that are commonly called “peaceful” are actually periods of preparation for a future war or a situation where militant instincts are suppressed by a stronger state.
These theories are supposedly based on the will of the overwhelming majority of the population. However, they do not take into account the fact that only a small number of wars in history were truly the result of the will of the people. More often, people are forcibly drawn into war by their rulers. One of the theories that puts political and military leaders at the forefront was developed by Maurice Walsh. He argued that the vast majority of the population is neutral towards war, and that wars only happen when leaders with a psychologically abnormal attitude towards human life come to power. Wars are started by rulers who deliberately seek to fight—such as Napoleon, Hitler, and Alexander the Great. Such people become heads of state in times of crisis, when the population is looking for a strong-willed leader who, they think, can solve their problems.
Thus, Pope Urban II in 1095, on the eve of the First Crusade, wrote: “The land that you have inherited is surrounded on all sides by sea and mountains, and it is too small for you; it barely provides food for the people. That is why you kill and torture each other, wage wars, that is why so many of you die in civil strife. Quiet your hatred, let the hostility end. Take the road to the Holy Sepulcher; reclaim this land from the wicked race and take it for yourselves.”
Ayn Rand argued that if a person wants to resist war, then he must first oppose the state-controlled economy. She believed that there would be no peace on earth as long as people adhere to herd instincts and sacrifice individuals for the sake of the collective and its mythical “good.”
What has been condemned in situations of mass murder from ancient times to today
Humanity has been thinking about the rules of warfare since people began to fight. This was determined, among other things, by the nature of the war, which sooner or later ends in peace, and with the former enemy it is still necessary to somehow live and negotiate.
Ancient Greece
Ethical Issues: Archers, Slavery, Marauders
Archer. Vase painter Epictetus. Greece,520-500 BC e. Wikimedia Commons
Since ancient times, participants in battles have had opinions about who shows valor in them and who uses unworthy techniques. Thus, since the time of the Iliad, the attitude towards the bow as an unworthy weapon has been recorded. Worthy Achaean and Trojan heroes confront each other in single battles with spears or swords. Paris is armed with a bow, whose treacherous act served as the beginning of the war. Paris convinced Helen the Beautiful to leave the house of her husband Menelaus and sailed with her at night to Asia, taking many treasures from the palace of Menelaus.: throughout the entire epic his cowardice and effeminacy are emphasized. A typical battle with his participation in Chapter XI of the Iliad is described as follows: Paris, hiding behind a gravestone, lies in wait for Diomedes, one of the most powerful Achaean warriors, and, taking advantage of the fact that he is removing the armor from the killed Trojan, wounds him in the heel with an arrow. In response, the wounded Diomedes calls him a “vile archer.” The fact that it was Paris who would later strike the invincible Achilles with an arrow also emphasizes the special misfortune of the fate of this hero, who was not defeated in the duel, but fell from a dishonorable blow.
In their texts, the Greeks talked about justice in a more practical sense. In particular, Plato in the Republic pointed out the inadmissibility of converting captured Hellenes into slaves and condemned looting on the battlefield. His student Aristotle, in Politics, reflects on the “justice” of waging war against those who are “by nature” destined for slavery. This reasoning subsequently formed the basis of many theories and justifications for many actions, including wars, which Western civilization would now prefer to forget about.
Ancient Rome
Ethical issues: respect for the enemy, the ceremony of war, ideas about cruelty
The philosopher and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero, in his treatise “On Duties,” spoke of war as a last resort, since people, unlike animals, can resolve disputes through negotiations. According to Cicero, “wars must be started with the goal of living in peace without committing illegalities; but after victory it is necessary to preserve the lives of those who during the war were neither cruel nor ferocious. ), and believed that obligations given to the enemy must be respected just like any others.
Fall of Carthage. Engraving by Georg Penz. 1539 Los Angeles County Museum of Art Perhaps it was the constant waging of war, coupled with the general tendency of Roman social thought to describe life using strict legal categories, that led the Romans to pay so much attention to the rules of war and peace. These issues themselves, according to Roman ideas, were under the jurisdiction of the goddess Dius Fidius, who was responsible for maintaining justice. It was customary to condemn excessive cruelty and incontinence in the conduct of wars - or, in any case, to further justify them. Plutarch remarked on this matter: “Good people also have a certain right of war, and one should not extend the thirst for victorious laurels to the point of losing benefit as a result of vile and wicked deeds.” As for what act was considered vile and wicked, there could be certain differences. In particular, Cicero, like, it seems, all Roman authors, considered the destruction of Carthage fair and justified (believing the cruelty once shown by Hannibal In 146 BC. e. Carthage (a Phoenician state in northern Africa with its capital in the city of the same name) was sacked and destroyed by the Romans; Almost the entire population was massacred or taken into slavery, and the remains of the city were burned and razed to the ground. This was preceded by long wars between the Carthaginians and the Romans. One of the commanders of Carthage, Hannibal, was famous for his cruelty towards his enemies. According to Titus Livy, “his cruelty reached the point of inhumanity<...>. He knew neither truth nor virtue, did not fear the gods, did not keep oaths, did not respect shrines.”, a fair reason for retribution), but expressed regret about the destruction of Corinth by the Romans In 146 BC. e. the ancient Greek city of Corinth was destroyed and burned by the Romans, and the inhabitants were killed or sold into slavery, after which Greece became a Roman province., considering this step a mistake.
“Enemies are those who have publicly declared war on us or to whom we have publicly declared war. The rest are robbers and robbers."
According to the classic commentator on Roman law from the 2nd century AD, the jurist Sextus Pomponius, “enemies are those whom we or whom we have publicly declared war on. The rest are robbers and robbers." In Rome, important legal consequences followed from this definition. In particular, citizens of Rome captured during a war declared by the Roman people were considered to have temporarily lost their freedom and remained in this status until peace was concluded, while Romans who were taken hostage by pirates (as happened once with Julius Caesar) lost their personal freedom and were not considered to have suffered any damage to their honor.
Regarding the attitude towards weapons, in the Roman army, units of archers and sling throwers were considered auxiliary troops and received less pay than legionnaires. In this sense, the Roman military machine remained disdainful of weapons that could kill at a distance.
The Roman Empire. Spread of Christianity
Ethical issues: abstinence from violence, righting evil, God's judgment
The question of how and when it is permissible to wage war received a new meaning after Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. The natural pacifism and peacefulness of the followers of the persecuted religion now had to be combined with the need to serve the guiding ideology of the empire. At the same time, the ethical message of Christianity, which preaches abstinence from violence, made this task quite non-trivial. St. Augustine presented a comprehensive view of the question of the Christian world’s attitude to war. In his reasoning These considerations are contained in the treatise “On the City of God,” in interpretations of the Septateuch and in some other works. it is said that war can be justified for a Christian and a Christian state, but it should only be a means of resisting evil and restoring order and tranquility in the earthly city. In addition, according to St. Augustine, war, like any Christian action, must be guided by the right intentions. Such an intention may be the desire to stop evil and restore justice. Moreover, even when restoring justice and rewarding the guilty, one should be guided not by revenge, but by the desire to correct the one who committed the offense.
Vision of Saint Augustine. Painting by Vittore Carpaccio. 1502 Wikimedia Commons The reasoning of the Father of the Church was largely based on the already existing Roman tradition of considering issues of justice in warfare and only supplemented it with a Christian interpretation of actions, where not only actions, but also correct intentions are important. They formed the basis of the prevailing approaches to issues of war and peace in Western Europe. In any case, if we talk specifically about understanding the problems of war, and not about the actual methods of waging it, then it is difficult to say how much Augustine’s considerations influenced military practice: the circle of educated people who could familiarize themselves with them was too narrow and was largely limited to monastic book centers.
The battles had to be as visual as possible, for which the battle sites were established in advance - usually on the banks of rivers
At this time, the attitude towards war was largely determined by the traditions of the German barbarian tribes, which gradually seized power over the territory of Western Europe and established their kingdoms there. They looked at war as a form of God's judgment: the result of the battle would indicate who was right and who was wrong in the disputes that arose. This determined many features of warfare - in particular, battles had to be as visual as possible. The battle sites were established in advance - usually on the banks of rivers (although this was not always explained by tactical necessity). At a safe distance, surrounding people and “sympathizers” of one side or the other not participating in the battle could observe what was happening in order to witness how “justice” was administered. This view of war as a way of determining the right side imposed certain restrictions on the methods of conducting military operations, restraining them from methods that would be considered “dishonorable.” In a subconscious form, these views continue to remain influential today.
European Middle Ages
Ethical issues: just war, secular nature of war, limiting violence against the population, looting, oath, truce, firearms
Siege of Orleans. Miniature from the manuscript “Vigils on the Death of King Charles VII.” Late 15th century Bibliothèque nationale de France By the 14th century, with the development of books, the emergence of university centers and the general complication of humanitarian life in Western Europe, the concept of bellum justum - a just war - was finally formulated. According to these ideas, also based on the writings of Gratian "Decree of Gratian", 12th century., Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica, 13th century. and the teaching of St. Augustine, war must have a just cause (that is, to pursue the goal of protection from evil, restoration of justice or compensation for damage caused, etc.), war must be preceded by negotiations and attempts to achieve what is required by peaceful means. Only the bearer of sovereign power, that is, the sovereign, has the right to declare war (which, by the way, limited the rights of spiritual authorities to declare war - even in the case of the Crusades, the popes could only announce a call for a campaign, which had to be supported by European monarchs). In addition, the war must have clear and achievable goals. Discussions of medieval scholastics about war, among other things, led to the victory of the opinion that wars cannot be waged to convert peoples to the Christian faith, since violence is not a motivating reason for a change of worldview.
The clergy in Western Europe became one of the initiators of introducing direct restrictions on the use of violence during armed conflicts. This was partly explained by the fact that the Catholic Church turned out to be the only structure operating throughout the entire Western world, divided by feudal strife, and therefore could serve as a natural balancer of interests. The "God's Peace Movement", which began at the end of the 10th century on the initiative of the French bishops, demanded that all those participating in various feudal conflicts refrain from robbing peasants and church property and violence against clergy. The knights were required to swear an oath to fulfill these promises (this was partially achieved through coercion on the part of those secular rulers who were interested in limiting conflicts). At the same time, the “Tristic of God” was also introduced, ordering the conflicting parties to refrain from war on certain days. In fact, it was in the documents of the church’s “God’s peace movement” that the concept was first formulated that non-combatants, that is, persons not directly involved in war, should not be victims of violence, and their property should also be protected. Later, these ideas were included in Western European codes of chivalry, which ordered the “ideal” warrior to protect the lives and property of civilians.
Robin Hood. 16th century engraving National Library of Scotland The attitude towards onions in the Middle Ages continued to be disdainful. It was not considered a decent weapon for a knight (who, however, was allowed to use a bow when hunting wild animals). The archery units in medieval armies were recruited from commoners, and even archers who became legendary, such as Robin Hood or William Tell, were treated accordingly. For all their prowess, they are, first of all, commoners, and, in the case of Robin Hood, they are engaged in robbery.
The attitude towards archers such as Robin Hood was disdainful: for all their prowess, they were, first of all, commoners, and, moreover, engaged in robbery
An even more negative attitude has formed towards the crossbow. A weapon that could easily pierce a knight's armor from a long distance was considered practically an "invention of the devil" This assessment of the crossbow is given in the works of the Byzantine princess and historian Anna Komnena.. In the West, in 1139, the bow and crossbow became the reason for a special resolution of the Second Lateran Council of the Catholic Church. These weapons, as too destructive and dishonest, were forbidden to be used in wars between Christians. In fact, this is the first example when they tried to limit the use of any weapons at the level of an international agreement.
A similar attitude remained for a long time towards firearms - starting from the 14th century, when gunpowder began to be increasingly used in military operations in Europe and Asia. Shooting from heavy and inconvenient devices that spewed smoke and hit the enemy at a distance was also not considered a worthy way of fighting. In the East, the first primitive shooting devices were often assigned to slaves. In Russia, the Streltsy army was also recruited from commoners and served for pay. In the early days of the use of firearms, those who used them could be treated with extreme cruelty. It is known that the 15th-century Italian condottiere Gianpaolo Vitelli cut off the hands of captured arquebusiers - that is, he treated them as violating the laws of war. Over time, it became impossible to fight without firearms and they ceased to be subject to moral evaluation.
The Age of Reformation. XVI - early XVII centuries
Ethical issues: non-involvement of civilians, professionalization of the army
The era of the Reformation and religious wars led to a deep crisis of knightly ideas about methods of warfare. As the people of Europe began to belong to different religious formations, many of the restraining moral restrictions were removed. The wars between Catholics and Protestants in the 16th-17th centuries and their apotheosis, the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648, became an example of monstrous and barely restrained cruelty on both sides.
Tree of the Hanged. Etching by Jacques Callot from the series “Great Disasters of War.” 1622-1623 Art Gallery of New South Wales The nightmare of sectarian warfare led to a number of shifts in the philosophical and political thought of Europe, and in particular to the emergence of international law as it currently exists - including, among other things, giving sovereign rulers full power over their territory. After this, the belonging of European countries and their rulers to different Christian denominations ceased to be considered a reason to wage war.
It was the robberies of local residents carried out during the invasion of Prussia by the Russian army that largely determined the attitude towards it in Europe
American historian Roland Baynton draws attention to the fact that the great literature of the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries, including the works of Shakespeare, practically does not contain the theme of pity for the fate of civilians in war. This theme appears in European literature along with the Enlightenment: with Voltaire's Candide, the works of Swift and other examples of pacifist thought. Moreover, it was the 18th century that in many ways became a model of “restrained” wars, in which civilians were minimally affected. This was partly facilitated by the very structure of the armed forces and the reasons that prompted European states to fight each other. After the establishment of the Westphalian system of international relations Recognition as one of the key “principles of national state sovereignty”, when each state has full power on its territory. De-ideologization is characteristic, that is, the elimination of the confessional factor as one of the main factors of politics. the war in Europe turned into a dispute between the rulers of the absolutist powers This definition does not suit England and Holland, who participated in these wars of the 18th century. for the balance of forces and interests, often (as in the case of the War of the Spanish Succession) having complex dynastic relations as a reason. The armies that fought in these wars were professional, replenished by conscription or money. The ideal soldier of that time, partly drawn from the mechanistic views of the age of rationalism, was a man-function, clearly and without hesitation carrying out the orders of the commander and without delay following orders for the restructuring of battle formations.
The harsh drill required to turn a soldier into a clockwork machine also contributed to the fact that armies were amazingly disciplined and showed a minimum of violence towards civilians. By the way, it was the robberies of local residents carried out during the invasion of Prussia by the Russian army during the Seven Years' War that became one of the important factors in the emergence of the attitude towards it in Europe as a wild and hostile force - this behavior greatly deviated from generally accepted norms (especially strictly observed by Frederick the Great), and therefore received wide publicity. According to one of the fundamental works on international law, the treatise “Law of Peoples” by the Swiss jurist Emmerich de Vattel, the army of a particular monarch is a separate legal entity authorized to wage war. All rights and obligations arising from this are associated with affiliation with this corporation. Those who did not join the army should not be involved in the conflict.
Golden 18th century
Ethical Issues: Honor
The way of warfare in the 18th century, when disciplined armies carried out complex maneuvers (often actually more important than the battles themselves), being only an instrument in the disputes of their monarchs, contributed to the fact that the war was accompanied by numerous different kinds of knightly conventions. The officers of the enemy troops could sometimes salute the enemy's illustrious commanders-in-chief and politely decide whose army would fire the first volley. Viewing war as a “sport of kings” helped reduce bitterness. Captured officers could be left with personal freedom if they gave their word of honor not to try to escape. The prisoner was released only after the end of hostilities and upon payment of a ransom For quite a long time, the payment of this ransom by an officer was considered a professional risk and was carried out at the expense of the prisoner’s personal funds; Only from the second half of the 18th century did governments begin to take on this responsibility..
Captured officers could be left with personal freedom if they gave their word of honor not to try to escape
At the same time, despite the correct attitude towards civilians, nothing prevented, according to the ancient law, from imposing indemnities on occupied cities, and sometimes completely plundering a captured enemy camp or fortress. The combination of customs and direct possibilities for waging war, thus, did not exclude cruelties and injustices (which is almost inevitable in such a matter as war). Nevertheless, the general spirit of the times and the professionalization of the army still introduced military violence within certain limits.
The beginning of the era of scientific progress. "Great 19th century"
Ethical issues: people's war, struggle of ideologies, persecution of enemies, guerrillas, hero worship, struggle for existence, increasing lethality, the underside of war, humane treatment of the wounded, restrictions on certain types of weapons, economic factors of warfare, the beauty of war
The brutal spirit of war was once again unleashed thanks to scientific progress and the socio-political processes that took place during the “great 19th century,” as the period between the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789 and the start of the First World War in 1914 is sometimes called.
Battle of Fleurus June 26, 1794. Painting by Jean Baptiste Moses. France, first half of the 19th century Wikimedia Commons One of the important consequences of the Great French Revolution was the transformation of war into a matter for the entire nation. The 1792 call for citizens to take up arms, which launched the revolutionary wars by defeating the first anti-French coalition, was the first example of war as a national effort. The revolution radically changed the approach to war - it was no longer the work of the monarch, the French people became the sovereign, who, in accordance with revolutionary logic, made the decision on war. At the same time, the war received ideological content. It could and should have been waged to spread new ideals. Accordingly, anyone who did not accept the new ideals in the territories occupied by the French could be considered an enemy (theoretically, not of the French, but of their own people, to whom the French were liberating), and therefore the harsh persecution of such enemies was considered justified and legitimate.
The revolution radically changed the approach to war - it was no longer the business of the monarch. The people, in accordance with revolutionary logic, decided on war
Although the revolutionary impulse of 1792 was gradually introduced into a certain framework, the ideological content of the wars remained in the era of Napoleon, who considered himself the right to reorganize the destinies of Europe.
The emergence of the masses into the arena of history, and therefore into the arena of wars, the emergence of the idea that wars are waged not by sovereigns, but by countries or nations, also gradually changed the criteria of what was permissible and unacceptable during the war. Although many customs of war - including the humane treatment of prisoners and civilians - during the Napoleonic Wars could be preserved in clashes between regular armies, when the war took on a truly popular character, any restrictions ceased to apply: actions of the guerrillas in Spain or Peasant partisan detachments in Russia were distinguished by monstrous cruelty, and the French did not miss the opportunity to repay in kind. The established rules, which assumed that only armies had the right to wage war, placed the partisans outside any military laws.
The main work of the 19th century devoted to military issues, the essay “On War” by Carl von Clausewitz, also became a sign of the crisis of various ethical standards associated with war. A brilliant military theorist and a graduate of the Prussian army, the keeper of the traditions of Frederick the Great, Clausewitz had a hard time with the defeat of Prussia by Napoleon in 1806, the reason for which he considered, among other things, the ossification of the Prussian military machine. Clausewitz first proposed approaching war based on its internal nature, that is, considering it an instrument of violence limited only by objective conditions and the opposing force. As Clausewitz put it, “war is an extremely dangerous business in which the worst mistakes come from kindness.”
“War is an extremely dangerous business in which the worst mistakes come from kindness.”
The gradual growth in popularity of ideas about war as an activity that does not tolerate external restraint, and about the inapplicability of everyday ethics to war, was influenced by many factors. One of them was romanticism, which prioritized the cult of heroes. For some, the introduction into scientific circulation of Darwin’s concept of the “struggle for existence” also turned out to be a shock to the foundations of the worldview and a reason to consider the relationships of countries and peoples from the point of view of an endless fight for the survival of the fittest. Superimposed on these ideas was the general crisis of religious morality and those concepts of the unacceptable that were defined by Christian teaching.
Nevertheless, faith in progress, which determined the worldview of the 19th century, also presupposed faith in the ultimate triumph of humanity, the opportunity for humanity to agree on general rules life and the disappearance of wars in the future. When, gradually, especially from the second half of the 19th century, progress began to be expressed, in particular, in the invention of more and more deadly types of weapons, general anxiety about what was happening forced us to look for ways to avert the specter of total war - that is, military action unrestrained by any rules and regulations. considering any objects and all categories of population on enemy territory as legitimate targets if it helps to achieve victory.
Faith in progress also presupposed faith in the triumph of humanity, the opportunity for humanity to come to an agreement and the disappearance of wars in the future
Harvest of Death: Dead Federal Soldiers on the Battlefield of Gettysburg. Photo by Timothy O'Sullivan. USA, 1863 Library of Congress Experience from the first major armed conflicts that occurred in the post-Napoleonic era, such as the American Civil War, the struggle for the unification of Italy and Crimean War, showed that the use of new, much more lethal weapons - rifled rifles loaded from the breech On the opposite side of the barrel from the muzzle., improved artillery and other gifts of technological progress make war much more deadly. In addition, a different information age had arrived: the wire telegraph allowed military journalists to deliver news from theaters of war with previously unimaginable speed. Their reports often vividly described the underside of the war, with the suffering of the wounded and the unenviable fate of prisoners, which had not previously been the reality of daily news.
In 1864, the First Geneva Convention was developed and signed: states that signed it undertake to exclude military hospitals from the number of military targets, to ensure humane treatment of the wounded and prisoners of war of the opposing side and the protection of civilians providing assistance to the wounded. At the same time, the Red Cross Society was created, and the red cross was recognized as the main sign of institutions and persons providing assistance to the wounded (later, with the annexation of Turkey, the red crescent was recognized as the same sign). The signing of the convention became a new mechanism for regulating issues of war and behavior in war. In conditions when the authority and influence of the former extra-state structures regulating matters of morality, such as the church, were no longer strong enough, and massive conscript armies and the use of unprecedented weapons limited the power of many unspoken internal corporate codes that were in force in the armies of previous centuries, the emergence of new documents regulating war.
At the end of the 19th century, the mutual militarization of the European powers, which began their movement towards the catastrophe of the First World War, became an obvious fact, and one of the idealistic attempts to stop this process was the convening of the International Peace Conference in The Hague in 1899. It was initiated by Russian Emperor Nicholas II, apparently, was truly concerned about the increasingly obvious movement of Europe and the world towards a new and terrible war. Although the conferences of 1899 and 1907 did not lead to actual disarmament decisions, they resulted, among other things, in the signing of the two Hague Conventions. These documents regulated in detail the laws and customs of war. They defined the rule of mandatory preliminary notification of the outbreak of war, provided for obligations of humane treatment of prisoners of war and the protection of the rights of civilians in occupied territories. In addition, the Hague Conventions attempted to regulate the application various types weapons - in particular, the signatories of the first convention pledged to refrain from throwing projectiles from aircraft for 5 years, the use of projectiles with asphyxiating substances in war was prohibited Except in cases where the asphyxiating properties were a side effect of conventional explosives., modified hollow point bullets (known as "dum-dum" bullets) were also banned due to their crippling effects.
International Peace Conference in The Hague in 1899 Imperial War Museums Most of the prohibitions of the Hague Conventions (except for the ban on the use of “dum-dum” bullets) were never put into practice and were repeatedly violated. Nevertheless, the signed documents became some kind of starting point - they established a scale by which, at least theoretically, it was possible to determine the actions of the armed forces in various armed conflicts. It is in this sense that they remained relevant in both the First and Second World Wars. The subsequent expansion and addition of these documents following the wars, which ultimately resulted in the signing of the Geneva Convention of 1949, which fundamentally condemned aggression, changed little in the very principle of regulating the conduct of wars.
A rather restrained attitude in European armies remained for a long time towards the machine gun - it was adopted into service slowly and reluctantly. This was influenced by a variety of reasons - in particular, the uncertainty of military theorists that the waste of ammunition produced by a machine-gun burst would be economically justified. Nevertheless, after the first experiments with machine guns it was also indicated that “ mechanical work“The arrow changes the whole idea of military craft and is unlikely, as it seemed for some reason, to be to the liking of a soldier. This was especially true for officers and generals, who were much more comfortable “preparing for previous wars,” that is, relying on the valor of proven weapons. Therefore, everything that did not fit into the logic of the battles of previous years could be rejected as unimportant. As one of the British Army manuals of the early 20th century put it rather colorfully, “it must be accepted as a principle that the rifle, however effective, cannot replace the effect produced by the speed of the horse, the magnetism of the mounted charge and the horror of cold steel.” . As can be seen, the drafters of the manual also took into account not only rational considerations, but also the “beauty” of traditionally accepted ways of fighting.
World War I
Ethical issues: chemical weapons, trench warfare
Gas affected. Painting by John Singer Sargent. England, 1919 Imperial War Museums The issue of the use of toxic substances until the beginning of the 20th century was considered from the point of view of some isolated actions The blade, smeared with poison, is the weapon of a spy and assassin, that is, an occupation that is obviously despised in traditional ideas about war. In the instructions of medieval Islamic jurists on the conduct of jihad, among the restrictions that warriors should impose on themselves, the prohibition of poisoned weapons was mentioned, since they cause unnecessary harm and suffering to people. Poisoning water sources was considered the same vile and unacceptable act in wars.. The poison was more of a “piece” product. Advances in chemistry and the industrial revolution dramatically changed this state of affairs. The chemical industry could produce chlorine and other poisonous gases on a sufficient scale to support military operations. The very idea of using gas in war was explained by the dead end of trench warfare, which the First World War had turned into by 1915. World War on the Western Front - the opposing sides were looking for ways to make at least a small gap in the continuous line of defense from the North Sea to the Swiss border. When the Germans first used a chlorine attack near the Belgian city of Ypres in April 1915, it caused a real shock and added particularly convincing arguments to the Entente propaganda, which portrayed the German army as monsters of the human race.
The very principle of the action of chemical weapons, when people were literally poisoned like rats, evoked the idea of something fundamentally unacceptable
At the same time, as statistics show, chemical weapons, which all the main warring parties soon began to use en masse, were not the deadliest weapons of the First World War. Its victims were only three percent of total number those killed on the war fronts. Nevertheless, the very principle of its operation, when people were literally poisoned like rats, evoked the idea of something fundamentally unacceptable.
After World War I, the commander of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe, General John Pershing, expressed his position on the use of poison gases as follows:
“Chemical weapons must be banned by all nations as incompatible with civilization. This is a cruel, dishonest and inappropriate use of science. It poses the gravest danger to civilians and demoralizes the best instincts of mankind.”
In 1925, with the signing of the Geneva Protocol, the use of chemical weapons was completely prohibited. This is probably the first time in the history of mankind that, apart from some excesses, a ban on the use of an entire class of weapons was successful and lasted for such a long time. And the consideration of the immorality of these weapons, their incompatibility with basic ideas about how people can wage war, plays an important role here.
The front, which stood still for years, gave rise to the idea that there would be no end to the war
The World War of 1914-1918 led to the collapse of the European world that we know from 19th century. Along with it, the attitude towards war in Western culture also radically changed. This was partly due to the very realities of trench warfare - the main and terrible feature of the First World War, especially on the Western Front. The front, which had stood still for years, gave rise to the idea that there would be no end to the war. The assessment of the war was also influenced by the very characteristics of trench life: in fact, in the absence of active hostilities, soldiers spent their days in deep crevices stretching across half the continent to the Swiss border. Unless they were at an observation post or firing position, they saw almost nothing except a strip of sky above them. Only at night could individual groups move out of the trenches to repair damaged structures. At the same time, the enemy, who was always in the same trenches on the other side of the no-man's land, was also out of sight As one of the war participants, Charles Carrington, recalled, “you could spend several weeks in the trenches and never see the enemy.” Only sometimes on the other side did particularly attentive observers notice “a silhouette flashing in the distance” or “through the rifle embrasure - a head and shoulders jumping across a gap in the enemy parapet.”.
At the same time, the immobility of the front led to another feature: a few kilometers from the front, the rear already began, where there was little reminiscent of the war. This sharp contrast between a space where people spend months and years living underground and periodically kill each other en masse, and another, former world that begins at arm's length, was too cruel and convincing a model of the meaninglessness and inhumanity of any war, which influenced the mood of generations who had similar trench experience. Hopeless attempts to break through the defense lines on both sides, which led to enormous losses and often did not bring results, the struggle for miserable pieces of land, apparently, especially influenced the mood of all those who went through this war. Perhaps it was then that the attitude towards generals became especially widespread “The best sight I saw at the Somme was two brigadier generals lying dead in the same shell hole,” one British trench officer once remarked. and in general to the rear authorities as soulless bloodsuckers, a special feeling of front-line brotherhood, the perception of war as a collective traumatic experience - that is, everything that has become the accepted pacifist canon in Western culture.
The Second World War
Ethical issues: condemnation of war-waging regimes and specific crimes against humanity, nuclear weapons, Cold War
Defendants at the Nuremberg Trials, 1945-1946 First row, from left to right: Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel; second row, from left to right: Karl Doenitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel. National Archives The Second World War left the world as one of the results of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials - that is, precedents with the condemnation of the political regimes of Germany and Japan that started the war, as well as their active functionaries for specific crimes committed during the war. Although it is hardly possible to avoid disputes about how ideal the procedure of the trial was, to what extent it was a “court of the victors” and, moreover, whether all the crimes of the Second World War were considered and condemned at them - nevertheless, it turned out to be in world history The experience is inscribed when brutal crimes committed in war become the subject of international judicial investigation. One can continue a long debate about how this mechanism actually works, how selective and effective it is. But the idea that brutality in war can be a crime against humanity, and that its perpetrators can and should be tried, now seems to be a generally shared principle (at least in theory).
Another “gift” of World War II was nuclear weapons. The very fact that humanity now possesses the technological power to destroy hundreds of thousands of lives in an instant has perhaps for the first time united ethicists and pragmatists in the assessment that war is becoming something intolerable in relations between nations. When it comes to the possibility of threatening human civilization itself, the contradictions between ethical and technocratic assessments of war are erased. In part, the fear of the use of nuclear weapons as a “doomsday device” led to the fact that, despite the fact that the main managers of nuclear arsenals during the Cold War - the United States and the Soviet Union - as well as other open and secret owners of these weapons, invested huge amounts of money into staging armament with ever new devices, they nevertheless never decided to use it. And nuclear disarmament initiatives have consistently received much stronger public support than general talk about abandoning weapons altogether.
The end of the 20th - the beginning of the 21st century
Ethical issues: terrorism, torture, drones
At the end of the century, when terrorism has become a global phenomenon, the motivation of movement participants, their ideas about the conduct of their struggle, what is permissible and fair in these actions become a separate phenomenon. The problem of armed confrontation with terrorists entails new ethical questions. The experience of the US wars in Afghanistan and the emergence of a prison for captured terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay base show that the status of captured members of terrorist organizations is practically not regulated by either legal or ethical frameworks. They do not have prisoner of war status. Moreover, from the point of view of those who detained them, the danger of such prisoners makes it possible to use various methods of influence against them, including torture. In fact, the emergence of such a category of enemy as “terrorist” again made torture a subject of ethical discussions - before, even if such methods were used against prisoners, it was not considered possible to talk about it as something absolutely unacceptable and illegal.
Unmanned aircraft MQ-9 Reaper PA Images / TASS Complex military operations now carried out with the help of unmanned aerial vehicles also raise separate questions. That “hunt for terrorists” using drones, which American intelligence agencies have carried out and are conducting in various remote corners of the earth, once again raises the question of how “moral” a war looks in which the operator controlling the drone, who makes the decision to deliver a fatal blow, is obviously safe . These are the same issues that were discussed after the invention of the bow and crossbow, and they have the same impact on the attitude towards those who use such weapons. In any case, from time to time the American press writes that specialists involved in flying drones feel somewhat disdainful towards themselves from pilots of conventional aircraft (and this partly affects the popularity of this profession). But these situations are not much different from the questions that arose earlier with the advent of types of weapons that provided fundamentally new ways to kill (one can recall how Arthur Wilson, who commanded the British Mediterranean Fleet at the beginning of the 20th century, called the submarines first put into operation “insidious, dishonest and damn un-English weapons). So the evolution of the ethical assessment of war continues along with the evolution of wars themselves.
Definition of war, causes of wars, classification of wars
Information on the definition of war, causes of wars, classification of wars
Definition
Wars in human history
Causes of wars and their classifications
Historical types of wars
Theories of the origin of wars
Behavioral theories
Evolutionary psychology
Sociological theories
Demographic theories
Rationalist theories
Economic theories
Marxist theory
The theory of the emergence of wars in political science
Objectivism position
Goals of the parties in the war
Consequences of the war
Story Cold War
War time
Declaration of war
Martial law
Hostilities
Prisoners of war
Armed forces
War is- a conflict between political entities (states, tribes, political groups, etc.), occurring in the form of hostilities between their armed forces. According to Clausewitz, “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” The main means of achieving the goals of war is organized armed struggle as the main and decisive means, as well as economic, diplomatic, ideological, informational and other means of struggle. In this sense, war is organized armed violence whose purpose is to achieve political goals.
Total war is armed violence taken to extreme limits. The main weapon in war is the army.
War is an armed struggle between large groups (communities) of people (states, tribes, parties); governed by laws and customs - a set of principles and norms of international law that establish the responsibilities of the warring parties (ensuring the protection of civilians, regulating the treatment of prisoners of war, prohibiting the use of particularly inhumane weapons).
Wars are an integral part of human life. The development of wars is the result of technological and demographic changes. It is a process in which long periods of strategic and technical stability are followed by sudden changes. The characteristics of wars change in accordance with the development of means and methods of warfare, as well as changes in the balance of power in the international arena. Although it was in wars that the shape of the modern world was determined, knowledge about wars was and remains insufficient to ensure the security interests of mankind. As the corresponding member notes Russian Academy Sciences A.A. Kokoshin, “at present, the degree of study of wars - a special state of society - is not adequate to the role of this political and social phenomenon in both modern system world politics, and in the life of individual states."
Until recently, the declaration of war, regardless of its goals, was considered the inalienable right of every state (jus ad bellum), the highest manifestation of its sovereignty in international relations. However, as the political weight of non-state actors (international non-governmental organizations, ethnic, religious and other groups) grows, there is a tendency for states to lose their monopoly on solving problems of war and peace. Already in 1977, Additional Protocol II to the 1949 Geneva Convention, regulating the protection of victims of non-international armed conflicts, imposed the obligations previously developed for states on non-state actors (armed rebel forces under organized command and controlling part of the national territory). In light of this trend, war can be defined as organized armed violence used by actors in international relations to achieve political goals.
2. Changing the scale of wars. If until the middle of the twentieth century. wars became increasingly larger, then from the second half of the twentieth century. a reverse trend has emerged - a decrease in the number of large and an increase in the number of small and medium-sized wars. At the same time, the previous trend of increasing destructiveness and destructiveness of wars has been preserved. As noted Russian researcher V.V. Serebryannikov, “medium and small wars are collectively used by subjects of international relations to achieve political goals.
A current area of military-political research has been the development of concepts of wars without military action (“non-military wars”). Threats posed by international terrorism, organized crime, weak states, trafficking in people and dangerous substances, environmental disasters, disease and uncontrolled migration cannot be separated from wars and military conflicts. It is no coincidence that the discussions of the late 1990s of the twentieth century. about the emergence of “new wars” coincided with a discussion of “new security threats” - threats or risks that are supranational or non-military in nature. Today, the view that modern war is “the continuation of politics by violent methods, in which armed struggle is not the only and main means,” is becoming increasingly widespread. Meanwhile, it is the use of weapons as a set of technical means of suppressing or subjugating the enemy, providing for the possibility of his physical destruction, that makes it possible to separate war from other types of political conflict.
War as a social phenomenon does not turn into an anomaly, but only transforms, losing its previous features and acquiring new features. Back in the 20th century, the necessary signs of war were:
1) warring parties that have a fairly defined status in the system of international relations and participate in hostilities;
2) a clear subject of dispute between opponents;
3) clear spatial parameters of the armed struggle, i.e. the presence of a localized battlefield and the division of enemy territory into rear and front.
Today, these signs of war have become optional. Summarizing some data on wars that have occurred since the beginning of the twentieth century, a number of trends can be identified.
1. Increasing frequency of wars. Frequency of wars in the 20th century. fluctuated, but generally exceeded the average frequency of wars throughout famous story humanity by about 1.5 times. Military action took place in more than 60 of the 200 UN member countries. In the 2,340 weeks between 1945 and 1990, there was only three weeks without a single war on earth. In the 90s of the twentieth century, more than 100 wars took place in the world, in which more than 90 states participated and up to 9 million people died. In 1990 alone, the Stockholm Peace Research Institute counted 31 armed conflicts.
2. Changing the scale of wars. If until the middle of the twentieth century. wars became increasingly larger, then from the second half of the twentieth century. a reverse trend has emerged - a decrease in the number of large and an increase in the number of small and medium-sized wars. At the same time, the previous trend of increasing destructiveness and destructiveness of wars has been preserved. As noted by Russian researcher V.V. Serebryannikov, “medium and small wars in the aggregate seem to replace a big war, extending its grave consequences in time and space.” Data on armed conflicts since World War II indicate that there are more and more clashes that fall short of the threshold of “real” war.
3. Changing methods of warfare. Due to the inadmissibility of full-scale warfare using weapons of mass destruction, the actual armed struggle in modern wars is increasingly moving into the background and is supplemented by diplomatic, economic, information-psychological, reconnaissance-sabotage and other forms of struggle. An important attribute of modern wars has become the tactic of “building bridges” between the military and the enemy population.
4. Changing the structure of military losses. The civilian population of the warring parties is increasingly becoming the target of armed influence, which leads to an increase in the proportion of casualties among the civilian population. During the First World War, civilian losses amounted to 5% of the total number of casualties, in the Second World War 48%, during the Korean War - 84, in Vietnam and Iraq - more than 90%.
5. Expanding the scope of participation in wars by non-state actors of regular armies, possessing the most advanced technical means, are underground informal armed groups.
6. Expanding the set of grounds for starting wars. If the first half of the twentieth century was a period of struggle for world domination, today the reasons for the outbreak of wars are due to contradictory trends in the growth of universality and fragmentation of the world. The clashes in Angola, Korea and Vietnam that took place after World War II were nothing more than a manifestation of the confrontation between the superpowers of the USSR and the USA, which, being the owners of nuclear weapons, could not afford to engage in open armed struggle. Another characteristic cause of wars and military conflicts in the 60s of the twentieth century. became the national self-determination of the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Wars of national liberation often turned out to be proxy wars, in which one or another superpower tried to use local armed groups to expand and strengthen its sphere of influence. In the 90s of the twentieth century. new causes of armed conflicts have emerged: interethnic relations (for example, in the former Soviet republics, in the Balkans and Rwanda), state weakness, competition for control of natural resources. Thus, along with disputes about statehood, disputes around governance within states have become established as a significant cause of conflict. In addition, religious reasons for armed conflicts have emerged.
7. Blurring the line between war and peace. In countries experiencing political instability, such as Nicaragua, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, troops used weapons and entered populated areas without declaring war. A separate aspect of this trend is the development of international crime and terrorism and the fight against them, which can take on the nature of military operations, but is carried out by law enforcement forces or with their participation.
Militarism and belligerence often accompanied periods of the most intensive development of peoples and served as a means of self-affirmation for their elites in the international arena. From the second half of the twentieth century. and especially since the end of the Cold War, the relationship between war and human progress has changed. With political systems reaching the level of organization that requires sustainable development, war as a means of resolving economic, social, ideological, and environmental contradictions becomes more and more “archaic.” However, the expansion of the circle of participants in international relations, the incompleteness of the process of forming a post-bipolar system of international relations, as well as the revolution in military affairs, making the means of armed struggle more accessible, predetermine the prospects for the development of military theory and practice in the new century.
Wars in human history
War is constant companion human history. Up to 95% of all societies known to us have resorted to it to resolve external or internal conflicts. According to scientists, over the past fifty-six centuries there have been about 14,500 wars in which more than 3.5 billion people died.
According to the extremely widespread belief in antiquity, the Middle Ages and the New Age (J.-J. Rousseau), primitive times were the only peaceful period of history, and primitive man (an uncivilized savage) was a creature devoid of any belligerence or aggressiveness. However, the latest archaeological studies of prehistoric sites in Europe, North America and North Africa indicate that armed conflicts (apparently between individuals) took place as early as the Neanderthal era. An ethnographic study of modern hunter-gatherer tribes shows that in most cases, attacks on neighbors, violent seizure of property and women are the harsh reality of their lives (Zulus, Dahomeans, North American Indians, Eskimos, tribes of New Guinea).
The first types of weapons (bludgeons, spears) were used primitive man from as early as 35 thousand BC, but the earliest cases of group combat date back only to 12 thousand BC. - only from now on can we talk about war.
The birth of war in the primitive era was associated with the emergence of new types of weapons (bow, sling), which for the first time made it possible to fight at a distance; from now on, the physical strength of those fighting was no longer of exceptional importance; dexterity and dexterity began to play a large role. The beginnings of a battle technique (flanking) emerged. The war was highly ritualized (numerous taboos and prohibitions), which limited its duration and losses.
A significant factor in the evolution of warfare was the domestication of animals: the use of horses gave nomads an advantage over sedentary tribes. The need for protection from their sudden attacks led to the emergence of fortifications; the first known fact is the fortress walls of Jericho (about 8 thousand BC). The number of participants in the wars gradually increased. However, there is no consensus among scientists about the size of prehistoric “armies”: figures vary from a dozen to several hundred warriors.
The emergence of states contributed to the progress of military organization. The growth of agricultural productivity allowed the elite of ancient societies to accumulate in their hands funds that made it possible:
increase the size of armies and improve their fighting qualities;
much more time was devoted to training soldiers;
The first professional military units appeared.
If the armies of the Sumerian city-states were small peasant militias, then the later ancient Eastern monarchies (China, Egypt of the New Kingdom) already had relatively large and fairly disciplined military forces.
The main component of the ancient eastern and ancient army was the infantry: initially acting on the battlefield as a chaotic crowd, it later turned into an extremely organized combat unit (Macedonian phalanx, Roman legion). At different periods, other “arms of arms” also gained importance, such as war chariots, which played a significant role in the conquests of the Assyrians. The importance of military fleets also increased, especially among the Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians; The first known naval battle took place around 1210 BC. between the Hittites and the Cypriots. The function of cavalry was usually reduced to auxiliary or reconnaissance. Progress was also observed in the field of weapons - new materials are used, new types of weapons are invented. Bronze ensured the victories of the Egyptian army of the New Kingdom era, and iron contributed to the creation of the first ancient Eastern empire - the New Assyrian state. In addition to the bow, arrows and spear, the sword, axe, dagger, and dart gradually came into use. Siege weapons appeared, the development and use of which reached a peak in the Hellenistic period (catapults, battering rams, siege towers). Wars have acquired significant proportions, drawing into their orbit big number states (wars of the Diadochi, etc.). The largest armed conflicts of antiquity were the wars of the New Assyrian kingdom (second half of the 8th–7th centuries), the Greco-Persian wars (500–449 BC), the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), and the conquests of Alexander the Great (334–323 BC) and the Punic Wars (264–146 BC).
In the Middle Ages, infantry lost its primacy to cavalry, which was facilitated by the invention of stirrups (8th century). A heavily armed knight became the central figure on the battlefield. The scale of war was reduced in comparison with the ancient era: it turned into an expensive and elitist occupation, into the prerogative of the ruling class and acquired a professional character (the future knight underwent long training). Small detachments (from several dozen to several hundred knights with squires) took part in the battles; only at the end of the classical Middle Ages (14th–15th centuries), with the emergence of centralized states, the number of armies increased; The importance of infantry increased again (it was the archers who ensured the success of the British in the Hundred Years War). Military operations at sea were of a secondary nature. But the role of castles has increased unusually; the siege became the main element of the war. The largest wars of this period were the Reconquista (718–1492), the Crusades, and the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453).
A turning point in military history was the spread from the mid-15th century. in Europe, gunpowder and firearms (arquebuses, cannons); the first time they were used was the Battle of Agincourt (1415). From now on, the level of military equipment and, accordingly, the military industry became an absolute determinant of the outcome of the war. In the late Middle Ages (16th - first half of the 17th century), the technological advantage of Europeans allowed them to expand beyond their continent (colonial conquests) and at the same time put an end to the invasions of nomadic tribes from the East. The importance of naval warfare increased sharply. Disciplined regular infantry replaced the knightly cavalry (see the role of the Spanish infantry in the wars of the 16th century). The largest armed conflicts of the 16th–17th centuries. there were the Italian Wars (1494–1559) and the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648).
In the centuries that followed, the nature of war underwent rapid and fundamental changes. Military technology progressed unusually quickly (from the musket of the 17th century to nuclear submarines and supersonic fighters of the early 21st century). New types of weapons (missile systems, etc.) have strengthened the remote nature of military confrontation. The war became more and more widespread: the institution of conscription and the one that replaced it in the 19th century. the institution of universal conscription made armies truly national (more than 70 million people took part in the 1st World War, over 110 million in the 2nd World War), on the other hand, the whole society was already involved in the war (women’s and child labor in military enterprises in the USSR and the USA during the 2nd World War). Human losses reached an unprecedented scale: if in the 17th century. they amounted to 3.3 million in the 18th century. – 5.4 million, in the 19th – early 20th centuries. - 5.7 million, then in the 1st World War - more than 9 million, and in the 2nd World War - over 50 million. The wars were accompanied by the grandiose destruction of material wealth and cultural values.
By the end of the 20th century. The dominant form of armed conflicts has become “asymmetrical wars”, characterized by a sharp inequality of capabilities of the warring parties. In the nuclear era, such wars are fraught with great danger, since they encourage the weaker side to violate all established laws of war and resort to various forms of intimidation tactics, including large-scale terrorist attacks (the tragedy of September 11, 2001 in New York).
The changing nature of war and the intense arms race gave rise in the first half of the 20th century. a powerful anti-war tendency (J. Jaurès, A. Barbusse, M. Gandhi, projects for general disarmament in the League of Nations), which especially intensified after the creation of weapons of mass destruction, which called into question the very existence of human civilization. The UN began to play a leading role in preserving peace, declaring its task “to save future generations from the scourge of war”; in 1974 the UN General Assembly qualified military aggression as an international crime. The constitutions of some countries included articles on an unconditional renunciation of war (Japan) or a ban on the creation of an army (Costa Rica).
Causes of wars and their classifications
The main reason for the outbreak of wars is the desire of political forces to use armed struggle to achieve various foreign policy and domestic political goals.
With the emergence of mass armies in the 19th century, xenophobia (hatred, intolerance towards someone or something alien, unfamiliar, unusual, the perception of someone else as incomprehensible, incomprehensible, and therefore dangerous and hostile), became an important tool for mobilizing the population for war. worldview. On its basis, national, religious or social enmity is easily incited, and therefore, since the 2nd half of the 19th century, xenophobia has been the main tool for inciting wars, channeling aggression, certain manipulations of the masses within the state, etc.
On the other hand, European societies that survived the devastating wars of the 20th century began to strive to live in peace. Very often, members of such societies live in fear of any shocks. An example of this is the ideologeme “If only there was no war,” which prevailed in Soviet society after the end of the most destructive war of the 20th century - World War II.
For propaganda purposes, wars are traditionally divided into:
fair;
unfair.
Just wars include liberation wars - for example, individual or collective self-defense against aggression in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter or a national liberation war against colonialists in the exercise of the right to self-determination. In the modern world, wars waged by separatist movements (Abkhazia, Ulster, Kashmir, Palestine) are considered formally fair, but disapproved.
Unjust - aggressive or unlawful (aggression, colonial wars). In international law, aggressive war is classified as an international crime. In the 1990s, such a concept as a humanitarian war appeared, which is formally aggression in the name of higher goals: preventing ethnic cleansing or humanitarian assistance to civilians.
According to their scale, wars are divided into global and local (conflicts).
The division of wars into “external warfare” and “internal warfare” is also important.
Air war
Naval warfare
Local war
Nuclear war
Colonial War
Information war
The classification of wars is based on a variety of criteria. Based on their goals, they are divided into predatory (Pecheneg and Cuman raids on Rus' in the 9th – early 13th centuries), conquest (wars of Cyrus II 550–529 BC), colonial (Franco-Chinese war 1883–1885), religious (Huguenot Wars in France 1562–1598), dynastic (War of the Spanish Succession 1701–1714), trade (Opium Wars 1840–1842 and 1856–1860), national liberation (Algerian War 1954–1962), patriotic (Patriotic War 1812), revolutionary (wars of France with the European coalition 1792–1795).
Based on the scope of military operations and the number of forces and means involved, wars are divided into local (conducted in a limited area and by small forces) and large-scale. The first include, for example, wars between ancient Greek policies; to the second - the campaigns of Alexander the Great, the Napoleonic Wars, etc.
Based on the nature of the warring parties, civil and external wars are distinguished. The first, in turn, are divided into apex ones, waged by factions within the elite (War of the Scarlet and White Roses 1455–1485), and interclass wars - wars against the ruling class of slaves (Spartacus’s war 74–71 BC), peasants (Great Peasant War in Germany 1524–1525), townspeople/bourgeoisie (English Civil War 1639–1652), social lower classes in general (Russian Civil War 1918–1922). Foreign wars are divided into wars between states ( Anglo-Dutch wars 17th century), between states and tribes (Caesar's Gallic Wars 58–51 BC), between coalitions of states (Seven Years' War 1756–1763), between metropolises and colonies (Indochina War 1945–1954), world wars (1914 –1918 and 1939–1945).
In addition, wars are distinguished by methods of warfare - offensive and defensive, regular and guerrilla (guerrilla) - and by place of warfare: land, sea, air, coastal, fortress and field, to which are sometimes added arctic, mountain, urban, wars in desert, jungle wars.
The moral criterion – just and unjust wars – is also taken as a classification principle. A “just war” refers to a war waged to protect order and law and, ultimately, peace. Its essential conditions are that it must have a just cause; it should only be started when all peaceful means have been exhausted; it should not go beyond achieving the main goal; The civilian population should not suffer from it. The idea of a “just war,” dating back to the Old Testament, ancient philosophy and St. Augustine, received theoretical formalization in the 12th–13th centuries. in the works of Gratian, the decretalists and Thomas Aquinas. In the late Middle Ages, its development was continued by neo-scholastics, M. Luther and G. Grotius. It again gained relevance in the 20th century, especially in connection with the advent of weapons of mass destruction and the problem of “humanitarian military actions” designed to stop genocide in a particular country.
Historical types of wars
Wars of the Ancient World
Painting "Battle of Zama", 202 BC. e. drawn by Cornelis Cort (1567)
Conquest campaigns of ancient states with the aim of enslaving tribes that were at a lower stage of social development, collecting tribute and capturing slaves (for example, the Gallic War, the Marcomannic War, etc.);
Interstate wars with the aim of seizing territories and robbing conquered countries (for example, the Punic Wars, the Greco-Persian Wars);
Civil wars between various factions of the aristocracy (for example, the wars of the Diadochi for the division of the empire of Alexander the Great in 321-276 BC);
slave revolts (for example, the slave revolt in Rome led by Spartacus);
popular uprisings of peasants and artisans (the “Red Brows” uprising in China).
Wars of the Middle Ages
Religious wars: Crusades, Jihad;
Dynastic wars (for example, the Wars of the Roses in England);
Wars for the creation of centralized national states (for example, the war for the unification of Russian lands around Moscow in the 14th-15th centuries);
Peasant wars-rebellions against state power (for example, the Jacquerie in France, the Peasants' War in Germany (Bauernkrieg)).
Wars of New and Contemporary Times
Colonial wars of capitalist countries for the enslavement of the peoples of Asia, Africa, America, Oceania (for example, the Opium Wars);
Wars of conquest of states and coalitions of states for hegemony (for example, the Northern War, the Mexican-American War, the Korean War, the Ethiopian-Eritrean War), wars for world domination (the Seven Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, the First and Second World Wars);
Civil wars accompanying the development of socialist and bourgeois-democratic revolutions. Often civil wars merge with wars against external intervention (Chinese Civil War);
National liberation wars of the peoples of dependent and colonial countries against the colonialists, for the establishment of state independence or for its preservation, against attempts to restore the colonial regime (for example, the Algerian War; the Portuguese colonial war, etc.);
Revolutions often end in wars, or to some extent are them [In war there are no winners - only losers.]
Post-industrial wars
It is believed that post-industrial wars are primarily diplomatic and espionage confrontations.
Urban guerrilla
Humanitarian War (Kosovo War)
Counter-terrorism operation
Inter-ethnic conflict (eg Bosnian War, Karabakh War)
The main types of wars in slave society were:
Wars of slave states for the enslavement of tribes that were at a lower stage of social development (for example, the wars of Rome against the Gauls, Germans, etc.); Wars between the slave states themselves with the aim of seizing territories and robbing conquered countries (for example, the Punic Wars of Rome against Carthage in the 3rd-2nd centuries BC, etc.); Wars between different groups of slave owners (for example, the war of the Diadochi for the division of the empire of Alexander the Great in 321-276 BC); Wars as slave uprisings (for example, the slave uprising in Rome under the leadership of Spartacus in 73-71 BC, etc.); popular uprisings of peasants and artisans (the “Red Brows” uprising in the 1st century AD in China, etc.).
The main types of wars in feudal society were:
Wars between feudal states (for example, the Hundred Years' War between England and France 1337-1453); internecine feudal wars for the expansion of possessions (for example, the War of the Scarlet and White Roses in England in 1455-85); Wars for the creation of centralized feudal states (for example, the war for the unification of Russian lands around Moscow in the 14th-15th centuries); Wars against foreign invasions (for example, the war of the Russian people against the Tatar-Mongols in the 13th-14th centuries). Feudal exploitation gave rise to: peasant wars and uprisings against the feudal lords (for example, peasant revolt under the leadership of I. I. Bolotnikov in 1606-07 in Russia); uprisings of the urban population against feudal exploitation (for example, the Parisian uprising of 1356-58).
Wars of the era of pre-monopoly capitalism can be classified into the following main types:
Colonial wars of capitalist countries for the enslavement of the peoples of Asia, Africa, America, Oceania; aggressive wars of states and coalitions of states for hegemony (for example, the Seven Years' War of 1756-63, etc.); revolutionary anti-feudal, national liberation wars (for example, the wars of revolutionary France at the end of the 18th century); Wars of national reunification (for example, the wars of Italian unification in 1859-70); liberation wars of the peoples of colonies and dependent countries (for example, popular uprisings in India in the 18th and 19th centuries against English rule), civil wars and uprisings of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie (for example, revolutionary war Paris Commune 1871).
In the era of imperialism, the struggle between monopolistic associations outgrows national boundaries and turns into a struggle between the main imperialist powers for the violent redivision of an already divided world. The intensification of the struggle of the imperialists is expanding their military clashes to the scale of world wars.
The main types of wars of the era of imperialism are:
Imperialist wars for the redivision of the world (for example, the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-05, World War I of 1914-18); civil liberation wars of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie (Civil War in the USSR 1918-20). The main types of wars of the era of imperialism also include national liberation wars of oppressed peoples (for example, popular uprisings in Cuba in 1906, in China in 1906-11).
In modern conditions, the only source of war is imperialism. The main types of wars of the modern era are:
Wars between states with opposing social systems, civil wars, national liberation wars, wars between capitalist states. The 2nd World War of 1939-45, due to its complex and contradictory nature, occupies a special place among the wars of the modern era.
Wars between states with opposing social systems are generated by the aggressive aspirations of imperialism to destroy the social gains of the peoples of socialist countries or countries that have embarked on the path of building socialism (for example, the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union of 1941-45 against those who attacked the USSR fascist Germany and its allies).
Civil wars accompany the development of socialist and bourgeois-democratic revolutions or are an armed defense of people's gains from bourgeois counter-revolution and fascism. Civil wars often merge with the war against imperialist intervention (the national revolutionary war of the Spanish people against fascist rebels and Italian-German interventionists in 1936-39, etc.).
National liberation wars are the struggle of the peoples of dependent and colonial countries against the colonialists, for the establishment of state independence or for its preservation, against attempts to restore the colonial regime (for example, the war of the Algerian people against the French colonialists in 1954-62; the struggle of the peoples of Egypt against the Anglo-French Israeli aggression in 1956; the struggle of the peoples of South Vietnam against the American invaders, which began in 1964, etc.). In modern conditions, the national liberation struggle for winning national independence is closely intertwined with the social struggle for democratic reconstruction public life.
Wars between capitalist states are generated by the aggravation of contradictions between them in the struggle for world domination (World Wars 1 and 2). The 2nd World War was generated by the aggravation of imperialist contradictions between the bloc of fascist states led by fascist Germany and the Anglo-French bloc and began as unjust and aggressive, especially on the part of Germany and its allies. However, Hitler's aggression posed the greatest threat to humanity; the Nazi occupation of many countries doomed their people to extermination. Therefore, the fight against fascism became a national task for all freedom-loving peoples, which led to a change in the political content of the war, which acquired a liberation, anti-fascist character. The attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR completed the process of this transformation. The USSR was the main force anti-Hitler coalition(USSR, USA, Great Britain, France) in the 2nd World War, which led to victory over the fascist bloc. The Soviet Armed Forces made a major contribution to saving the peoples of the world from the threat of enslavement by fascist invaders.
In the post-war period, there is a process of economic integration of capitalist countries, a unification of the forces of reaction against socialism, which, however, does not eliminate acute contradictions and conflicts between capitalist states, which under certain conditions can become a source of war between them.
Theories of the origin of wars
At all times, people have tried to comprehend the phenomenon of war, identify its nature, give it a moral assessment, develop methods for its most effective use (the theory of military art) and find ways to limit or even eradicate it. The most controversial question was and continues to be about the causes of wars: why do they happen if the majority of people do not want them? A wide variety of answers are given to this question.
Theological interpretation, which has Old Testament roots, is based on the understanding of war as an arena for the implementation of the will of God (gods). Its adherents see in war either a way of establishing the true religion and rewarding the pious (the conquest of the “Promised Land” by the Jews, the victorious campaigns of the Arabs who converted to Islam), or a means of punishing the wicked (the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, the defeat of the Roman Empire by the barbarians).
The concrete historical approach, dating back to antiquity (Herodotus), connects the origin of wars solely with their local historical context and excludes the search for any universal causes. At the same time, the role of political leaders and the rational decisions they make is inevitably emphasized. Often the outbreak of war is perceived as the result of a random combination of circumstances.
The psychological school occupies an influential position in the tradition of studying the phenomenon of war. Even in ancient times, the prevailing belief (Thucydides) was that war is a consequence of bad human nature, an innate tendency to “do” chaos and evil. In our time, this idea was used by S. Freud when creating the theory of psychoanalysis: he argued that a person could not exist if his inherent need for self-destruction (the death instinct) was not directed towards external objects, including other individuals, other ethnic groups , other religious groups. Followers of S. Freud (L.L. Bernard) viewed war as a manifestation of mass psychosis, which is the result of the suppression of human instincts by society. A number of modern psychologists (E.F.M. Darben, J. Bowlby) have reworked the Freudian theory of sublimation in a gender sense: the tendency to aggression and violence is a property of male nature; suppressed in peaceful conditions, it finds the necessary outlet on the battlefield. Their hope for ridding humanity of war is associated with the transfer of control levers into the hands of women and with the establishment of feminine values in society. Other psychologists interpret aggressiveness not as an integral feature of the male psyche, but as a result of its violation, citing as an example politicians obsessed with the mania of war (Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini); they believe that for the advent of an era of universal peace, an effective system of civil control is sufficient to deny access to power to madmen.
A special branch of the psychological school, founded by K. Lorenz, is based on evolutionary sociology. Its adherents consider war to be an extended form of animal behavior, primarily an expression of male rivalry and their struggle for possession of a certain territory. They emphasize, however, that although war had a natural origin, technological progress has increased its destructive nature and brought it to a level unthinkable for the animal world, when the very existence of humanity as a species is threatened.
The anthropological school (E. Montague and others) decisively rejects the psychological approach. Social anthropologists prove that the tendency to aggression is not inherited (genetically), but is formed in the process of upbringing, that is, it reflects the cultural experience of a particular social environment, its religious and ideological attitudes. From their point of view, there is no connection between the various historical forms of violence, since each of them was generated by its own specific social context.
The political approach is based on the formula of the German military theorist K. Clausewitz (1780–1831), who defined war as “the continuation of politics by other means.” Its many adherents, starting with L. Ranke, derive the origin of wars from international disputes and the diplomatic game.
An offshoot of the political science school is the geopolitical direction, whose representatives see the main cause of wars in the lack of “living space” (K. Haushofer, J. Kieffer), in the desire of states to expand their borders to natural boundaries (rivers, mountain ranges, etc.) .
Going back to the English economist T.R. Malthus (1766–1834), demographic theory views war as a result of an imbalance between population and the amount of means of subsistence and as a functional means of restoring it by destroying demographic surpluses. Neo-Malthusians (U. Vogt and others) believe that war is immanent in human society and is the main engine of social progress.
At present, the sociological approach remains the most popular when interpreting the phenomenon of war. In contrast to the followers of K. Clausewitz, his supporters (E. Kehr, H.-W. Wehler, etc.) consider war to be a product of internal social conditions and the social structure of the warring countries. Many sociologists are trying to develop a universal typology of wars, formalize them taking into account all the factors influencing them (economic, demographic, etc.), and model fail-safe mechanisms for their prevention. The sociostatistical analysis of wars, proposed back in the 1920s, is actively used. L.F.Richardson; Currently, numerous predictive models of armed conflicts have been created (P. Breke, participants in the “Military Project”, Uppsala Research Group).
Information theory, popular among specialists in international relations (D. Blaney and others), explains the occurrence of wars by a lack of information. According to its adherents, war is the result of a mutual decision - the decision of one side to attack and the decision of the other to resist; the losing side is always the one that inadequately assesses its capabilities and the capabilities of the other side - otherwise it would either refuse aggression or capitulate in order to avoid unnecessary human and material losses. Therefore, knowledge of the enemy's intentions and his ability to wage war (effective intelligence) becomes crucial.
Cosmopolitan theory connects the origin of war with the antagonism of national and supranational, universal human interests (N. Angel, S. Strechey, J. Dewey). It is used primarily to explain armed conflicts in the era of globalization.
Supporters of the economic interpretation consider war to be a consequence of rivalry between states in the sphere of international economic relations, which are anarchic in nature. The war is started to obtain new markets, cheap labor, sources of raw materials and energy. This position is shared, as a rule, by left-wing scientists. They argue that the war serves the interests of the propertied strata, and all its hardships fall on the share of the disadvantaged groups of the population.
The economic interpretation is an element of the Marxist approach, which treats any war as a derivative of class war. From the point of view of Marxism, wars are fought to strengthen the power of the ruling classes and to split the world proletariat through appeals to religious or nationalist ideals. Marxists argue that wars are the inevitable result of the free market and the system of class inequality and that they will disappear into oblivion after the world revolution.
Behavioral theories
Psychologists such as E. F. M. Durban and John Bowlby argue that it is the nature of humans to be aggressive. It is fueled by sublimation and projection, where a person turns his grievances into prejudice and hatred towards other races, religions, nations or ideologies. According to this theory, the state creates and maintains a certain order in local societies and at the same time creates the basis for aggression in the form of war. If war is an integral part of human nature, as many psychological theories assume, then it will never be completely eradicated.
Italian psychoanalyst Franco Fornari, a follower of Melanie Klein, suggested that war is a paranoid or projective form of melancholy. Fornari argued that war and violence develop from our “need for love”: our desire to preserve and protect the sacred object to which we are attached, namely the mother and our connection with her. For adults, such a sacred object is the nation. Fornari focuses on sacrifice as the essence of war: the desire of people to die for their country and the desire to give themselves for the good of the nation.
Although these theories can explain why wars exist, they do not explain why they occur; at the same time, they do not explain the existence of some cultures that do not know wars as such. If the inner psychology of the human mind is unchanged, then such cultures should not exist. Some militarists, such as Franz Alexander, argue that the state of the world is an illusion. Periods commonly called "peaceful" are actually periods of preparation for a future war or a situation where warlike instincts are suppressed by a stronger state, such as the Pax Britannica.
These theories are supposedly based on the will of the overwhelming majority of the population. However, they do not take into account the fact that only a small number of wars in history were truly the result of the will of the people. Much more often, people are forcibly drawn into war by their rulers. One of the theories that puts political and military leaders at the forefront was developed by Maurice Walsh. He argued that the vast majority of the population is neutral towards war, and that wars only happen when leaders with a psychologically abnormal attitude towards human life come to power. Wars are started by rulers who deliberately seek to fight - such as Napoleon, Hitler and Alexander the Great. Such people become heads of state in times of crisis, when the population is looking for a leader with a strong will, who, they think, can solve their problems.
Evolutionary psychology
Proponents of evolutionary psychology tend to argue that human warfare is analogous to the behavior of animals who fight over territory or compete for food or a mate. Animals are aggressive by nature, and in the human environment, such aggressiveness results in wars. However, with the development of technology, human aggressiveness reached such a limit that it began to threaten the survival of the entire species. One of the first adherents of this theory was Konrad Lorenz.
Such theories were criticized by scientists such as John G. Kennedy, who believed that the organized, long-lasting warfare of humans was fundamentally different from the turf fighting of animals - and not just in terms of technology. Ashley Montague points out that social factors and education are important reasons determining the nature and course of human wars. War is still a human invention that has its own historical and social roots.
Sociological theories
Sociologists have long studied the causes of war. There are many theories on this matter, many of which contradict each other. Proponents of one of the schools of Primat der Innenpolitik (Priority of Domestic Policy) take as a basis the work of Eckart Kehr and Hans-Ulrich Wehler, who believed that war is a product of local conditions, and only the direction of aggression is determined by external factors. Thus, for example, the First World War was not the result of international conflicts, secret conspiracies or imbalances of power, but the result of the economic, social and political situation in each country involved in the conflict.
This theory differs from the traditional Primat der Außenpolitik (Priority of Foreign Policy) approach of Carl von Clausewitz and Leopold von Ranke, who argued that war and peace are a consequence of the decisions of statesmen and the geopolitical situation.
Demographic theories
Demographic theories can be divided into two classes: Malthusian theories and Youth Predominance theories.
According to Malthusian theories, the causes of wars lie in population growth and lack of resources.
Pope Urban II in 1095, on the eve of the First Crusade, wrote: “The land which you have inherited is surrounded on all sides by sea and mountains, and it is too small for you; it barely provides food for the people. That is why you kill and torture each other, wage wars, that is why so many of you die in civil strife. Quiet your hatred, let the hostility end. Take the road to the Holy Sepulcher; reclaim this land from the wicked race and take it for yourselves.”
This is one of the first descriptions of what was later called the Malthusian theory of war. Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) wrote that population always increases until its growth is limited by war, disease or famine.
Proponents of the Malthusian theory believe that the relative decrease in the number of military conflicts in the last 50 years, especially in developing countries, is a consequence of the fact that new technologies in agriculture are able to feed a much larger number of people; at the same time, the availability of contraceptives has led to a significant decline in the birth rate.
The theory of youth dominance.
Average age by country. The predominance of youth is present in Africa and in slightly lesser proportions in South and Southeast Asia and Central America.
The theory of youth dominance differs significantly from Malthusian theories. Its adherents believe that the combination of a large number of young men (as graphically represented in the Age-Sex Pyramid) with a lack of permanent peaceful work leads to a great risk of war.
While Malthusian theories focus on the contradiction between a growing population and the availability of natural resources, the youth dominance theory focuses on the discrepancy between the number of poor, non-inheriting young men and available job positions in the existing social system division of labor.
Major contributions to the development of this theory were made by the French sociologist Gaston Bouthoul, the American sociologist Jack A. Goldstone, the American political scientist Gary Fuller, and the German sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn. Samuel Huntington developed his theory of the Clash of Civilizations, largely using the theory of youth dominance:
I don't think Islam is a more aggressive religion than any other, but I suspect there have been many deaths at the hands of Christians throughout history. more people than at the hands of Muslims. The key factor here is demographics. By and large, people who go out to kill other people are men between the ages of 16 and 30. During the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the Muslim world had high birth rates and this led to a huge skew towards youth. But he will inevitably disappear. Birth rates in Islamic countries are falling; in some countries - rapidly. Islam was originally spread by fire and sword, but I don't think there is an inherited aggressiveness in Muslim theology."
The theory of youth dominance was recently created, but has already gained great influence on US foreign policy and military strategy. Both Goldstone and Fuller advised the American government. CIA inspector General John L. Helgerson referred to this theory in his 2002 report, "The National Security Implications of Global Demographic Change."
According to Heinsohn, who first proposed the theory of youth dominance in its most general form, skew occurs when 30 to 40 percent of a country's male population belongs to the "explosive" age group of 15 to 29 years. Usually this phenomenon is preceded by a birth rate explosion, when there are 4-8 children per woman.
In the case where there are 2.1 children per woman, the son takes the place of the father, and the daughter takes the place of the mother. A total fertility rate of 2.1 results in replacement of the previous generation, while a lower rate leads to population extinction.
In the case when 4-8 children are born in a family, the father must provide his sons with not one, but two or four social positions (jobs) so that they have at least some prospects in life. Given that the number of respected positions in society cannot increase at the same rate as the supply of food, textbooks and vaccines, many “angry young men” find themselves in situations where their youthful anger spills over into violence.
There are too many of them demographically
They are unemployed or stuck in a disrespected, low-paying position,
They often do not have the opportunity to have a sexual life until their earnings allow them to start a family.
Religion and ideology in this case are secondary factors and are used only to give violence a semblance of legitimacy, but in themselves they cannot serve as a source of violence unless there is a preponderance of youth in the society. Accordingly, supporters of this theory consider “Christian” European colonialism and imperialism, as well as today’s “Islamic aggression” and terrorism, as a result of demographic imbalance. The Gaza Strip is a typical illustration of this phenomenon: increased aggressiveness of the population caused by an excess of young, unsettled men. By contrast, the situation can be compared with neighboring relatively peaceful Lebanon.
Another historical example where youth played a large role in uprisings and revolutions is the French Revolution of 1789. The economic depression in Germany played an important role in the emergence of Nazism. The Rwandan genocide in 1994 may also have been a consequence of the severe dominance of youth in society.
Despite the fact that the relationship between population growth and political stability has been known since the publication of Memorandum 200 national security(National Security Study Memorandum 200) in 1974, neither governments nor the World Health Organization implemented population control measures to prevent the terrorist threat. Prominent demographer Stephen D. Mumford attributes this to the influence of the Catholic Church.
The theory of youth predominance has become the object of statistical analysis by the World Bank Population Action International, and the Berlin Institute of Demography and Development (Berlin-Institut für Bevölkerung und Entwicklung). Detailed demographic data is available for most countries in the US Census Bureau's international database.
The theory of youth dominance has been criticized for its statements leading to racial, gender and age "discrimination".
Rationalist theories
Rationalistic theories assume that both sides in a conflict act rationally and are based on the desire to obtain the greatest benefit with the least loss on their part. Based on this, if both sides knew in advance how the war would end, then it would be better for them to accept the results of the war without battles and without unnecessary sacrifices. Rationalist theory puts forward three reasons why some countries are unable to reach an agreement among themselves and instead go to war: the problem of indivisibility, asymmetric information with deliberate misleading, and the inability to rely on the enemy's promises.
An indivisibility problem occurs when two parties cannot reach a mutual agreement through negotiation because the thing they seek to possess is indivisible and can only be owned by one of them. An example is the war over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
The problem of information asymmetry arises when two states cannot calculate in advance the likelihood of victory and reach an amicable agreement because each of them has military secrets. They can't open the cards because they don't trust each other. At the same time, each side tries to exaggerate its own strength in order to bargain for additional advantages. For example, Sweden tried to mislead the Nazis about its military capabilities by playing the "Aryan superiority" card and showing Hermann Göring elite troops dressed as regular soldiers.
The Americans decided to enter the Vietnam War knowing full well that the Communists would resist, but underestimating the ability of the guerrillas to resist the regular US Army.
Finally, negotiations to prevent war may fail due to the failure of states to comply with the rules of fair play. The two countries could have avoided war if they had stuck to the original agreements. But according to the deal, one party receives such privileges that it becomes more powerful and begins to demand more and more; As a result, the weaker side has no choice but to defend itself.
The rationalist approach can be criticized on many points. The assumption of mutual calculation of benefits and costs is questionable - for example, in cases of genocide during the Second World War, when the weaker party was left with no alternative. Rationalists believe that the state acts as a whole, united by one will, and the leaders of the state are reasonable and are able to objectively assess the likelihood of success or failure, which supporters of the behavioral theories mentioned above cannot agree with.
Rationalist theories generally apply well to game theory rather than to modeling the economic decisions that underlie any war.
Economic theories
Another school of thought holds that war can be seen as an increase in economic competition between countries. Wars begin as an attempt to control markets and natural resources and, as a result, wealth. Representatives of the ultra-right political circles, for example, argue that the strong have a natural right to everything that the weak are unable to keep. Some centrist politicians also rely on economic theory to explain wars.
“Is there in this world at least one man, one woman, even a child, who does not know that the causes of war in the modern world lie in industrial and commercial competition?” - Woodrow Wilson, September 11, 1919, St. Louis.
“I spent 33 years and four months in the military and for most of that time I worked as a high-class goon working for Big Business, Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I am a racketeer, a gangster of capitalism." - one of the highest-ranking and most decorated Marines (awarded two Medals of Honor) Major General Smedley Butler (the main candidate of the US Republican Party for the Senate) in 1935.
The problem with the economic theory of capitalism is that it is impossible to name a single major military conflict that was started by the so-called Big Business.
Marxist theory
The theory of Marxism proceeds from the fact that all wars in the modern world occur due to conflicts between classes and between imperialist forces. These wars are part of the natural development of the free market and they will disappear only when the World Revolution occurs.
The theory of the emergence of wars in political science
Statistical analysis The war was first taken up by World War I researcher Lewis Fry Richardson.
There are several different schools of international relations. Proponents of realism in international relations argue that the main motivation of states is their own security.
Another theory examines the issue of power in international relations and the Theory of Power Transition, which builds the world into a certain hierarchy and explains major wars as a challenge to the incumbent hegemon from a Great Power that is not subject to his control.
Objectivism position
Ayn Rand, the creator of Objectivism and advocate of rational individualism and laissez-faire capitalism, argued that if a person wants to oppose war, he must first oppose the state-controlled economy. She believed that there would be no peace on earth as long as people adhere to herd instincts and sacrifice individuals for the sake of the collective and its mythical “good.”
Goals of the parties in the war
The direct purpose of war is to impose one's will on the enemy. At the same time, the initiators of war often pursue indirect goals, such as: strengthening their internal political position (“small victorious war”), destabilizing the region as a whole, distracting and tying up enemy forces. In modern times, for the side that directly started the war, the goal is a world better than the pre-war one (Liddell-Hart, “The Strategy of Indirect Action”).
For the side experiencing aggression from the enemy who started the war, the goal of the war automatically becomes:
Ensuring your own survival;
Confronting an enemy who wants to impose his will;
Preventing relapse of aggression.
IN real life often there is no clear line between the attacking and defending sides, because both sides are on the verge of an open manifestation of aggression, and which of them will start on a large scale first is a matter of chance and adopted tactics. In such cases, the war goals of both sides are the same - imposing their will on the enemy in order to improve their pre-war position.
Based on the above, we can conclude that war can be:
Completely won by one of the warring parties - either the will of the aggressor is fulfilled, or, for the defending side, the attacks of the aggressor are successfully suppressed and his activity is suppressed;
The goals of neither side have been fully achieved - the will of the aggressor(s) has been fulfilled, but not completely;
Thus, World War II was won by the troops of the anti-Hitler coalition, since Hitler failed to achieve his goals, and the authorities and troops of Germany and its allies unconditionally capitulated and surrendered to the authorities of the victorious side.
The Iran-Iraq war was not won by anyone - because neither side was able to impose its will on the enemy, and by the end of the war, the position of the warring parties was not qualitatively different from the pre-war one, apart from being exhausted by the fighting of both states.
Consequences of the war
The negative consequences of wars, in addition to the loss of life, include the complex that is designated as a humanitarian catastrophe: famine, epidemics, population movements. Modern wars are associated with enormous human and material losses, with unprecedented destruction and disasters. For example, losses in the wars of European countries (killed and those who died from wounds and diseases) were: in the 17th century - 3.3 million people, in the 18th century - 5.4, in the 19th and early 20th centuries (before the First World War) - 5.7, in the First World War - over 9, in the Second World War (including those killed in fascist concentration camps) - over 50 million people.
The positive consequences of wars include the exchange of information (thanks to the Battle of Talas, the Arabs learned the secret of making paper from the Chinese) and “acceleration of the course of history” (left-wing Marxists consider war to be a catalyst for social revolution), as well as the removal of contradictions (war as a dialectical moment of negation in Hegel). Some researchers also consider the following factors to be positive for human society as a whole (not for humans):
War returns biological selection to human society, when the offspring are left by those most adapted to survival, since under normal conditions of the human community the effect of the laws of biology when choosing a partner is greatly weakened;
During hostilities, all prohibitions that are imposed on a person in society in normal times are lifted. As a consequence, war can be considered as a way and method of relieving psychological tension within an entire society.
Fear of imposing someone else's will, fear of danger is an exceptional incentive for technical progress. It is no coincidence that many new products are invented and appear first for military needs and only then find their application in peaceful life.
Improvement of international relations at the highest level and the appeal of the world community to such values as human life, peace, etc. in the post-war period. Example: the creation of the League of Nations and the UN as a reaction to the First and Second World Wars, respectively.
History of the Cold War
The Cold War was a global geopolitical, economic and ideological confrontation between Soviet Union and its allies, on the one hand, and the United States and its allies, on the other, lasting from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s. The reason for the confrontation was the fear of Western countries (primarily Great Britain and the USA) that part of Europe would fall under the influence of the USSR.
One of the main components of the confrontation was ideology. The deep contradiction between the capitalist and socialist models, the impossibility of convergence, in fact, is the main reason for the Cold War. The two superpowers, the winners of World War II, tried to rebuild the world according to their ideological principles. Over time, confrontation became an element of the ideology of the two sides and helped the leaders of military-political blocs consolidate allies around them “in the face of an external enemy.” The new confrontation required the unity of all members of the opposing blocs.
The expression “Cold War” was first used on April 16, 1947 by Bernard Baruch, adviser to US President Harry Truman, in a speech before the South Carolina House of Representatives.
The internal logic of the confrontation required the parties to participate in conflicts and interfere in the development of events in any part of the world. The efforts of the USA and the USSR were aimed primarily at dominating the military sphere. From the very beginning of the confrontation, the process of militarization of the two superpowers unfolded.
The USA and the USSR created their spheres of influence, securing them with military-political blocs - NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
The Cold War was accompanied by a race of conventional and nuclear arms that continually threatened to lead to a third world war. The most famous of such cases when the world found itself on the brink of disaster was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. In this regard, in the 1970s, both sides made efforts to “détente” international tensions and limit arms.
The growing technological lag of the USSR, along with stagnation Soviet economy and exorbitant military spending in the late 1970s - early 1980s, forced the Soviet leadership to take political and economic reforms. The policy of perestroika and glasnost announced by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 led to the loss of the leading role of the CPSU and also contributed to the economic collapse in the USSR. Ultimately, the USSR, burdened by an economic crisis, as well as social and interethnic problems, collapsed in 1991.
Periodization of the Cold War
Stage I - 1947-1955 - creation of a two-block system
Stage II - 1955-1962 - period of peaceful coexistence
Stage III - 1962-1979 - period of detente
Stage IV - 1979-1991 - arms race
Manifestations of the Cold War
Bipolar world in 1959
A bipolar world at the apogee of the Cold War (1980)
An acute political and ideological confrontation between the communist and Western liberal systems, which has engulfed almost the entire world;
creation of a system of military (NATO, Warsaw Pact Organization, SEATO, CENTO, ANZUS, ANZYUK) and economic (EEC, CMEA, ASEAN, etc.) alliances;
speeding up the arms race and military preparations;
a sharp increase in military spending;
periodically emerging international crises (Berlin Crisis, Cuban Missile Crisis, Korean War, Vietnam War, Afghan War);
the unspoken division of the world into “spheres of influence” of the Soviet and Western blocs, within which the possibility of intervention was tacitly allowed in order to maintain a regime pleasing to one or another bloc (Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Grenada, Vietnam, etc.)
the rise of the national liberation movement in colonial and dependent countries and territories (partly inspired from outside), the decolonization of these countries, the formation of the “Third World”, the Non-Aligned Movement, neo-colonialism;
creation of an extensive network of military bases (primarily the United States) on the territory of foreign countries;
waging a massive “psychological war”, the purpose of which was to propagate one’s own ideology and way of life, as well as to discredit the official ideology and way of life of the opposite bloc in the eyes of the population of “enemy” countries and the “Third World”. For this purpose, radio stations were created that broadcast to the territory of the countries of the “ideological enemy”, the production of ideologically oriented literature and periodicals was financed. foreign languages, the escalation of class, racial, and national contradictions was actively used.
reduction of economic and humanitarian ties between states with different socio-political systems.
boycotts of some Olympic Games. For example, the USA and a number of other countries boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. In response, the USSR and most socialist countries boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
In Eastern Europe, communist governments, having lost Soviet support, were removed even earlier, in 1989-1990. The Warsaw Pact officially ended on July 1, 1991, and from that moment the end of the Cold War can be counted.
The Cold War was a gigantic mistake that cost the world enormous effort and enormous material and human losses in the period 1945-1991. It is useless to find out who was more or less to blame for this, to blame or whitewash someone - politicians in both Moscow and Washington bear equal responsibility for this.
The beginning of Soviet-American cooperation did not foretell anything like this. President Roosevelt after the German attack on the USSR in June 1941. wrote that "this means the liberation of Europe from Nazi domination. At the same time, I do not think that we should worry about any possibility of Russian domination." Roosevelt believed that the great alliance of the victorious powers could continue to operate after the Second World War, subject to mutually acceptable norms of behavior, and he considered preventing mutual distrust between the allies to be one of his main tasks.
With the end of the war, the polarity of the world changed dramatically - the old colonial countries of Europe and Japan lay in ruins, but the Soviet Union and the United States moved forward, only marginally involved in world ratio forces up to this point and have now filled a kind of vacuum formed after the collapse of the Axis countries. And from that moment on, the interests of the two superpowers came into conflict - both the USSR and the USA sought to expand the limits of their influence as far as possible, a struggle began in all directions - in ideology, to win the minds and hearts of people; in an effort to get ahead in the arms race in order to talk to the other side from a position of strength; in economic indicators - to demonstrate the superiority of their social system; even in sports - as John Kennedy said, "a country's international prestige is measured by two things: nuclear missiles and Olympic gold medals."
The West won the Cold War, and the Soviet Union voluntarily lost it. Now, having dissolved the Warsaw Treaty Organization and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, broken the Iron Curtain and united Germany, destroyed a superpower and banned communism, Russia in the 21st century can be convinced that not any ideology, but only geopolitical interests prevail in Western political thinking. Having moved the borders of NATO close to the borders of Russia, placing its military bases in half of the republics former USSR, American politicians are increasingly turning to the rhetoric of the Cold War, demonizing Russia in the eyes of the world community. And yet I want to believe in the best - that the great powers of the East and West will not conflict, but cooperate, adequately solving all problems at the negotiating table, without any pressure and blackmail, which is what the greatest US president of the 20th century dreamed of. It seems that this is quite feasible - in the coming era of globalization, Russia is slowly but surely integrating into the world community, Russian companies are entering foreign markets, and Western corporations are coming to Russia, and only a nuclear war can prevent, for example, Google and Microsoft from developing their high-tech products, and Ford to manufacture its cars in Russia. Well, for millions of ordinary people in the world, the main thing is “that there is no war...” - neither hot nor cold.
A classic example of socio-political, economic and psychological antagonism is the Cold War. Having affected all spheres of social life, the Cold War is revealing its consequences even now, which determines the debate about the end of this phenomenon. We will not touch upon the issue of the end date of the Cold War, we will only try to understand chronological framework its beginning and outline our view of its essence.
Firstly, one cannot help but notice that history textbooks often contain the most opposing positions on certain issues. But among the dates that are contained in the vast majority of manuals, one can name the date of the beginning of the Cold War - March 6, 1946, Churchill’s speech in Fulton.
However, in our opinion, the beginning of the Cold War goes back to the revolutionary events in Russia associated with the coming to power of the Bolsheviks. Then it was just beginning to smolder on the planet, without flaring up into a full-scale conflict. This is confirmed by the statement of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G.V. Chicherin in response to V. Wilson’s remark that Soviet Russia would strive to enter the League of Nations, made at the Paris Peace Conference. He said the following: “Yes, she knocks, but not in order to get into the company of robbers who have discovered their predatory nature. It is knocking, the world workers' revolution is knocking. She knocks like an uninvited guest in Maeterlinck's play, whose invisible approach shackles hearts with chilling horror, whose steps are already understood on the stairs, accompanied by the clank of a scythe - she knocks, she is already entering, she is already sitting down at the table of a dumbfounded family, she is an uninvited guest - she is invisible death".
Absence diplomatic relations between Soviet Russia and the United States for 16 years after October 1917, reduced any communication between the two countries to a minimum, promoting the spread of directly opposed attitudes towards each other. In the USSR - at the philistine level - hostility towards the “country of capital and the oppression of workers” grew, and in the USA - again at the human level - interest and sympathy for the state of “workers and peasants” grew almost in direct proportion. However, the political trials carried out in the 30s against “enemies of the people” and constant violations by the authorities of civil rights and freedoms led to the formation and widespread dissemination of a sharply negative and extremely skeptical attitude not only towards the government of the USSR, but also towards communist ideology in general. It was at this time, we believe, that the Cold War developed in its ideological and political aspect. Domestic policy The Soviet Union led to a complete denial of socialist and communist ideals not only in the United States, but throughout the Western world. The situation was further aggravated by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, concluded between the Soviet government and Nazi Germany in August 1939. However, in general, the pre-war period did not provide economic opportunities - the Great Depression and forced industrialization and collectivization in the USSR - for both states to turn mutual hostility into any kind of hot conflict. And President Roosevelt quite adequately built his foreign policy line in relation to the country of the Soviets, although this was more likely due to national interest.
We see that at the beginning of the Cold War there were ideological contradictions. The Soviet state actively opposed the ideology of communism and socialism to the Western powers, former allies in the Entente. The thesis about class struggle and the impossibility of peaceful coexistence between states of two formations, put forward by the Bolsheviks, led to the gradual sliding of the world towards bipolar confrontation. On the American side, participation in the intervention against Soviet Russia was most likely caused by a reluctance to see the positions of Great Britain and France strengthened in Europe and Japan in the Far East. Thus, the pursuit of national interests on the one hand, which conflicted with the needs of the other, and the tenets of communist ideology laid the foundation new system relations between countries.
The development paths of the allies in World War II after the victory over Nazi Germany diverged; in addition, the leaders of the two countries, Truman and Stalin, did not trust each other at all. It was obvious that both the USA and the USSR would aggressively expand their sphere of influence, although, in view of the emergence of nuclear weapons, by non-military means, since the use of the latter would result in the death of humanity or most of it.
The post-war world opened up vast expanses of rivalry for the USA and the USSR, which often turned into veiled diplomatic language, or even open hostility. Second half of the 40s - early 60s. Not only did they not resolve the disputes that already existed by that time, but they also added new ones. The mere fact that the main languages have been enriched with a huge number of terms and concepts regarding relations between the Soviet Union and the United States from the very beginning of the Cold War eloquently testifies to the real tension of the international situation: “iron curtain”, “nuclear diplomacy”, “power politics” , “brinksmanship”, “domino principle”, “liberation doctrine”, “captive nations”, “crusade for freedom”, “doctrine of rolling back communism”, “strategy of massive retaliation”, “nuclear umbrella”, “missile shield” ”, “missile gap”, “flexible response strategy”, “escalatory dominance”, “bloc diplomacy” - about forty-five in total.
The Cold War system includes everything: economic, political, intelligence war. But the main war, in our opinion, is a psychological war, only victory in it is a real victory. A victory, the fruits of which can really be used when building a new world order. Countries built their internal and foreign policy lines based on, some of them, anti-Soviet and anti-communist attitudes, others based on the postulate of hostility of imperialist circles. The practice of escalating the situation in public opinion was actively used. Governments have actively used a variety of means to “throw mud at each other,” including such a powerful lever of pressure as education. The Cold War was (and still is) taught in a very one-sided way, both in one country and in another. However, the rudiment of this phenomenon remains the fact that we still cannot abandon the negative attitude towards Western countries in the education system. Many aspects general history We continue to view the history of the Fatherland through the prism of ideological prejudices, bias, from the position of the antinomy “not like ours means bad.”
To sum up, we can say that the Cold War is a rather eloquent historical phenomenon. Using her example, you can show a lot, illustrate the various trends of our time. In addition, studying the Cold War brings us closer to a more objective assessment of history, which in turn should provide a more objective assessment of modern events.
War time
Wartime is a period when a state is at war with another state. In time of war, martial law is introduced in the country or in its individual regions.
The beginning of wartime is the declaration of a state of war or the moment of the actual start of hostilities.
The end of wartime is the declared day and hour of the cessation of hostilities.
Wartime is a period when a state is at war with another country. A state of war arises from the moment it is declared by the highest body of state power or from the moment the actual outbreak of hostilities.
Wartime is the special conditions of life of the state and society associated with the occurrence of a force majeure circumstance - war.
Each state is obliged to fulfill its functions to protect its citizens from external threats. In turn, to perform these functions, the laws of all countries provide for the expansion of the powers of the state while simultaneously limiting the rights and freedoms of citizens.
Legal consequences
In accordance with the Federal Law “On Defense” in the Russian Federation, a state of war is declared by federal law in the event of an armed attack on the Russian Federation by another state or group of states, as well as in the event of the need to implement international treaties of the Russian Federation. From the moment the state of war is declared or the actual start of hostilities, war time begins, which expires from the moment the cessation of hostilities is declared, but not earlier than their actual cessation.
Emergency measures aimed at the defense of the country related to the restriction of civil liberties are taken by all states. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln temporarily abolished fundamental civil rights. Woodrow Wilson did the same after the outbreak of World War I and Franklin Roosevelt did the same during World War II.
Economic consequences
The economic consequences of wartime are characterized by excessive spending state budget for defense needs. All the country's resources are directed to meeting the needs of the army. Gold and foreign exchange reserves are put into circulation, the use of which is highly undesirable for the state. As a rule, these measures lead to hyperinflation.
Social consequences
The social consequences of wartime are characterized, first of all, by a significant deterioration in the standard of living of the population. The transition of the economy to fulfill military needs requires the maximum concentration of economic potential in the military sector. This entails an outflow of funds from social sphere. In conditions of extreme necessity, in the absence of the ability to ensure commodity-money turnover, the food system can switch to a rationing basis with a strictly metered supply of products per person.
Declaration of war
The declaration of war is expressed in a special kind of solemn actions, indicating that the peace between these states has been broken and an armed struggle between them is imminent. The declaration of war has already been recognized in ancient times as an act required by national morality. The methods of declaring war are very different. At first they are symbolic in nature. The ancient Athenians, before starting a war, threw a spear at the enemy country. The Persians demanded land and water as a sign of submission. The declaration of war in Ancient Rome, where the performance of these rituals was entrusted to the so-called fetials. In medieval Germany, the act of declaring war was called "Absagung" (Diffidatio).
According to the prevailing views among the French, it was considered necessary that at least 90 days should elapse from the moment of declaration of war to the start of it. Later, namely from the 17th century, the declaration of war was expressed in the form of special manifestos, but very often the clash began without prior notification (Seven Years' War). Before the war, Napoleon I issued a proclamation only for his troops. Special acts of declaration of war have now fallen out of use. Usually a war is preceded by a break in diplomatic relations between states. So, Russian government did not send a formal declaration of war to the Sultan in 1877 (Russian-Turkish War 1877-1878), but limited itself to informing the Porte, through its charge d'affaires, that diplomatic relations between Russia and Turkey were interrupted. Sometimes the moment of the outbreak of war is determined in advance in the form of an ultimatum, which declares that failure to comply with this requirement within a certain period will be considered a legal reason for war (the so-called casus belli).
Constitution Russian Federation does not grant any government agency the right to declare war; the president only has the power to declare martial law in the event of aggression or threat of aggression (defensive war).
Martial law
Martial law is a special legal regime in a state or part of it, which is established by a decision of the highest body of state power in the event of aggression against the state or an immediate threat of aggression.
Martial law usually provides for significant restrictions on certain rights and freedoms of citizens, including such basic ones as freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, the right to trial, the right to inviolability of property, etc. In addition, judicial and executive powers may be transferred to military courts and military command.
The procedure for introducing and the regime of Martial Law are determined by law. On the territory of the Russian Federation, the procedure for introducing, enforcing and canceling the martial law regime is defined in the federal constitutional law “On Martial Law”.
Transfer of the armed forces to martial law
Transfer to martial law - First stage strategic deployment Armed Forces, the process of their reorganization in accordance with the requirements of war. Includes bringing the armed forces into higher degrees combat readiness with their mobilization, bringing formations, formations and units to full combat readiness.
It can be carried out in stages or one-time, for all armed forces or parts of them, by region and direction. The decision on these actions is made by the highest political leadership of the state and is implemented through the Ministry of Defense.
A state of war entails a number of legal consequences: termination of diplomatic and other relations between the warring states, termination of international treaties, etc.
In wartime, certain criminal legal acts, or parts of these regulations, come into force, tightening liability for certain crimes. At the same time, the fact of committing a crime in wartime is a qualifying feature of certain military crimes.
According to Part 1 of Art. 331 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation criminal liability for crimes against military service committed in wartime or in a combat situation is determined by wartime legislation of the Russian Federation.
In exceptionally difficult circumstances, changes in criminal proceedings or the complete abolition of individual stages are possible. Thus, in besieged Leningrad during the blockade, a resolution of local authorities was in force, ordering law enforcement agencies to shoot looters, robbers and robbers detained at the scene of a crime. Thus, the entire criminal process was limited to two stages - detention and execution of punishment, bypassing the preliminary investigation, court hearing, appeal and cassation proceedings.
Martial Law is a special state-legal regime temporarily introduced by the highest state authority in the country or its individual parts in an emergency; characterized by the introduction of special (emergency) measures in the interests of protecting the state. The most significant features of Martial Law: expansion of the powers of military command and control bodies; imposing on citizens a number of additional responsibilities related to the defense of the country; restriction of the rights and freedoms of citizens and people. In areas declared under Martial Law, all functions of state power in the field of defense, ensuring public safety and public order are transferred to military authorities. They are given the right to impose on citizens and legal entities additional duties (involve in labor conscription, confiscate vehicles for defense needs, etc.), regulate public order in accordance with the requirements of the social situation (limit street traffic, prohibit entry and exit into areas declared under Martial Law, regulate the operating hours of enterprises and institutions and etc.). For disobedience to these bodies, for crimes directed against the security of the country and damaging its defense, if they are committed in areas declared under Martial Law, the perpetrators are held accountable under martial law. In accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, Martial Law is introduced on the territory of the Russian Federation or in some of its localities in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation or an immediate threat of aggression by the President of the Russian Federation with immediate notification of the Federation Council and the State Duma. Approval of decrees on the introduction of Martial Law falls within the competence of the Federation Council. -Shapinsky V.I.
Street fight and others.
Combat is a military and universal concept that describes emergency armed confrontation between groups of people specially trained for this (usually parts of the regular armed forces of national states).
Military science understands combat operations as the organized use of forces and means to carry out assigned combat missions by units, formations and associations of branches of the Armed Forces (that is, waging war at the operational, operational-tactical and tactical levels of the organization).
Waging war at a higher, strategic level of an organization is called warfare. Thus, combat operations are included in military operations as an integral part - for example, when a front conducts military operations in the form of a strategic offensive operation, the armies and corps that are part of the front conduct military operations in the form of offensives, envelopments, raids, and so on.
Battle - an armed engagement (clash, battle, battle) between two or more parties who are at war with each other. The name of the battle usually comes from the area where it took place.
In the military history of the 20th century, the concept of battle describes the totality of battles of individual battalions as part of an overall major operation, for example the Battle of Kursk. Battles differ from battles in their scale and often their decisive role in the outcome of the war. Their duration could reach several months, and their geographical extent could be tens and hundreds of kilometers.
In the Middle Ages, battles tended to be one connected event and lasted a few days at most. The battle took place in a compact area, usually in open areas, which could be fields or, in some cases, frozen lakes. The places of battles were imprinted in the people's memory for a long time; monuments were often erected on them and a special emotional connection was felt with them.
Since the middle of the 19th century, the concepts of “battle,” “battle,” and “operation” have often been used as synonyms. For example: Battle of Borodino and Battle of Borodino.
Combat is the main active form of action by military units (subunits, units, formations) on a tactical scale, an organized armed conflict limited in area and time. It is a set of strikes, fire and maneuvers of troops coordinated in terms of target, place and time.
The battle can be defensive or offensive.
Military blockade is military action aimed at isolating an enemy object by cutting off its external connections. The military blockade is intended to prevent or minimize the transfer of reinforcements, the delivery of military equipment and logistics, and the evacuation of valuables.
The objects of a military blockade can be:
individual states
cities, fortified areas, points of strategic and operational importance with military garrisons,
large groupings of troops in theaters of war and the armed forces as a whole
economic regions
straits, bays
naval bases, ports.
The blockade of a city or fortress with the intention of subsequently capturing this object is called a siege.
Objectives of the military blockade:
undermining the military-economic power of the state
depletion of forces and means of the blocked group of enemy armed forces
creating favorable conditions for its subsequent defeat
forcing the enemy to surrender
prohibition of the transfer of enemy forces to other directions.
The blockade can be complete or partial, carried out on a strategic and operational scale. A blockade carried out on a tactical scale is called a blockade. A strategic military blockade may be accompanied by an economic blockade.
Depending on the geographical location the object of the blockade and the forces and means involved, the blockade can be land, air, sea or mixed.
The ground blockade is carried out by ground forces in cooperation with aviation and air defense forces. Land blockades were already used in wars of the ancient world - for example, in the Trojan War. In the 17th-19th centuries it was often used to capture powerful fortresses.
An air blockade is usually part of a land and sea blockade, but if air power plays a decisive role, it is called an air blockade. An air blockade is carried out by aviation forces and air defense forces in order to suppress or minimize external communications of the blocked object by air (in order to prevent the receipt of material resources and reinforcements, as well as evacuation by air) by destroying enemy aircraft both in the air and at landing airfields and takeoff. In coastal areas, an air blockade is usually combined with a sea blockade.
The naval blockade is carried out by the actions of the Navy - surface ships, submarines, carrier-based and base aviation - patrolling approaches to the coast, installing minefields in the areas of ports, naval bases, on sea (ocean) communications, launching missile and bomb air and artillery strikes against important ground targets, as well as the destruction of all enemy ships at sea and at bases, and aviation in the air and at airfields.
Sabotage (from Latin diversio - deviation, distraction) - actions of sabotage groups (units) or individuals behind enemy lines to disable military, industrial and other facilities, disrupt command and control, destroy communications, nodes and communication lines, destroy manpower and military equipment, impact on the moral and psychological state of the enemy.
Ambush is a hunting technique; advance and carefully camouflaged placement of a military unit (hunter or partisans) on the most likely routes of movement of the enemy in order to defeat him with a surprise attack, capture prisoners and destroy military equipment; in the activities of law enforcement agencies - the secret placement of a capture group at the place where the criminal is expected to appear for the purpose of detaining him.
A counteroffensive is a type of offensive - one of the main types of military operations (along with defense and oncoming combat). A distinctive feature from a simple offensive is that the side intending to launch a large-scale counterattack first exhausts the enemy as much as possible, knocking out the most combat-ready and mobile units from his ranks, while using all the advantages that a pre-prepared and targeted position provides.
During the offensive, troops, unexpectedly for the enemy, seize the initiative and impose their will on the enemy. The greatest consequences for the enemy come from the fact that, unlike defense, where rear units are pulled away from the front line, the advancing enemy pulls them as close as possible in order to be able to supply his advancing troops. When the enemy’s onslaught is stopped and units of the defenders go on a counter-offensive, the rear units of the attackers find themselves defenseless and most often end up in a “cauldron”.
Counterstrike is a strike delivered by troops of an operational formation (front, army, army corps) in a defensive operation to defeat a group of enemy troops that has penetrated into the depths of the defense, restore the lost position and create favorable conditions for launching a counteroffensive.
It can be carried out in one or several directions by forces of the second echelons, operational reserves, part of the forces of the first echelon, as well as by troops withdrawn from secondary sectors of the front. It is supported by the main aviation forces and a specially created artillery group. In the direction of the counterattack, airborne assault forces can be landed and raid detachments can be used. As a rule, it is applied to the flanks of a wedged enemy group.
It can be carried out directly against the main forces of the advancing enemy in order to dissect them and oust them from the occupied area. In any conditions, the counterattack should, if possible, be based on those sections of the front where the enemy is stopped or detained. If this is not possible, the beginning of a counterattack takes the form of an oncoming battle.
Offensive is the main type of military action (along with defense and counter combat), based on the attacking actions of the armed forces. It is used to defeat the enemy (destroy manpower, military equipment, infrastructure) and capture important areas, borders and objects on enemy territory.
Counteroffensive near Moscow, 1941
In accordance with the military doctrines of most states and military blocs, the offensive, as a type of military action, is given preference over defensive military actions.
An offensive consists of striking the enemy with various military means on land, in the air and at sea, destroying the main groupings of his troops and decisively using the success achieved by rapidly advancing one’s troops and enveloping the enemy. The scale of the offensive can be strategic, operational and tactical.
The offensive is carried out with full effort, at a high tempo, non-stop day and night, in any weather, with close cooperation of all units
During the offensive, troops seize the initiative and impose their will on the enemy. The goal of the offensive is to achieve a certain success, to consolidate which a transition to defense or an offensive on other sectors of the front is possible.
Defense is a type of military action based on the protective actions of the armed forces. It is used to disrupt or stop the enemy’s offensive, to hold important areas, boundaries and objects on one’s territory, to create conditions for going on the offensive, and for other purposes.
Consists of defeating the enemy with fire (in nuclear war and nuclear) strikes, repelling his fire and nuclear strikes, offensive actions taken on the ground, in the air and at sea, countering the enemy’s attempts to seize held lines, areas, objects, defeating his invading groups of troops .
Defense can have strategic, operational and tactical significance. Defense is organized in advance or is carried out as a result of enemy troops going on the offensive. Usually, along with repelling enemy attacks, defense also includes elements of offensive actions (inflicting retaliatory, oncoming and preemptive fire strikes, conducting counterstrikes and counterattacks, defeating the attacking enemy in the areas of his base, deployment and initial lines), the proportion of which characterizes the level her activity.
IN ancient world and in the Middle Ages fortified cities, fortresses, and castles were used for defense. With the equipping of armies (from the 14th-15th centuries) with firearms, the construction of field defensive fortifications began, mainly earthen ones, which were used to fire at the enemy and shelter from his cannonballs and bullets. The appearance in the mid-19th century of rifled weapons, which had a higher rate of fire and greater firing range, necessitated the need to improve methods of defense. To increase its stability, the battle formations of troops began to be echeloned in depth.
A siege is a prolonged military blockade of a city or fortress with the intention of capturing the object by subsequent assault or forcing the garrison to capitulate as a result of exhaustion of its forces. The siege begins subject to resistance from the city or fortress, if capitulation is rejected by the defenders and the city or fortress cannot be captured quickly. The besiegers usually completely blockade the objective, disrupting the supply of ammunition, food, water and other resources. During a siege, attackers may use siege weapons and artillery to destroy fortifications and make tunnels to penetrate the site. The emergence of siege as a method of warfare is associated with the development of cities. During excavations of ancient cities in the Middle East, signs of defensive structures in the form of walls were discovered. During the Renaissance and early modern period, siege was the main method of warfare in Europe. Leonardo da Vinci's fame as a creator of fortifications is commensurate with his fame as an artist. Medieval military campaigns relied heavily on the success of sieges. During the Napoleonic era, the use of more powerful artillery weapons led to a decrease in the importance of fortifications. By the beginning of the 20th century, the fortress walls were replaced with moats, and the fortress castles were replaced with bunkers. In the 20th century, the meaning of the classical siege almost disappeared. With the advent of mobile warfare, a single, heavily fortified fortress is no longer as crucial as it once was. The siege method of warfare has exhausted itself with the advent of the possibility of delivering huge volumes of destructive means to a strategic target.
Retreat is a forced or deliberate abandonment by troops of occupied lines (areas) and their withdrawal to new lines deep within their territory in order to create a new grouping of forces and assets for subsequent combat operations. The retreat is carried out on an operational and strategic scale.
Troops were forced to resort to retreat in many wars of the past. Thus, in the Patriotic War of 1812, Russian troops under the command of M.I. Kutuzov deliberately retreated from Moscow in order to replenish the army and prepare a counteroffensive. In the same war, Napoleon's army was forced to retreat from Moscow to Smolensk and Vilna in order to avoid defeat from attacks by Russian troops.
In the first period of the Great Patriotic War, Soviet troops, conducting active defensive actions, were forced to retreat in order to withdraw units and formations from the attacks of superior enemy forces and gain time to create a stable defense with the forces of strategic reserves and retreating troops. The retreat was carried out mainly in an organized manner, on the orders of the senior commander. To ensure the exit of the main forces from the battle against the most threatening enemy groupings, air and artillery strikes were usually carried out, measures were taken to covertly withdraw the main forces to lines advantageous for conducting defensive operations, and counterattacks (counterstrikes) were launched against the enemy groupings that had broken through. The retreat usually ended with the troops moving to the defensive at the specified line.
11.5 Naval warfarePrisoners of war
Prisoner of war is the name given to a person captured by the enemy during a war with weapons in his hands. According to existing military laws, a prisoner of war who surrenders voluntarily to avoid danger does not deserve leniency. According to our military regulations on punishments, the leader of a detachment who lays down his weapon in front of the enemy or concludes capitulation with him, without fulfilling his duty according to duty and in accordance with the requirements of military honor, is expelled from service and deprived of ranks; If the surrender is made without a fight, despite the opportunity to defend oneself, then one is subject to the death penalty. The commandant of a fortified place who surrenders it without fulfilling his duty in accordance with the duty of the oath and in accordance with the requirements of military honor is subject to the same execution. V.’s fate at different times and in different countries was not the same. The barbarian peoples of antiquity and the Middle Ages often killed all prisoners without exception; The Greeks and Romans, although they did not do this, turned captives into slavery and released them only for a ransom corresponding to the rank of the captive. With the spread of Christianity and enlightenment, the fate of V. began to become easier. Officers are sometimes released on their word of honor that during the war or a certain time they will not fight against the state in which they were captured. Anyone who breaks his word is considered dishonest and may be executed if captured again. According to Austrian and Prussian laws, officers who escaped from captivity contrary to their word of honor are dismissed from service. Captured lower ranks are sometimes used for government work, which, however, should not be directed against their fatherland. V.'s property, excluding weapons, is considered inviolable. During a war, military units can be exchanged with the consent of the warring parties, and usually an equal number of persons of the same rank are exchanged. At the end of the war, V. are released to their homeland without any ransom for them.
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation include the ground forces, air force, navy, as well as such individual branches of the military as space and airborne troops and the Strategic Missile Forces. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are one of the most powerful in the world, numbering more than a million personnel, distinguished by the presence of the world's largest arsenal of nuclear weapons and a well-developed system of means of delivering them to targets.
The Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is the President of the Russian Federation (Part 1, Article 87 of the Russian Constitution).
In the event of aggression against the Russian Federation or an immediate threat of aggression, he introduces martial law on the territory of the Russian Federation or in certain localities in order to create conditions for its reflection or prevention, with immediate notification of this to the Federation Council and the State Duma for approval of the corresponding decree (regime martial law is determined by federal constitutional law of January 30, 2002 No. 1-FKZ “On martial law”). To resolve the issue of the possibility of using the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation outside the territory of the Russian Federation, a corresponding resolution of the Federation Council is necessary.
The President of Russia also forms and heads the Security Council of the Russian Federation (clause “g” of Article 83 of the Constitution); approves the military doctrine of the Russian Federation (clause “z” of Article 83); appoints and dismisses the high command of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (clause “l” of Article 83).
Direct leadership of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (except for civil defense troops, border and internal troops) is exercised by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
History of the Russian army
Army Ancient Rus'
Army of Muscovite Rus'
Army Russian Empire
White Army
USSR Armed Forces
History of the Red Army
Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
Armed Forces of Belarus
Armed Forces of Ukraine
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had Armed Forces common to all republics (including the RSFSR), in contrast to the departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation were organized on May 7, 1992 by decree of the President of the Russian Federation B.N. Yeltsin as the successor to the Soviet Army and Navy. On December 15, 1993, the Charter of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation was adopted.
The peacekeeping forces of the Russian Army took part in containing a number of armed conflicts on the territory of the former USSR: the Moldavian-Transnistrian conflict, the Georgian-Abkhazian and the Georgian-South Ossetian.
The 201st Motorized Rifle Division was left in Tajikistan in the conditions of the beginning civil war 1992-1996
The question of the neutrality of Russia's role in these conflicts is debatable; in particular, Russia is reproached for actually siding with Armenia in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Supporters of this point of view prevail in Western countries, which are increasing pressure on Russia to withdraw troops from Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Proponents of the opposite point of view point out that Western countries are thus pursuing their national interests, fighting the growing influence of Russia in Armenia, Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where pro-Russian sentiments have won.
The Russian army took part in two Chechen wars - 1994-96 ("restoration of constitutional order") and 1999-actually until 2006 ("counter-terrorism operation") - and in the war in South Ossetia in August 2008 ("Peace Enforcement Operation") .
Structure of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
Air Force
Ground troops
Navy
Branches of the Armed Forces
Space Force
Airborne troops
The Armed Forces consist of three branches of the Armed Forces, three branches of the armed forces, the Logistics of the Armed Forces, the Cantonment and Accommodation Service of the Ministry of Defense, railway troops and other troops not included in the branches of the Armed Forces.
According to press reports, conceptual documents of long-term planning, which are being developed by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, provide for the solution of a number of fundamental tasks in the field of defense and military development:
Preserving the potential of strategic deterrent forces capable of causing damage in response, the extent of which would call into question the achievement of the goal of any possible aggression against Russia. The way to solve the problem is the balanced development and maintenance of a sufficient level of combat strength of the strategic nuclear forces and missile and space defense forces. By 2010, Russia's Strategic Missile Forces will have two missile armies with 10-12 missile divisions (as of 2004 - three armies and 17 divisions), armed with mobile and silo missile systems. At the same time, heavy 15A18 missiles equipped with ten warheads will remain on combat duty until 2016. The Navy should be armed with 13 strategic nuclear missile submarines with 208 ballistic missiles, and the Air Force should be armed with 75 Tu-160 and Tu-95MS strategic bombers;
Increasing the capabilities of the Armed Forces to a level that ensures a guaranteed response to current and possible future military threats to Russia. To this end, self-sufficient groups of troops and forces will be created in five potentially dangerous strategic directions (Western, South-West, Central Asian, South-East and Far East), designed to neutralize and localize armed conflicts;
Improving the structure of military command. Starting from 2005, the functions of combat employment of troops and forces will be transferred to the General Staff. The main commands of the branches and branches of the armed forces will be responsible only for the training of their troops, their development and comprehensive support;
Ensuring the independence of Russia in terms of the development and production of weapons and military equipment of strategic importance.
Approved in 2006 Government program weapons development for 2007-2015.
Sources
glossary.ru - Service of thematic explanatory dictionaries Glossary
krugosvet.ru - online encyclopedia Around the World
wikipedia - the free encyclopedia Wikipedia
falange.ru – Great historical battles and wars
FINANCIAL ACADEMY
UNDER THE GOVERNMENT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Department of Philosophy
Abstract on the topic:
Problems of war and peace in various philosophical and historical periods
student group K-1-6
Danilova E. E.
Assoc. Ioseliani Ya. D.
Introduction 3
I. The concept of war. Relationship between military and political goals 4
1. Clausewitz’s philosophical teaching on war. Inevitability
hostilities 4
II. Views on the war in historical perspective 6
1. Antiquity 6
2. Problems of the world and the Christian religion 7
III. New approaches to the philosophical problem of war and peace 8
1. Age of Enlightenment 8
2. Modernity 11
Conclusion 12
List of used literature 14
Introduction
On May 9, 1995, Russia solemnly celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Today, rethinking history, we must bow our heads before the greatest sacrifices made by our people in the bloodiest war that humanity has ever known. We should pay tribute to the memory of the Soviet soldier who liberated the world from fascist aggression, and to the citizens of the country who worked in the rear for the benefit of victory.
These days, all people on the planet remembered the horrors of war and fully felt the evil that it brings. The memory of this is still alive, but, unfortunately, wars are still being waged on earth, they have not disappeared, they have not become a thing of the past. The real military conflict in Russia, a country that has experienced the hardships and burdens of civil and world wars, makes us think with pain about the necessity and inevitability of war as such, the age-old contradiction between war and peace.
I. The concept of war. Relationship between military and political goals
1. Clausewitz’s philosophical teaching on war.
The inevitability of hostilities
Very interesting, in my opinion, are the ideas put forward in the book “On War” by Carl von Clausewitz. Brought up under the influence of the German school of philosophy, and especially Hegel, he developed theories about war and the influence of politics on it.
Consider his definition of war. The philosopher wrote: “If we want to grasp in thought as one whole all the countless martial arts that make up war, then it is best to imagine a fight between two fighters. Each of them seeks, through physical violence, to force the other to carry out his will; his immediate goal is to crush the enemy and thereby make him incapable of any further resistance.”
So, war, according to Clausewitz, is an act of violence aimed at forcing the enemy to carry out our will. Violence uses the inventions of art and the discoveries of science to resist violence. The imperceptible, scarcely worth mentioning restrictions which it imposes on itself in the form of customs of international law accompany violence without, in essence, weakening its effect.
In addition to martial arts, Clausewitz is characterized by another comparison of war: “Combat in large and small operations is the same as paying cash in bill transactions: no matter how distant this payment is, no matter how rarely the moment of implementation comes, someday its hour will come. ”
Next, Clausewitz introduces two concepts that, in his opinion, are necessary for the analysis of war: “the political purpose of war” and “the purpose of military action.” The political object of war, as the original motive, must be a very significant factor: the less sacrifice we demand from our enemy, the less resistance we can expect from him. But the more insignificant our demands, the weaker our preparation will be. Further, the more insignificant our political goal, the less value it has for us and the easier it is to refuse to achieve it, and therefore our efforts will be less significant.
Indeed, one and the same political goal can have very different effects not only on different peoples, but also on the same people in different eras. Between two peoples, two states, there may be such tension in relations that a completely insignificant political reason for war in itself will cause tension that far exceeds the significance of this reason and will lead to a genuine explosion.
Sometimes a political goal may coincide with a military one, for example, the conquest of certain areas; sometimes a political goal will not in itself be suitable to serve as an expression of the purpose of military action. The political goal is all the more decisive for the scale of the war, the more indifferent the latter masses are and the less strained the relations between the two states are in other matters."
In his book, Clausewitz analyzes the connection between war and politics. He believes that War in human society - the war of entire nations, and, moreover, civilized peoples - always stems from a political situation and is caused only by political motives. War, in his opinion, is not only a political act, but also a genuine instrument of politics, the continuation of political relations, their implementation in other ways. What remains original in it relates only to the originality of its means.
Thus, taking into account the validity and general acceptance of the connection between war and politics and summing up the above, it seems possible to draw the following conclusion: if war is, essentially, a continuation of politics, its final argument, then there are no inevitable wars, just as there is no only true political lines.
II. Views on the war in historical perspective
1. Antiquity
The dream of peace accompanied man at all levels of civilization, starting from his very first steps. The ideal of a life without war, when generally accepted norms of justice would be observed in international relations, dates back to ancient times. Already in ancient philosophers one can see ideas of peace, however, this issue was considered only as a problem of relations between Greek states. Ancient philosophers sought only to eliminate internecine wars. Thus, in the plan of the ideal state proposed by Plato, there are no internal military clashes, but honors are given to those who distinguished themselves in the “second greatest form of war” - in the war with external enemies. Aristotle’s point of view on this topic is similar: the ancient Greeks saw foreigners as enemies and considered them and everything that belonged to them good prey if it could be captured. The reasons for this are believed to lie in the level of economic development of society. From here there is a direct transition to the problem of slavery.
For the thinkers of this era, slavery was a natural and even progressive phenomenon. Aristotle, for example, considered it a socially necessary institution. The sources of slaves were prisoners of war, as well as free people who were enslaved for debt (though their situation was easier), and children born to slaves. And if so, then a foreign policy aimed at seizing more and more territories and enslaving new millions of foreigners cannot be approved. Therefore, the overwhelming majority of thinkers considered it legitimate to wage wars against other nations, because war was the main source of slave power, without which a slave-owning economy could not exist. Heraclitus, for example, argued that “war is the father and mother of everything; it determined some to be gods, others people; some it made slaves, others free.” Aristotle wrote: “...if the weavers’ shuttles themselves wove, and the plectrums themselves played the cithara (implying the absurdity of such an assumption), then architects would not need workers, and masters would not need slaves.”
The Roman Empire had a similar attitude towards slavery: the Romans called everything barbaric that was not Roman, and said: “For barbarians, chains or death.” The call of the ancient Roman thinker Cicero “Let the weapon give way to the toga,” that is, let the civil power decide not by military force, but was not actually applied to the barbarians.
2. Problems of the world and the Christian religion
If we look at the question of a world without wars from the point of view christian church, then one can see some duality here. On the one hand, the fundamental commandment “Thou shalt not kill” declared the taking of a person’s life to be the most serious sin. The Church suppressed internecine wars during the Middle Ages, which was well reflected, for example, in the history of Rus'. Thus, the Kiev prince Vladimir Monomakh persuaded the Russian princes not to shed Christian blood during Lent. Christianity was the initiator of the establishment of the so-called Peace of God (Pax Treuga Dei) - the days when civil strife ceased. These days were associated with mythical events from the life of Christ, with the most important religious holidays; military operations were also not carried out on the days designated by the church for reflection and prayer during the period of Christmas Eve and Lent.
Violation of the Peace of God was punishable by fines, including confiscation of property, excommunication and even corporal punishment. The protection of the World of God primarily included churches, monasteries, chapels, travelers, women, as well as items necessary for agriculture.
At the same time, the preaching of universal peace did not prevent the Christian Church from consecrating numerous wars of conquest, Crusades against the “infidels”, suppression of peasant movements. Thus, criticism of war at that time was limited to ethical ideas Christian doctrine, and the ideal of universal peace remained peace among the Christian peoples of Europe.
III. New approaches to a philosophical problem
war and peace
1. Age of Enlightenment
Young bourgeois humanism spoke a new word about peace. His era was the time of the formation of capitalist relations. The process of initial accumulation of capital in blood fit into the history of not only Europe, but the entire planet. The expropriation of land and tools from the broad masses of the people, colonial robberies and conquests in America and Africa created the conditions for the emergence and development of the capitalist mode of production. National states were also created by force of arms. At the same time, the young bourgeoisie was to a certain extent interested in maintaining peace, ending feudal strife, and developing domestic and international trade. She created national markets, began to connect economic ties all parts of the globe into one world market.
The focus of the progressive thinkers of this era was on man, his liberation from the shackles of feudal dependence, from the oppression of the church and social injustice. The problem of understanding the conditions for the harmonious development of personality naturally led humanists to raise the question of eliminating the greatest evil from people’s lives - war. A remarkable feature of the humanistic teachings of the Enlightenment was the condemnation of war as the greatest disaster for nations.
The birth of the idea of eternal peace was undoubtedly facilitated by the transformation of war into an increasingly greater threat to the peoples of Europe. The improvement of weapons, the creation of massive armies and military coalitions, many years of wars that continued to tear European countries apart on an even wider scale than before, forced thinkers almost for the first time to think about the problem of relations between states and to look for ways to normalize them, which, according to
in my opinion, is the first distinctive feature of the approach to the problem of peace at that time. The second thing that first appeared then was the establishment of a connection between politics and wars.
The ideologists of the Enlightenment raised the question of such a structure of society, the cornerstone of which would be political freedom and civil equality, and opposed the entire feudal system with its system of class privileges. Outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment defended the possibility of establishing eternal peace, but they expected it not so much from the creation of a special political combination of states, but from the ever-increasing spiritual unity of the entire civilized world and the solidarity of economic interests.
The French enlightenment philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau in his treatise “Judgement on Perpetual Peace” writes that wars, conquests and the strengthening of despotism are mutually related and contribute to each other, that in a society divided into rich and poor, into the dominant and the oppressed, private interests, then there are interests of those in power that contradict the general interests - the interests of the people. He associated the idea of universal peace with the armed overthrow of the power of rulers, because they are not interested in maintaining peace. The views of another French educator, Denis Diderot, are similar. Voltaire, on the other hand, feared the movement of the lower classes and thought of changes in social life in the form of a revolution from above, carried out by an “enlightened” monarch in the interests of the nation.
The views of representatives of the German classical school of philosophy are interesting. I. Kant was the first to express a guess about the objective regularity leading to the establishment of eternal peace, about the inevitability of creating a union of peoples on a peaceful basis. The same thing happens here as with individuals uniting into a state in order to prevent mutual extermination. States will be forced “to enter into a union of peoples, where each, even the smallest, state could expect its security and rights not from its own forces, but exclusively from such a great union of peoples.” Kant examines the problems of relationships between independent states in his treatise “Towards Eternal Peace.”
Kant constructs his treatise in the form of an agreement, parodying the corresponding diplomatic documents. First preliminary articles, then “final” and even one “secret”. The “final” articles of the Kantian project are about ensuring the achieved peace. The civil structure in every state must be republican. The second "final" article of the treaty of perpetual peace defines the basis on which international law, namely: an international union of states where a structure similar to a civil society is implemented, in which the rights of all its members are guaranteed. Union of peoples, "federalism of the free
states" is not a universal state; Kant clearly advocates the preservation of national sovereignty. The third "final" article limits "universal citizenship" to only the right to hospitality in a foreign country. Every person should be able to visit any corner of the earth without being subjected to attacks and hostile actions Every people has the right to the territory that it occupies; it should not be threatened with enslavement by aliens. The Treaty of Perpetual Peace is crowned by a “secret” article: “... states that arm themselves for war must take into account the maxims of philosophers about the conditions of possibility. common world.
Another representative of German classical philosophy, I. Herder, believes that an agreement concluded in conditions of hostile relations between states cannot serve as a reliable guarantee of peace. To achieve eternal peace, moral re-education of people is necessary. Herder puts forward a number of principles with the help of which people can be educated in the spirit of justice and humanity; among them is an aversion to war, less reverence for military glory: “The conviction must be spread more and more widely that the heroic spirit manifested in wars of conquest is a vampire on the body of humanity and does not at all deserve the glory and respect that is given to it according to tradition, coming from the Greeks, Romans and barbarians." In addition, Herder includes correctly interpreted purified patriotism and a sense of justice towards other peoples as such principles. At the same time, Herder does not appeal to governments, but appeals to the people, to the broad masses who suffer most from the war. If the voice of the people sounds impressive enough, the rulers will be forced to listen to it and obey.
Hegel's theory sounds like a sharp dissonance here. Absolutizing the primacy of the universal over the individual, the species over the individual, he believed that war carries out the historical sentence on entire peoples who are not associated with the absolute spirit. According to Hegel, war is the engine of historical progress, “war preserves the healthy morality of peoples in their indifference in relation to certainties, to their familiarity and rooting, just as the movement of the wind protects lakes from rotting, which threatens them during a long lull, just as to the peoples - long-lasting, or even more so, eternal peace."
2. Modernity
In the further course of history, the problems of the world continued to occupy the minds of mankind; Many prominent representatives of philosophy, scientists and cultural figures are known to us for their views on these issues. Thus, Leo Tolstoy defended in his works the idea of “non-resistance to evil through violence.” A. N. Radishchev rejected those provisions of the theory of natural law that recognized war as inevitable and justified the right of war. In his opinion, the structure of society on the principles of a democratic republic will forever eliminate the greatest evil - war. A. I. Herzen wrote: “We are not happy about war, we are disgusted by all kinds of killings - wholesale and in breakdown... War is execution in droves, it is radical destruction.”
The twentieth century, which brought humanity two world wars unprecedented in scale, further aggravated the importance of the problem of war and peace. During this period, the pacifist movement developed, which originated in the USA and Great Britain after the Napoleonic wars. It rejects all violence and all wars, including defensive ones. Some modern representatives of pacifism believe that wars will disappear when the population on earth becomes stable; others are developing activities to which a person’s “militant instinct” could be switched. Such a “moral equivalent,” in their opinion, can be the development of sports, especially competitions associated with the risk of life.
The famous researcher J. Galtung tried to go beyond the narrow framework of pacifism; his concept is expressed in “minimizing violence and injustice in the world”, then only the highest vital human values can be achieved. The position of one of the most influential theorists of the Club of Rome, A. Peccei, is very interesting, who claims that the scientific and technological complex created by man “deprived him of guidelines and balance, plunging the entire human system into chaos.” He sees the main reason undermining the foundations of the world in the flaws in the psychology and morality of the individual - greed, selfishness, inclination to evil, violence, etc. Therefore, the main role in the implementation of the humanistic reorientation of humanity, in his opinion, is played by “people changing their habits, morals, and behavior.” “The question comes down,” he writes, “to how to convince people in different parts of the world that the key to solving problems lies in improving their human qualities.”
Conclusion
Thinkers of various eras condemned wars, passionately dreamed of eternal peace and developed various aspects of the problem of universal peace. Some of them paid attention mainly to its ethical side. They believed that aggressive war is a product of immorality, that peace can only be achieved as a result of the moral re-education of people in the spirit of mutual understanding, tolerance of different religions, the elimination of nationalist remnants, and the education of people in the spirit of the principle “all men are brothers.”
Others saw the main evil caused by wars in economic destruction, in the disruption of the normal functioning of the entire economic structure. In this regard, they tried to persuade humanity towards peace, painting pictures of universal prosperity in a society without wars, in which priority would be given to the development of science, technology, art, literature, and not to the improvement of means of destruction. They believed that peace between states could be established as a result of the reasonable policies of an enlightened ruler.
Still others developed the legal aspects of the problem of peace, which they sought to achieve through an agreement between governments, the creation of regional or world federations of states.
The problem of peace, like the problem of war, attracts the attention of political and social movements and scientists in many countries. The successes of peace-loving forces and all organizations are indisputable, as are the achievements of a number of schools and directions, scientific centers, specializing in the study of world problems. A vast amount of knowledge has been accumulated about peace as a goal, as a factor in the development and survival of mankind, about the complex dialectic of the relationship between war and peace and its features in the modern era, about possible ways and prerequisites for moving towards a world without weapons and wars.
Another important conclusion from the above is equally obvious: the analysis of concepts of the world requires serious effort. A sufficiently deep and consistent philosophy of peace must be built, the most important component of which should be the dialectic of war and peace in their historical development. At the same time, the problem of the philosophy of the world should not be dissolved in a narrowed dispassionate academicism, excessively focused on the controversy surrounding the definitions and interrelations of individual concepts related to this field research activities. An appeal to politics and ideology (as shown above, the connection between war and politics is inextricable), from my point of view, is not only acceptable, but also necessary in this analysis - of course, not to the detriment of its scientific content.
The universal, global comparison of the problems of war and peace gives particular relevance to the cooperation of pacifists, believers and atheists, social democrats and conservatives, other parties, movements and movements. Pluralism of philosophical interpretation of the world, ideological pluralism are inextricably linked with political pluralism. The various components of the peace movement are in complex relationships with each other - from ideological confrontation to fruitful dialogue and joint action. This movement reproduces a global task - the need to find optimal forms of cooperation between various social and political forces in order to achieve a common goal for the human community. Peace is a universal human value, and it can only be achieved through the common efforts of all peoples.
Bibliography:
1. Bogomolov A. S. Ancient philosophy. M. 1985.
2. Gulyga A.V. German classical philosophy. M. 1986.
3. Kapto A. S. Philosophy of the world. M. 1990.
4. Clausewitz K. About war. M. 1990.
5. Treatises on eternal peace. M. 1963.
Tutoring
Need help studying a topic?
Our specialists will advise or provide tutoring services on topics that interest you.
Submit your application indicating the topic right now to find out about the possibility of obtaining a consultation.
Loading...