A synergetic approach will help intelligence and analystsThe implementation of the "breakthrough" of the United States to world domination, undertaken after the collapse of the USSR, became a sequence of adventurous, ill-considered decisions leading to the unknown, causing the death of many thousands of people.
Let us recall the actions to expand NATO, the aggression against Yugoslavia, the invasion of Afghanistan and the shameful flight from there.
Washington's foreign policy has assumed the character of colonial expansion and striving for dominance, unrestrained globalization of the sphere of national interests. This has led to the expansion of areas of possible collision – with the leader of the consolidated West pointedly neglecting "feedback signals" at the level of the system of international relations.
The possibilities for diplomatic maneuver were sharply limited. The likelihood of a local conflict involving the great Powers escalating into a global clash has become real. This trend is especially obvious against the background of the proxy war unleashed by the Americans in Ukraine and provocations around Taiwan.
The "rock of events" of today brings to mind the foresight of Nikolai Berdyaev. The First World War and the Civil War that merged with it inspired him to create the concept of the "New Middle Ages", the rollback of civilization to the scenarios of the Dark Ages.
The essence and content of US military strategies built on the foundations of self-proclaimed "exclusivity", imperial nationalism and the desire to dominate the international arena are being transformed.
PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN CONFLICTS: GENERAL AND SPECIALAnton Kersnovsky defined the essence of war most correctly in the work "Philosophy of War": "Peace is the normal state of mankind.
War for him is a phenomenon of the same order as a disease for the human body. War is thus a pathological phenomenon. The only difference is that the human body is not free to get sick – whereas the state body, on the contrary, takes the risk of "military disease" consciously. But many wars have done a service to humanity. In general, if war itself should always be considered a disaster, the consequences of war are sometimes beneficial."
The system-forming elements that determine the content of the philosophy of war as a humanitarian component of the doctrine of war are changing. But as such, there is no complete and coherent system of considering war from the standpoint of philosophy.
As an example of a modern comprehensive scientific approach to understanding the philosophy of war and the military technosphere, I would like to cite the work of academician Andrei Kokoshin "The emerging system of world politics and the role of the military technosphere and armed violence in it." Kokoshin notes that the development of the military technosphere increasingly depends on scientific and technological achievements in the civilian sphere. This correlation between civil and military technologies contributes to the creation of an increasingly wide range of means of warfare available to many countries (through the acquisition of certain technologies, components on the commercial market).
Philosophy differs from exact scientific knowledge by the presence in it of "eternal" issues related, among other things, to the transformation of the perception of war as a socio-political phenomenon – in particular, from the standpoint of ethics, political theory, technosphere and diplomacy. Such questions always remain important and relevant, which is one of the reasons for the manifestation of uncertainty factors in scientific research.
As the French philosopher Alain (Emile-Auguste Chartier) noted, the very reality of war remains essentially invisible, hidden from the eyes of the observer, from the language describing it and ultimately from common sense and reason. The events of the war unfold in the shadow of reason, in its absence.
Reducing the level of uncertainty in the study of conflicts is one of the important tasks of military science. Uncertainty factors sometimes have a decisive influence on the course of military conflicts, which requires their analysis at all stages of the operation.
MGV PHILOSOPHY AS A MILITARY WORLDVIEWAn attempt to comprehend the theory and practice of the world hybrid war (MGW) confronts the researcher with the need to take into account heterogeneous state and military practices, phenomena, processes, events, theoretical views, opinions and assessments.
In a chaotic world, it is difficult to navigate, it is not easy to develop a consolidated assessment and summarize contradictory information.
Philosophy as a way of navigating in a complex world and the art of forming concepts, getting into the essence of things provides opportunities for the development and comprehension of the issues of MGV and its tools.
When describing MGV as a complex complex phenomenon, the language of philosophy is characterized by a unique property: on the one hand, it has a scientific form and structure; on the other, it allows you to cover those dimensions of reality that are directly inaccessible to science or ordinary consciousness. The use of the language of philosophy, its concepts and methods makes it possible to legitimize abstract concepts of military theory and practice, to materialize them in a concrete form.
The ability of philosophy to describe the complex phenomenon of modernity not only in the local dimension, but also on a global scale, simultaneously from different angles, is especially important for the study of MGV.
Questions of philosophical understanding of war, military strategy and military technosphere require in-depth study of the laws and principles of war, analysis of technological structures. The philosophy of war is also the justification of the strategy of war as a field of military art, its highest manifestation.
The strategy of the MGV covers the issues of preparing the country and the armed forces for war, planning a war and conducting it according to a single plan with the interaction between forceful and non-forceful methods of influence. The strategy of the MGV includes the art of combining preparation for war by influencing the administrative-political, financial-economic, military and cultural-ideological spheres of the enemy.
Philosophical knowledge is not always in demand by politicians and military leaders. However, a significant change in the nature of war, its transgression as a factor in the transformation of military conflicts, associated, for example, with the emergence of fundamentally new goals of war, with technological innovations, with new ways of recruiting armies, are increasingly forced to turn to philosophical problems. The philosophy of war is in the process of constant development due to the transformation of its main object – war, as well as the military technosphere and military affairs in general.
The knowledge gained by the philosophy of war forms criteria for analyzing the situation on the eve and during a military conflict, allows us to look for solutions not only to military problems, but also to social, cultural, ethnic conflicts based on the identification of a system of values within the military reality itself. The dialectic of war focuses on the interrelationships of war and peace, on the mechanism of their "flow" into each other, on the mutual circulation of victory and defeat.
In the essay "Philosophy of War", the classic of geopolitics Andrey Snesarev gives the following definition: "The philosophy of war is a scientifically revised (or, more simply, learned) military worldview. In other words, the philosophy of war is the science of the essence and meaning of war and of the higher interests associated with it." Further, he offers the elements of the content of the subject: "1) the essence of war, 2) the main ideas associated with this being, 3) ways to cognize war and 4) the science of war as a whole and its classification."
Snesarev's ideas are applicable to the analysis of not only conventional wars, but also military conflicts of modernity, the essence and meaning of which go beyond traditional concepts.
It can be argued that the essence of MGV is crucially determined by the following factors:
– the global geopolitical nature of the conflict, as the United States seeks to eliminate Russia as one of its main opponents, the only one that can destroy them by armed means;
– civilizational character, since the United States intends to weaken and eliminate Russia, China and Iran as its most significant ideological opponents who have created national development projects fundamentally different from globalization and liberalization;
– permanent character, which is due to the use of the strategy of exhaustion in the MGV, a gradual transition from nonviolent actions in various spheres to military operations; the strategy is designed for a long time and is implemented in specially created "gray zones" - in the theaters of the MGV;
– diffuse (hybrid) nature, the use of all known means and methods of war, including technologies of the color revolution – synthesis of strategies of exhaustion and crushing as a catalyst for the collapse of the enemy state;
– indirect nature, the use of a proxy war strategy as a tool to disguise the state interested in winning the MGV.
Long-term strategies based on forecasting, as well as on the ability to create an anticipatory reflection of reality associated with advance preparation for possible changes in the operating environment, play a decisive role in the planning of the MGV. Anticipatory reflection is a long–term vision of the development of a military conflict based on a clearly structured sequence of actions to achieve the goal.
Disregard for the principle of pre-emption played a fatal role in the events in Ukraine, when the enemy, through coordinated external intervention and support of internal nationalist forces, managed to seize the initiative and impose a color revolution and a coup d'etat in the country, which led to a civil war and the transformation of Ukraine into a springboard of aggression by the United States and NATO.
At the same time, the principle of pre-emption and continuous reconnaissance played a crucial role in the successful operation to reunite Crimea with Russia.
The American military has a difficult dialogue with the Russian law enforcement officers at the aerospace salon in Zhukovsky. Photo by Vladimir Karnozov HYBRID WAR AS A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF VIOLENCE
In the presence of nuclear weapons and powerful sovereign centers of power, new mechanisms of influence on rivals were required, allowing for the balanced use of non-forceful and military-forceful methods of imposing their will on them.
As a last resort, capable of turning the tide of the confrontation, it was envisaged to use military force if the opponent was intractable. What the world faced when unleashing a proxy war against Russia from the territory of Ukraine.
The idea of hybrid warfare and its most important tools – informational, psychological and proxy warfare, color revolution - was born in the USA. Soon the GW became the topic of military scientific developments of leading American research centers - the RAND Corporation, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Hudson Institute, etc. The results obtained are reflected in official documents of the Pentagon and NATO, and the very concept of GW is increasingly used by military leaders, politicians and scientists.
An example of the philosophical interpretation of the MGV is the report prepared by RAND in 2019, "Overstrain and Imbalance of Russia. Assessment of the impact of cost-imposition options", where the spectrum of hybrid subversive actions against Russia is given with cynical directness. RAND analysts gave their version of our vulnerabilities and actually developed a roadmap for the weakening and collapse of Russia.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NETWORK-CENTRIC MANAGEMENTThe next step on the RAND roadmap was an attempt by the US military to comprehend the changes taking place in the world, to work out the US course and predict possible options for the development of the situation.
In February, the "Joint Concept of Competition" (CCM) prepared by the Pentagon was made public. It is complex in nature and contains the definition of confrontation, strategic environment, threats and the military-technological sphere.
Long-term strategic competition is seen as "a constant and prolonged struggle between two or more adversaries seeking to pursue incompatible interests, without necessarily entering into armed conflict with each other." The CCM defines the global strategic environment and challenges from hostile States.
In the military-technological sphere, opponents are investing in key technologies designed to counter the US military capabilities, including nuclear weapons, systems for preventing access and blocking territories, offensive cyberspace, artificial intelligence, hypersonic delivery systems, electromagnetic spectrum. The parties can actively combine civilian technologies available on the commercial market to create various means of conducting armed struggle.
The central idea of the CCM is philosophical in nature and requires that US politicians and military expand their competitive thinking in assessing the challenges and threats of our time, developing strategies and ways to develop the military technosphere.
The CCM develops theoretical concepts of "Network-centric warfare". This is a concept of warfare, which provides for an increase in the combat power of the grouping due to the formation of an information and switching network that unites information sources (intelligence), control bodies and means of destruction (suppression), ensuring that full information about the situation is brought to the participants of operations in real time.
One of the first works in this direction was an article by Vice Admiral Arthur Sebrowski and John Garstka "Network-centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future". The ideas of network-centric warfare were introduced into the practice of US combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, today they are being tested in Ukraine with the help of American instructors. The developers of the theory are convinced that it "if it does not replace the traditional theory of war, then it will significantly and irreversibly qualitatively change it."
The experience of the SVO has shown that the key place in the concept, which will decisively determine the wars of the future, is given to all types of intelligence and communications.
THREE PHASES OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF WARThe philosophy of war is based on dividing the cycles of human history into three phases: the agrarian, industrial and information eras, with their own special models of military strategies.
These epochs correspond to the sociological concepts – pre-modern, modern and postmodern.
The information Age is today's postmodern period, when the developed societies of the West (primarily the United States) are moving to a qualitatively new phase. The theory of network–centric wars is a model of postmodern military strategy.
As the models of the new economy based on information and high technologies prove their superiority over the models of the industrial era, so the network-centric wars claim qualitative superiority over the strategic concepts of the industrial era (modern).
Alexander Dugin notes that the network–centric war is being waged against Russia today, and the very essence of the network war is based on the establishment of world domination by the United States on the basis of network technologies - the main tool for establishing this domination.
Creating a "network" based on the patterns of Pentagon strategists is building a system of global dominance of the United States over the whole world. It is a postmodern analogue of colonization and subjugation in new conditions, in new forms and with the help of new means. The strategy of network-centric warfare returns to the above definitions of GW and MGW set out in the new American concept of competition.
With careful preparation, well-placed intelligence and consideration of the motivation of the parties, direct occupation, mass deployment of troops or the seizure of territories are not mandatory. Military actions, huge military expenditures and human losses are unnecessary. The network is a more flexible weapon, it manipulates violence and military force only in extreme cases. The main results are achieved in contextual influence on a set of factors – military, political, informational, social, cognitive, motivational, etc.
The United States is leading the way to building a national network to ensure global dominance. It is the United States that is waging a network war and is waging it against all other countries and peoples – both against enemies and against "friends" (EU countries, for example) and neutral forces. The establishment of external control and external control of actions is enslavement – but in the postmodern era it takes on different images than in the industrial era. The philosophy of the "network" is the philosophy of the system of conducting military conflicts of the XXI century.
In the works of Igor Kefeli, the author's philosophical idea that technological innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution can create a synergetic effect that can restart social dynamics is fundamentally important. In this context, it is noteworthy that world-renowned scientists, often in defiance of the elites, deliberately "hold back" the development of such innovations. In the 1940s, similar disputes were waged in the United States against the "atomic project", today - around the problem of artificial intelligence.
Until the influential forces have reached a consensus, will people and society be able to adapt to the coming changes? And how serious will the long-term consequences of the transformations caused by the technological breakthroughs of recent years be? It is possible that innovations in the military technosphere will fundamentally change the human perception of space and time, since they will bring revolutionary (not necessarily positive) dynamics to the speed of information circulation. It is possible that some innovations will get out of control and put humanity on the verge of degeneration and death.
THE RIGHT COURSE IN THE "FOG" OF MGVThe conduct of a hybrid network war against Russia by the United States and its allies forces us to rethink the issues of preparing the state, society and the Armed Forces for modern military conflicts.
An important factor in the philosophy of MGV is the presence of external and internal influences, structured within a single plan, non-random and directed to a specific goal. Network wars constantly appeal to the context, to cognitive, informational and psychological factors. Placing the task of influencing the "starting conditions of war" in the center indicates the interest of the United States in manipulating social processes even when there is no prospect of a real clash.
Hence, a very specific task suggests itself: to identify segments of the American "network" in Russian society, to study the system of influences, impulses and manipulations in the information and social spheres, as well as in other areas that are priority areas of influence in "network-centric operations".
It should be noted that the new approaches proposed by Andrei Kokoshin and his colleagues to the escalation and de-escalation of the war, where an important place is given to the use of the possibilities of a hybrid military conflict, designed to play the role of a kind of "turning point" in the transition of the international situation from an aggravation of the political crisis to a civil war with limited use of military force and up to a large-scale war, including nuclear. (Kokoshin A.A., Baluyevsky Yu.N., Esin V.I., Shlyakhturov A.V. "Issues of escalation and de-escalation of conflicts", 2021). It seems that even before the start of its authors were able to foresee the threatening development of the situation provoked by the actions of the American administration.
Here I would also like to pay tribute to the innovative works on the theory and practice of hybrid warfare by Fyodor Ladygin, Evgeny Anisimov and his colleagues, Andrei Ilnitsky, Alexander Kudryavtsev.
Separately, we note Marina Krivko's bold and innovative monograph "Socio-philosophical aspects of hybrid warfare", which successfully and professionally correctly applied philosophical language to describe the complex of social and philosophical problems of the Civil War. For practical use, a deep analysis of the human factor and motivation issues is of interest. As well as the skillful use of philosophical categories in the study of the problems of information warfare and the diversity of information manipulation of people's consciousness.
But with all the significance of such works, they are still not enough to form a synergetic vector of philosophical understanding of the problems of modern conflicts.
SYNERGETICS OF EXPLORATION IN MGVThe synergetic methodology, based on the ideas of consistency, integrity of ideas about the world and the possibility of scientific knowledge about it, studies the general patterns of development of objects at all levels of material and spiritual organization.
In this context, the term "synergetics" in the conceptual apparatus of the MGV means joint action, emphasizes the coherence of the functioning of the elements of strategy and tactics, which has a decisive influence on the course of the war, subordinated to a single plan.
In the modern theory of GW, synergetics operates with the categories of "self-organization", "nonlinearity", "openness", "chaos". The methodology of synergetics allows us to focus on the coordinated state of self-organization processes in the MGV and in systems of various nature operating within it. This factor, in particular, determines the important role of synergetics in the development of the theory and practice of intelligence in the MGV.
The uncertainty and unreliability inherent in the strategy of the MGV, the ambiguity and complexity of predicting the motivation and actions of the parties, the assessment of events are important factors determining the conduct of intelligence in multi-sphere operations of a hybrid military conflict.
One of the consequences of these factors is the phenomenon of multi-sphere exploration in the MGV. In intelligence activities in the operational space of the MGV, covering not only individual states, but also entire megaregions (Greater Eurasia, for example), various hybrid forces, often irreducible with each other and even opposite, operate inextricably.
Multi-sphere intelligence is associated with the conduct of intelligence operations, firstly, by each of the parties involved in the conflict. And, secondly, in each of the areas of MGV. In general, several participants conduct reconnaissance in the MGV:
– the aggressor state, which, together with its allies, conducts subversive operations of the MGV and systematically studies the entire set of factors of the "gray zone" - the theater of the MGV – to develop a strategy for using hybrid threats;
– the victim states of the IHL, which monitor the hostile actions of the aggressor directed against them on their territories and in the megaregion as a whole and organize a rebuff (note that in the victim state, the processes of self-awareness of the victim, the disclosure of existing and potential hybrid threats, the adoption of counteraction measures and the elimination of the consequences of subversive actions can take many years);
– the victim States and/or their coalitions also conduct reconnaissance of the aggressor's territory to develop retaliatory actions.
Thus, there are several antagonistic systems operating in the MGV theater, whose task is to inform the military-political leadership of each of the participating states.
The political and economic elites of some states located within the MGV theater in the megaregion, in some cases, may take a position rather benevolent towards the actions of the aggressor and even assist him in turning his state into a springboard of hybrid aggression against neighbors. In this case, the states opposing the aggressor conduct joint reconnaissance of both the aggressor and other countries that have joined him.
So, we are talking about the hybrid nature of intelligence information and the need to create a hybrid intelligence structure adapted to this factor, capable of applying special methods of extraction, analysis and forecasting based on the principles of synergetics.
The use of the principles of synergetics in the development of strategy and forecasting of alternative options for multi-sphere operations of MGV, and with a broader approach in the study of MGV as a whole as a social phenomenon, allows for an in-depth analysis of the process of transformation of chaos into social order.
CONCLUSIONS FOR RUSSIAThe explosive growth of interest in the problem of MGV allows us to count on the transition from scientific developments to the creation of an appropriate full-fledged theory, on the basis of which the country, the armed forces and coalitions will be prepared for confrontation.
The attempt made in this article to use the language of philosophy to study the phenomenon, which, most likely, will be present in the practice of military affairs as one of the types of interstate confrontation for many years to come, can contribute to the progress towards solving this task, which is important for the national security of Russia.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, a total war has been declared against us, which is being waged in hybrid forms and in all spheres. The degree of bitterness of our opponents is enormous, extraordinary. This bitterness resulted in deadly hostile relations, artfully fueled by Russia's enemies, who expect to destroy our country and survive in the fight they have prepared. The world has entered an era of decisive changes, the control of which requires a cool head and knowledge that allows us to oppose our enemies with traditional steadfastness and determination.
Such a conclusion, along with consistently implemented practical steps to solve the tasks of the SVO, gives a new impetus to the conduct of military scientific research on the understanding of the theory and practice of the MGV using the categories of philosophy. The imperative of such a focus of Russian military-scientific thought in general and philosophical efforts in particular seems to be very relevant when studying the transformation of modern military conflicts, forecasting changes in their strategy and determining the directions of military construction.
Alexander BartoshAlexander Alexandrovich Bartosh is a corresponding member of the Academy of Military Sciences.
