Questions of the applied theory of wars
A.A. Kokoshin, Yu.N. Baluyevsky, V.I. Esin, A.V. Shlyakhturov. Issues of escalation and de-escalation of crisis situations, armed conflicts and wars. Moscow: LENAND, 2021. – 88 p. ISBN 978-5-9710-9260-5.
This small but capacious work cannot fail to attract the attention of all those who are interested in the problems of decision-making in the political, diplomatic and military-political sphere. There are at least two reasons for this. The first is the composition of the author's team: Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Andrey Kokoshin, Director of the Institute for Advanced Strategic Studies of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE). (In the past, he held the positions of First Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, Secretary of the Defense Council of the Russian Federation and Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.) Its co–author is the Inspector General of the Directorate of General Inspectors of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Army General Yu.N. Baluyevsky (formerly Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation - First Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation). Another author is a professor of the mentioned institute, retired Colonel–General V.I. Esin (formerly Chief of the General Staff of the Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN) - First Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the RVSN). The fourth author of the work was Professor of the Higher School of Economics, retired Colonel-General A.V. Shlyakhturov (formerly head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation).
The authors knowingly write that in recent years Russia has achieved great results in the development of its forces and means of strategic deterrence, which plays an extremely important role in ensuring the national security of the Russian Federation.
The paper considers four main issues. First of all, the authors turn to the theoretical aspects of wars and the use of military force. Then they proceed to the analysis of the main trends in the development of the military-political situation, including military-technological development, affecting conflict and crisis situations. The last two parts of the work are directly devoted to the issues of escalation. The third part examines the "escalation ladder" and the fourth examines the problems of crisis management and de-escalation. In the presented work, the authors demonstrate deep knowledge of the history of the issue, justifiably referring to the largely still relevant works of military theorists of past times, as well as to modern authors of works on theoretical issues of war and peace.
One of the very important, still in need of clarification, questions raised by the authors in the first part of the study was the definition of the concept of "war". They rightly point to the fact that today this concept is being eroded by the frequent and not always correct use of this term in relation to various aspects of human activity – "trade war", "information war", "cold war" and others. In this regard, they suggest "not to neglect quotation marks" when using such terminology in professional works.
In the same part of the work, issues related to such a concept as "friction of war", introduced by Karl Clausewitz and used by the outstanding domestic and military theorist Alexandrov Svechin, are considered.
The second part of the presented research is devoted to the consideration of the issues of the modern development of the political and military situation in the world. The authors note a number of phenomena and trends that, in their opinion, should be taken into account when considering the problems of escalation and de-escalation of conflicts with the use of military force. More specifically, along with other things, the authors of the book write about the destruction of the international arms control regime by the United States, the growing role of cyberspace and the potential for its use for hostile purposes, the problem of space and precision conventional weapons, and other factors that have a negative impact on strategic stability. The authors pay due attention to the problems of hybrid warfare.
They also pay attention to the blurring of the threshold between the possible massive use of conventional (including high-precision) weapons and nuclear weapons. The authors reject Western accusations against Russia that it allegedly has a concept of "escalation for de-escalation" and point to the fact that the United States itself can adhere to such a concept, which is reflected in some documents of a military doctrinal nature, in particular, in the Doctrine of Nuclear Operations of 2019. An unambiguous conclusion is made that such a concept puts into the minds of decision makers in the United States "false ideas that "low power" means controllability of the corresponding process." All this is believed to have led to a significant erosion of the strategic stability that had been developing for decades.
In the third part of the work, the authors make an excursion into history, analyzing the "escalation ladder" of the famous American researcher Herman Kahn, developed by him in the second half of the 1960s. There is a reasonable opinion that Kahn's work has not lost its relevance at the present time, despite the fact that since then there have been "huge changes" in the field of military technologies, weapons systems, forms and methods of conducting armed struggle and in military affairs in general. The authors have a negative attitude to the idea of a "controlled" nuclear war, which has been repeatedly discussed by Western authors, and the possibility of its de-escalation. At the end of the section, a variant of the "escalation ladder" developed by the authors is given in the development of what was proposed by academician A.A. Kokoshin in his monograph "Issues of Applied Theory of War" published in 2018.
The authors pay special attention to the consideration of the war with the limited use of nuclear weapons. In this regard, they analyze open data on the holding of a number of games in the United States, including options for the possible use of such weapons under various conditions of the development of the military-strategic situation. The conclusion of the authors of the study is quite unambiguous. They believe that the escalation after crossing the "nuclear threshold" is a "completely unexplored, unknown and generally unknowable area."
Alexander Savelyev
Alexander Georgievich Saveliev – Doctor of Political Sciences, Chief Researcher at the Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IMEMO RAS).
