ESSAYS AND STUDIES
WAR TRANSFORMATION AT THE TURN OF THE 20TH TO THE 21ST CENTURY
Abstract
During the Cold War, the key role in the war transformation
had two post-war processes that took place simultaneously on the
international arena. The first one was the indirect competition of a super
powers for the global domination over neutral, nonaligned countries
and the second one was the decolonization process. In the shadow of
nuclear danger, the interaction of these processes resulted in a series
of local civil wars in Third World countries behind which, as a rule,
were the super powers, USA and USSR. This kind of conflict became
more prevalent in the second half of the 20th century, and the traditional
form of armed conflict between the states has almost disappeared. The
characteristics of contemporary armed conflicts differed from traditional
because one side of the conflict was a non-state actor. This has led to
irregularities, nonlinearities and asymmetries of contemporary conflicts
as its dominant characteristics. By strengthening Islamist transnational
terrorist organizations in the period of the unipolar global order, nontraditional
conflicts became global and, as such, they effectively
disputed the conventional superiority of the western great powers in
achieving the strategic interests. Thereby, at the beginning of the new
century, international global terrorism became the key determinant of
contemporary armed conflicts by what they were different considerably
from the local civil conflicts from the Cold War era. The return of
Russia as a great power and the rising of China’s power marked the
beginning of the multipolar world. The military aspect of the foreign
policy activities of the mentioned states, as well as other challengers
of strategic interests of Western powers such as Iran and North Korea,
is marked by the new concept of war. It included the full integration of
military and non-military instruments of state power to achieve political
goals in which the role of armed forces is minimized, concealed or
even not necessary. This view of the new concept of war was the most
significant novelty in the history of studying the war.
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