1 Challenges of the twenty-first century, social sciences and strategic thinking
Vladimir Rukavishnikov
Introduction
The end of Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 totally transformed the strategic landscape, forcing a rethinking of the basic assumptions behind national foreign and defense policy around the world. Today the world is located at a transitional stage, from the East–West confrontation that formed the model of international relations in the twentieth century to a new pattern of international relationships, creating a huge opportunity for constructive cooperation and the settlement of conflicts by political means, dialogue and compromise. Although there are certain grounds to name this period as Cold Peace, all of us know that the world order of the twenty-first century belongs to those who build it. Now it is time to think on how to build it – a future of greater peace, security, prosperity and freedom – and to predict the possible problems.
There had been a sharp growth in the number of internal crises, civil wars and violent ethnic conflicts around the globe during the years after the end of Cold war.1 This means the entire world has unfortunately not rid itself of military dangers. One may also add that less predictable regional armed conflicts had displaced the previously overarching but predictable global one. The geography of armed conflict in the last decade of the past century had changed as well. Europe, which during the years of Cold War did not have a single armed conflict, had quite a few. It leads social scientists and the military analysts to new debates on war and peace issues both in a “Clausewitzian” and non-Clausewitzian way of thinking, while at the same time trying to look to the future, to understand the new world order.2
The politicians and the military leaders, in their turn, focused on the implications of the rapid geopolitical change and economic globalization accompanied by the scientific–technological revolution on the security sector, on the debates about new missions of the armed forces and their organizational structure, maintenance and training.3 Armed forces have to adjust not only to a new strategic environment of international relations but also to a rapidly changing society. Almost everywhere the process of defining a new foreign policy, security and military strategy is unfolding. The objective is to provide guidelines on how the armed forces could be used in support of national security and defense policy in a new security environment.
Several fundamentals determine policy of the state in both long-term and short-term perspectives in each country. They are national interests, goals, values, current military might and economic capacities, present-day internal and external threats, and the burden of history. Interests are the main driving force of politics. Vital interests include the securing of the integrity and inviolability of a country’s territory, and the repulsion and cessation of aggression against the nation and its allies. While the military power still retains significance in relations among states, an ever-greater role is being played by economic, political, scientific and technological, ecological and information factors. The process of globalization forces the nation-states to adhere to a cooperative international system with all sorts of mechanisms for non-violent conflict regulations where armed forces are mainly viewed as an instrument of collective security.
Each nation steps into the future carrying the heritage of its own past. This past leaves its mark on the development of society, and on the way people think, including the way the military staff thinks. For instance, quite recently regarding NATO’s intention to accept new members, the Russians favored describing the process as “NATO expansion,” while the Americans and the Europeans tended to refer to the process as “joining NATO,” otherwise simply as “NATO enlargement.” Terms “expansion” and “enlargement” are virtually identical terms in English but not in the Russian language, where they have different meanings: “expansion” has a distinctly aggressive connotation. But, of course, not only historical experience equips minds for making military–strategic calculations. The way of examination of newly emerged challenges is equally important.
As the global economy is becoming increasingly interdependent, the old threats and new challenges taken together tie the security and well-being of people in any country to events beyond their borders more than ever before. Indeed, today incidents formerly considered peripheral to national security – the spread of ethnic and religious conflict, the breakdown of law and order in faraway regions, or the disruption of trade agreements and environmental disasters – can pose real threats to both national and global security. That is why in the first section of this chapter we present a brief review of main global challenges together with a general discussion of the impact of science on security thinking. Challenges of the twenty-first century may be considered as drivers for strategic thinking,4 and social science helps to discover most important drivers in time.
We have to point out the complicated relationship between the social science and re-making of strategy. Theoretical debates in the social sciences are almost always perceived by the military analysts as “rather abstract” and “non-pragmatic” ones. Indeed, the conclusions and recommendations of civilian experts are often articulated in a “too scientific” way, but over and over again such a discussion serves as an impulse for the broader public discourse on policy, and about the role of the military as a national and/or international instrument in safeguarding the nation and shaping the new global order. That is why, in a most obvious way, the indirect influence of social sciences on contemporary military thinking may be found in the official strategic documents, which – no matter how they would be named – needed to declare clearly the list of threats, challenges and goals to be achieved.
The task for analysts is to dispel the real security threats, both immediate and longer-term ones, and to recommend possible paths and methods for countering them. Three kinds of documents are most important in this regard: the National Security Concept, the Military Doctrine and the Foreign Policy Concept.5 The National Security Concept represents formally adopted general political goals on protecting the citizens, society and state against external and internal threats of any nature, taking into account the available resources, and conforming to the level of guarantees which provide the global and regional security system. This document defines the security objectives and reviews the risk factors that currently threaten the security of the given country. The Military Doctrine presents a system of strategic views, principles and approaches to ensure national security in military–political and military terms. The doctrine explores the military–strategic environment, and defines defense policy priorities and directions of employment, build-up and development of the Armed Forces in the interest of national security and promotion of peace and stability in the region and the world as a whole. The Foreign Policy Concept is a system of views on the content and main areas in the foreign-policy activities of the given state. The legal basis of these documents consists of the Constitution of the state and other legislative acts that regulate the activity of certain bodies of state power in foreign and security policy, generally recognized principles and norms of international law, and international treaties signed by the name of the given state.
The rearrangement of the hierarchy of threats that occurred after the Cold War and the terrorist attack that occurred in the USA on September 11, 2001, have been reflected in a revision of earlier approved strategic documents. The public perception of threats has changed as well, and this fact was registered by opinion polls.6 Due to a lack of room in this chapter, we’ll take a brief look on general changes in concepts and doctrines, focusing mainly on American and Russian grand strategies.7 Being permanent members of the UN Security Council, possessing a substantial potential and resources in all spheres of the activity and maintaining intensive relations with the leading states of the world, the USA and the Russian Federation exert a significant influence on the formation of the world order of the twenty-first century.
Global challenges and the impact of science on security thinking
When speaking about the impact of science and technology on the military thinking, one always recalls the invention of nuclear weapons that forced the revision of military strategy in the second half of the twentieth century. During the years after the creation of nuclear weapons, there was a consensus that the big war of the future would most probably be a worldwide nuclear war. The enemies were to be the USSR and other Warsaw Pact countries, on one side, and the USA and its NATO allies, on the other side. The projected World War III considered as the decisive clash between “the world of communism” and “the world of capitalism.”
Strategists both in the USA and the USSR agreed that the basic form of combat actions in this war would be the nuclear strikes by ICBM and heavy bombers and the counter-actions of the anti-air and anti-missile defense forces in deflecting these strikes. Strategic offensive operations in ground theaters of military actions were planned as the way to exploit the nuclear strikes of strategic forces. The war was expected to be short, although the possibility of a protracted war was not excluded. Older people may remember in this regard a theory of “massive nuclear retaliation,” which some time ago was popular both in the USA and the Soviet Union; it was based on the conviction that the first sudden massive nuclear strike could not be successfully implemented without the act of retaliation.8
At the end of the 1960s, when Soviets and Americans had actually reached nuclear parity, the two sides began to lose their illusions concerning the possible outcome of the global nuclear war. According to the classical theory of war, each side considers victory to be its ultimate goal. But what does “a military victory” mean in the classic sense? First, it is the total defeat of the enemy’s armed force as the main objective of destruction. Second, it is the undermining of the enemy’s economic power. Third, it is the replacement of the unfriendly government which started the war (plus the destruction of the enemy’s political system as the ideologically motivated goal), and, then, peace enforcement. Could the victor achieve all above-mentioned goals in the nuclear war? The answer was negative. There would be no victor in such a clash, but all of humanity would be annihilated. The conclusion was a result of scientific researches, first of all. As a consequence of this sad truth, the threat of nuclear weapon use lost its former value in the theory and practice of containment of communism, which was the core of US foreign policy, and US security and military doctrines since 1948.9 With the end of the nuclear stand-off between the Soviet Union and the United States, nuclear weapons lost much of their relevance for international security.10 Nonetheless until recently the military considered the nuclear deterrent as the ultimate mean of defense, and the weapons of mass destruction are still around in very large numbers.
The immediate threat of global nuclear war has significantly declined, thanks to the efforts of many states, above all Russia and the United States. The world has undoubtedly gained from the diminishing of a scale of this deadly threat, but the number of state-members of the “nuclear club” is growing despite the efforts of the international community to stop the process of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.11 On the other hand, over the last decade, the nature of the nuclear threat has fundamentally changed, and now it varies from the large-scale attack against Russia by its possible enemies (the central point of view on this issue, commonly held in Russia) to the use of one or a few devices by a socalled “rogue nation” or subnational terrorist groups against the United States or one of its allies (a popular version in the West). Countering the proliferation of nuclear weapons – by slowing the spread of nuclear capabilities among states, assuring that nuclear devices do not get into the hands of terrorist groups, and protecting existing stockpiles – has thus become as high a priority for leading nuclear powers as deterring major nuclear attacks.12
Scientific and technological expertise is essential to any country’s security. It is the foundation of economic and military strength, intelligence capabilities, and international prestige – all of which contribute to national strategy. Turning back to the starting point, we have to say that science and technology, unquestionably, are drivers for change in the military–strategic thinking, and the history of nuclear weapons may serve as the best proof of it. The military always attempt to exploit advanced technology, even though the cost of the modern high-tech weaponry tends to be very high. The age-old “projectile vs amour” problem continues to live. It has always led to the competition between projectile and amour designers, which ultimately resulted in the appearance of new, highly effective means of conducting war that have a great influence on tactics and strategy of combat operations.13 The revolution in military affairs and the onset of information warfare and operations is silent, but it creates a truly strategic gap between the countries, those that benefit from its advantages, and those that cannot afford to renovate their armaments.
The point to be stressed here is the dynamics of global defense spending. After the end of the Cold War, defense expenditures of the main powers fell significantly.14 Today, the tendency is the opposite – defense spending is increasing essentially not only in the USA but also in the EU, Russia, China, India and the like.15 What is important in this regard is that new types of weaponry for interstate wars, not for local low-intensity conflicts or fighting against terrorists, are currently on production lines.16
The dynamics of defense spending is the indicator of dominant strategic viewpoints. Does the new rise of defense spending mean that inherited geopolitical ideas still influence the thinking of military strategists and politicians? Is it possible for an interstate war to break out somewhere, and if so, between whom and by whom is it to be undertaken? On these questions the policy analysts should be ready to present an answer, maybe in a circumlocutory form. Indeed, the great uncertainty created by the growth of total world military expenditure is the challenge humanity is facing today to its long-term security, to its very survival.
Looking through the press reports and mainstream publications in the domain of international studies, one may conclude that present-day thinking about global security has narrowed down to little more than five-to-seven international issues. The first issue is international terrorism. This theme has occupied the headlines and front pages of newspapers and magazines since the September 11 terrorist attack in the US. Worldwide terrorist incidents revive fears of 9/11 and ignite talk about the global terrorist network of Islamic extremists. The endless war in Chechnya (or the counter-terrorist operation, as the Russian officials name it) can be included in this news group as well. What is more or less clear from the Russian experience is that, to counter terrorism, the government must coordinate justice and home affairs to good effect. The state must react, but avoid over-reacting. The clear understanding of the roots of terrorism in each case is also important; we have to notice that, up to now, the UN has never agreed on what is terrorism, because the discrepancy concerning the definition of terrorism still exists.
The second issue is the non-stop conflict between Israelis and the Palestinians that has been running since the late 1940s; sporadic acts of violence in that area leave the world in despair. This issue is a heritage of the Cold-War past that overshadows the observed future. Although today’s Russia is trying, together with Europe and the USA, to break that deadlock, it is becoming clear a few su...
