There is no consensus in the literature on the definition of the concept war. According to Quincy Wright, one of the earliest definitions of war was given by Cicero, who defined war as "rivalry with the use of force"(contention by force).

This suggests that war involves competition (struggle) for something, and this competition takes place in a special form, namely with the use of force. In politics, competition includes disputes over objects of a certain value.

Greece made an addition to the definition of Cicero, noting that war is and certain legal status.

Wright believes that war - it a certain period of time when certain rules come into force regulating violence on the part of states that seek in this way to resolve a dispute between them.

Webster's Dictionary states that war is a state of usually open and declared armed conflict between states or nations.

Another definition of war is given by Headley Ball (Bull) - war is organized violence, which is carried out against each other by political units 2 .

This is a more general definition than in Webster's Dictionary. But the concept violence also remains undefined. The advantages of this definition of a ternary are:

1)" it does not reduce wars only to interstate wars;

2) uses terms that are not disputed;

3) includes the concept of "organized".

So, war is organized violence. This means, firstly, that military activity someone carried out in accordance with rules and traditions. Secondly, war is not random violence. She has a certain direction and source. Third, war is collective, not an individual phenomenon. However, this is not just a collective phenomenon, but a political phenomenon.

War as an extreme form of rivalry essential function. War is way of solving certain kinds of problems(Margaret Mead - Margaret Mead). Hence, war is learned (learned) behavior, and we are talking about the behavior of society, and not individual individuals.

The significance of Mead's approach is that she shows war as product of human activity. Mankind is accustomed to solving certain issues with the help of war. Hence, in order to prevent the outbreak of wars, it is necessary to create other mechanisms for resolving situations that push states onto a military path.

Mead does not give an answer in his works to the question of whether why humanity solved certain problems in this way, why there was a consolidation of a certain model of behavior.

Biologists give part of the answer to this question, considering the phenomenon of aggressive behavior of animals.

Animals protect their territory from strangers. They also fight for food and the right to procreate. Both of these circumstances are connected with the territory (Wilson). So, aggression can be associated with the struggle for living space. Clans and groups have survived through the struggle for existence, in the struggle for territory. genetic memory, thus, it can be considered as a factor predetermining aggressive behavior in case of rivalry for territory.

Clausewitz gave two classic definitions of war:

1 Diplomatic Gazette. 1992. No. 7. S. 3-4.

2 Vasquez. R. 23.

Chapter 2 War, Peace, and States

“War is nothing but the continuation of politics by other means ... it can never be separated from politics ... Once war has become a reality, it is nothing but the expression of politics ... its instrument. Therefore, the subordination of the military point of view to the political one is the only possible one.”

"War is an act of violence with the aim of forcing the enemy to do his will" 1 .

According to Clausewitz, war is a political act of violence. The political aspect is the most important for him. There is a war tool, which is necessary for politicians in certain situations. Clausewitz notes that war comes when conventional politics and diplomacy fail. In cases where the existing diplomatic practice (negotiations or developed conflict resolution mechanisms, as well as international law) is not capable of leading to an acceptable result for the conflicting parties, war becomes a means by which one of the parties tries to force the other to do its will.

War begins when one of the parties is ready to make certain sacrifices in order to achieve the goal. Hence, wars start only because of certain problems, which, however, may vary in different historical periods, in different cultures, etc. If there is a way to resolve the conflict that satisfies both sides, there is no war.

From understanding the causes of war, two questions follow that need to be answered:

1) what makes problems not solvable peacefully?

2) why is violence so attractive as a political tool?

Historically, the establishment of political control and the successful and absolute complex issues were resolved as a result of wars.

This process began in the early agricultural civilizations, when people became more attached to the land than to gathering and hunting. In addition, these societies became more organized, which was important for mobilization and warfare (Wright, Mansfield).

However, war, once it has arisen, has its own logic. Violence and the desire for dominance can make war irrational. Clausewitz's rational explanation of war may conflict with psychological explanation - desire to kill. 3. Freud, for example, believed that the rational explanation of war is incorrect, since its main causes are instincts, namely the explosive reaction \& against the increasing pressure of modern civilization. The more aggressive and repressive a civilization is towards a person, the stronger the response.

Freud considered wars by the manifestation of the death instinct to destroy what was created by eros (the instinct of life). Thus, psychoanalysts have raised the question that war, along with political and cultural components, also includes mental ones. This approach also makes one think about the non-political goals of the war (the "satisfaction of aggressive urges" of a psychological nature).

It is important to consider the following theoretical assumptions regarding war:

1) war is a state to which humanity is accustomed (historicism);

2) war is a process; it has causes that do not immediately lead to a collision in an extreme form;

3) war, as a rule, is the result of a long confrontation;

4) war is a kind of way to solve problems;

5) war can have several causes;

6) there are different types of wars;

7) war as a means of enrichment.

war) is a socio-political phenomenon that directly affects the fate of power in all its forms and has its own teachings and theories. In the West, one of these scientific directions is now called polemology - 1) armed struggle between states, sometimes in a given state (civil warfare); 2) in a figurative sense, an extreme degree of fierce struggle, hostile relations between someone (a warrior of the authorities, a war of laws). There are V.: world, local; colonial, unjust, liberation, predatory, customs, newspaper.

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

WAR

an armed clash between opposing large masses of people pursuing their own interests; it is a policy implemented through the use of armed force. Under certain conditions, a warrior is the most radical means of achieving political goals.

Within the framework of savagery and barbarism - before the emergence of the state and politics - inter-tribal and intra-tribal armed clashes took place. With the development of human communities, the multiplication of the population and with the emergence of the state, sporadic armed skirmishes and clashes develop into wars. There are wars within states, between social and national groups (civil war, interethnic and national liberation wars); wars between individual states (for example, the wars between Rome and Carthage, the wars of conquest by Alexander the Great, the wars of Napoleon Bonaparte, etc.); wars between groups (coalitions) of states (including the world wars of 1914-1919 and 1939-1945). With the advent of nuclear missile weapons capable of destroying mankind, war with the use of such weapons, while remaining a continuation of politics, ceased to be a radical means of achieving political goals: it would lead to catastrophic results. In this situation, the confrontation between "capitalism and socialism" was transformed into the "cold war" (1946-1991) with its own principles, means and forms of development.

Contrary to Stalinism, which claimed that the root cause of all wars is private property and the exploitation of man by man, in reality wars (for example, inter-tribal wars) happened long before the emergence of private property and exploitation: their causes were the struggle for "living space", for the possession of fire, women and etc. But wherever wars arise, they are always based on a clash, a confrontation of interests, the desire of some people to achieve their goals through the use of armed violence, bloodshed, contrary to the interests and aspirations of other people. Of course, with the emergence of private property, exploitation, and the state, wars took on a qualitatively new form, and not only because they were most often based on feuds over private property, the struggle of interests for vital, material benefits, but also because the state became powerful. organizing the preparation and conduct of war. Politics, which arose along with the emergence of the state, became the most important means of preparing and carrying out military operations, and the war itself became only a continuation of politics, but other - military - means. Any war has its own causes and its own character, fair or unfair, fleeting or protracted, local or fairly wide, and in modern times - global, world in nature. For real politics, it is especially important to determine the nature of the war in order to develop an adequate attitude towards it: taking the side of a just war and hindering the development and success of unjust wars. In order to understand the nature and character of war, it is necessary to find out from what historical conditions a given war arose, what social forces are waging it and in the name of what, that is, what goals they pursue, what results they want to achieve and what can become a real result of the war. One thing is the direct subjugation of the people against whom the war is unleashed, another thing is when the war is waged because of the redistribution of colonies, and the third thing is when the goal of the war is the extermination of a certain national or social group, the destruction of a people or nationality (genocide).

At earlier stages of human history (within the framework of such secondary formations as slavery, the Asian mode of production and feudalism), war, arising on the foundation of private property and exploitative relations, pursued the goal of redistributing territories and wealth, capturing cheap labor, etc. At higher levels, with the growth of the productive forces, more substantial goals were set - the enslavement of the peoples of entire countries or states. At the same time, it must be taken into account that the main losses during the war are borne by the people, ordinary citizens - peasants, workers, farmers, employees, etc. It was they who paid for the wars by a sharp drop in their living standards. In contrast, a certain part of the wealthy, exploiters and oppressors used wars for selfish purposes: the extermination during the war of the most productive part of the population, the fall in the standard of living of the broad masses was often accompanied by the rapid enrichment of that part of the population that was engaged in the supply of weapons, uniforms, ammunition, food for the army, pumping into their pockets a huge part of the funds mobilized by the government through taxes.

For example, the Anglo-Boer War at the end of the 19th century. brought the English merchants of death £1,125 for each one killed. In the future, incomes increased rapidly: already during the First World War, they amounted to $ 8,000 for each killed. During the Second World War, which claimed more than 50 million human lives, the profits of the American monopolies alone amounted to over 55 billion dollars. deep wounds that take decades to heal.

The historically uneven economic and socio-political development of individual countries is constantly changing the balance of power in the world arena, which, as political scientists rightly point out both in the West and in the East, leads to attempts to use their increased power to redistribute territories and wealth. There are no other means of restoring the balance that is disturbed from time to time, except for crises in the economy and wars in politics. Interstate wars, including world wars, are the product of a conscious policy. But this does not mean that at any historical stage there are equal opportunities to prevent war. As early as the beginning of the 20th century. Lenin and his supporters proceeded from the inevitability of wars between states, and therefore he considered the armed uprising of the people and civil war, although not the best, but the most probable form of development of the people's revolution. Later the situation changed. Why? Previously, the interests and policies of only finance capital, the imperialist bourgeoisie, clashed in the world arena. And the forces of the people of labor, the forces of a peaceful democracy were insufficient to prevent the war. It was in connection with this that V. Lenin wrote about “the international policy of finance capital, which is now dominant throughout the world, which inevitably gives rise to new imperialist wars (Soch., vol. 33, p. 33). When the situation and the balance of forces changed, such wars ceased be inevitable.

Along with interstate wars, there are also wars within states that are waged for social liberation (armed uprisings, civil war or guerrilla warfare in the name of national liberation). All these are just wars. It would be wrong to think that any use of armed violence is unacceptable. Even Jean Jacques Rousseau substantiated the justice of the armed struggle against tyrants: “An uprising,” he wrote, “which leads to the murder or overthrow from the throne of some sultan, is an act as natural as those acts by which he had just disposed of property and by the life of his subjects. By force alone he held on, by force alone he was overthrown." Many thinkers developed the idea of ​​justice and justified the struggle against tyrants, justified popular uprisings.

As the irreparable losses associated with armed uprisings and civil wars, and even more so with world armed conflict, became more and more obvious, a concept aimed at the peaceful resolution of national, social and international disputes is being established. But before this concept began to prevail, almost fifty years of peace after the Second World War was secured by confrontation in the conditions of an extremely dangerous arms race and mutual threats. The struggle of incompatible interests during these years continued on the world stage in the form of the "cold war", which spurred on the arms race, which bled "real socialism", ensuring the victory of the West. "The Cold War" is not only a Soviet-American clash, but a global confrontation that excluded the third world war with a head-on collision of two systems and their nuclear missile forces. "Both the Americans and the Russians," wrote Arthur Schlesinger /Jr./, "are accustomed to viewing the Cold War as a kind of duel between only two states, as an exclusively Soviet-American monopoly. However, it would be a mistake to reduce the Cold War to a bilateral game, waged by the USSR and the USA. The states of Europe were not just spectators who were present at someone's match. They also took part in the Cold War. And, as the author believes, the West won this war.

War. One of the most thorny aspects of nation-building is the increasing role of the use of military force as the state grows. It should be noted that the vast majority of European nations were formed and united by their conquest. Therefore, heresy, uprisings and liberation movements were very brutally suppressed. And in many third world countries this continues to this day.

For any ruler, the preservation of the state is a matter of paramount importance. Both the monarch and the president will do everything possible to prevent a foreign invasion of the country or to avoid an internal split. And they are ruthless when such threats arise. In the interest of preserving the state, they build up the military power of their state in order to be able to withstand any threats, and this, in turn, means that they need to constantly improve the political system of the state ...

Failure to improve the army and the system of government could lead to a loss of power. The territorial organization of Europe has been noticeably simplified as small states have been subjugated and merged with larger ones. Therefore, the war was a powerful engine of unification and various kinds of improvements.

Why is there a war?

Much has been written about why war occurs. Many thinkers agree that the war had many causes, not just one. Although, very broadly, theories on the subject of wars fall into two general categories: micro and macro theories - a small, close-up picture, the center of which is individuals, as opposed to a large, panoramic picture, in the center of which whole camps and their interaction.

Microtheories. The roots of microtheory lie largely in biology and psychology. They try to explain the war as the result of human genetic aggressiveness. The result of millions of years of evolution was that people turned into fighters in order to get food, protect their families and protect their territory. In this, humans are no different from many animals. Many anthropologists angrily refute such biological Darwinism, arguing that the behavior of primitive people varies widely - some of them aggressive others - not, which can only be explained by their culture. Psychologically oriented writers explore the personalities of leaders, what makes them who they are, and how they achieve such power over the masses that they can be thrown into war.

Biological and psychological theories have some insight into the problem, but they are far from explaining wars themselves. If man is inherently aggressive, why aren't countries at war all the time? How is it that countries can fight a long series of wars - the Russian-Turkish war around the Black Sea or the Arab-Israeli war - under the leadership of different leaders, who must certainly be psychologically different? The biological and psychological approach can penetrate into the essence of underlying causes, but not immediate causes. There is a certain human aggressiveness, but in what conditions does it manifest itself? In order to understand this, let us turn to macrotheories.

macrotheories. Macrotheory has its roots in history and political science. They focus their attention mainly on the power and ambitions of states. States, not individuals, are the main actors involved. States expand where they can—as in the case of Germany's eastward advance in the Middle Ages, the "obvious inevitability" of the Americans, the growth of the British Empire, and the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe and Afghanistan. Only a balancing force can stop the movement in order to expand its possessions. One side, fearing the growth of a neighboring country, will strengthen its defenses or enter into alliances in order to counter the power of a neighbor.

Much in international relations can be explained by the proverb "Si vis racem para bellum" ("If you want peace, prepare for war") and "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Political leaders almost automatically feel the national interest and power and seek to strengthen them. Does the pursuit of power lead to war or peace? Here again there are two main theories. The balance of power. The oldest and most widespread theory says that peace happens when states, strengthening their national power and forming alliances, balance one another. Those who dream of expansionism are blocked. In accordance with the theory of the balance of power, large periods of relative peace - between the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the wars that broke out as a result of the French Revolution / 1798-1814 /, and then from 1815 until the outbreak of World War I in 1914 - were the time when the European powers balanced each other. When the balance was disturbed, the war began.

Hierarchy of power. Sophisticated analysts call the balance of power a problem squared. First, because it is so problematic to calculate the scale of force that it is impossible to know how and when the balancing of forces occurs. Some authors note that the periods of peace were when the forces were balanced, when the states in terms of strength were lined up in a hierarchical row. It was in times of transition, when this hierarchy was broken, that countries were tempted to go to war. After a great war with a final outcome, peace reigns, because in this case the balance of forces is well known. If this theory is correct, then trying to achieve a precise balance of power is absolutely wrong: it will lead to war because the states involved will think they have a good chance of winning.

Wrong perception. Combining micro and macro approaches, some scholars have focused on "imagination" or "perception" as a key factor in warfare. Both the psychological approach and the strength approach make a certain contribution, for they are not perfect. Not the real situation (which is difficult to have an idea of), but the situation that leaders perceive as such, forces them to make decisions regarding war or peace. They often have misconceptions when faced with hostility and the development of better weapons in another country that believes its actions are defensive and aimed at bridging the armaments gap. John F. Kennedy showed that the Soviets had an advantage in missiles over us; he achieved a sharp increase in missiles in the United States. This resulted in the Soviets actually being behind us, and they perceived the American efforts as a threat that they must confront. President Reagan believed that Soviet power was superior to ours and extremely dangerous; he accelerated the development of new missiles to achieve equilibrium. The Soviets took this as an aggressive move and countered it with their own new weapons. Both sides were held hostage to their own vulnerability. As Henry Kissinger famously said, "Absolute security for one power means absolute vulnerability for all others."

In the theory of misperceptions or representations, the psychological and real world collide with each other in the affairs of political leaders. They believe that they are acting for defensive purposes, but the picture they have created of the situation may be distorted. It is interesting to note that in our time, not a single country calls its actions otherwise than defensive. The Americans in Vietnam saw their actions as defending the free world; The Soviets in Afghanistan believed they were defending socialism. In their own eyes, a nation is never aggressive. A country, under the leadership of its leaders, under the influence of ideology and the media, can bring itself to such a state of fear that even its most aggressive steps can be explained as being defensive. Even Hitler and the Germans during the Second World War believed that they were defending Germany against hostile states.

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

War - personal enmity between politicians - states, tribes, groups, etc., taking place in the form of armed confrontation, military (combat) actions between their armed forces.

War pursues one goal - the imposition of one's will. One or a group of people forces another person, a group to give up their freedom, ideology, property rights, to give away resources: territory, water area, etc.

According to Clausewitz, “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 carried to extreme limits, that is, the destruction of ((all)) people. The main tool in the war is the army.

Armed conflicts between the strong and the weak are called appeasements, military expeditions, or the development 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 world and local (conflicts).

The division of wars into "external" (external warfare) and "internal" (internal warfare) is also important.

An air war is a war that is fought 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, the so-called “limited war”, among small states or a large and small state, these wars 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: rockets, portable bombs, contamination of the territory with nuclear waste, and so on.

Colonial war - the goal of this war is to conquer or keep the colony in their hands, that is, the people, the state.

Small war - the goal of this war game is to break the enemy to provide an advantage to the main troops for the decisive battle.

Information war - the impact on the population (military too) of the enemy by spreading (different in general any) disinformation, the goal is to influence the will of the enemy.

Network-centric war - the essence of this war is to increase the combat capabilities of ((promising)) formations in modern wars and armed conflicts, by achieving ((information superiority)), uniting combatants into a single network.

Psychologists, such as E. Durban and John Bowlby, argue that aggression is inherent in man by nature. According to this theory, the state creates and maintains a certain order in the local society and at the same time creates a basis for aggression in the form of war. If war is an integral part of human nature, as many psychological theories suggest, then it will never be completely eliminated.

Sigmund Freud considered aggressiveness to be one of the basic instincts that determine the psychological “springs”, the direction and meaning of human existence, and based on this position, Freud even refused to participate in the movement of fighters for peace, 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.

The periods commonly called "peaceful" are in fact periods of preparation for a future war or a situation in which the militant instincts are suppressed by a stronger state.

These theories are allegedly based on the will of the vast majority of the population. However, they do not take into account the fact that only a small number of wars in history were really the result of the will of the people. Much more often, the people are forcibly drawn into the war by their rulers. One theory that focuses on political and military leaders was developed by Maurice Walsh. He argued that the vast majority of the population is neutral in relation to war, and that wars happen only when leaders come to power with a psychologically abnormal attitude towards human life. 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, as they think, is able to solve their problems.

So, 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 feeds 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 enmity end. Enter the road to the Holy Sepulcher; reclaim this land from the unholy race and claim it for yourself."

Ayn Rand, argued that if a person wants to resist war, then he must first of all resist 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 was condemned in situations of mass murder from ancient times to the present day

Mankind 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 the former enemy will continue to have to somehow live and negotiate.

ancient greece

Ethical Issues: Archers, Slavery, Marauders

Archer. The vase painter Epictetus. Greece,
520-500 BC e. Wikimedia Commons

Since ancient times, the participants in the battles had an opinion about who shows valor in them and who uses unworthy tricks. So, since the time of the Iliad, the attitude towards the bow as an unworthy weapon has been recorded. Worthy Achaean and Trojan heroes oppose 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 Elena 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 epic, his cowardice and effeminacy are emphasized. A typical fight with his participation in the XI chapter 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 removes the armor from the killed Trojan, wounds him with an arrow in the heel. In response, the wounded Diomedes calls him "a vile archer." The fact that it is Paris who later strikes the invincible Achilles with an arrow also emphasizes the particular ill-fated fate of this hero, who was not defeated in a 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 "State" pointed out the inadmissibility of the conversion of captive 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 now Western civilization would prefer to forget.

Ancient Rome

Ethical issues: respect for the enemy, the ceremonial of war, notions of cruelty

The philosopher and politician Mark 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, without committing illegalities, to live in peace; but after the victory, it is necessary to save the lives of those who during the war were neither cruel nor ferocious ... ”He recognized the need to“ refrain from cruelty ”in wars where it is“ about the glory of our state ”(and not about the question of her life and death ), and believed that the obligations given to the enemy must be observed in the same way as any others.


Fall of Carthage. Engraving by Georg Penz. 1539 Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Perhaps it was the constant waging of wars, with the general desire of Roman social thought to describe life in terms of strict legal categories, that led the Romans to pay so much attention to the rules of warfare and peace. These issues themselves, according to Roman ideas, were under the jurisdiction of the goddess Dius Fidius, who was responsible for the observance of justice. It was customary to condemn excessive cruelty and intemperance in the conduct of wars - or, in any case, additionally justify it. Plutarch noted on this occasion: “Good people also have a certain right to war, and one should not extend the thirst for victorious laurels to the point of losing benefit due to vile and impious deeds.” As for what deed is considered heinous and impious, there could be certain discrepancies. In particular, Cicero, like all Roman authors, it seems, considered the destruction of Carthage just and justified (assuming the cruelty once shown by Hannibal In 146 BC. e. Carthage (the Phoenician state in northern Africa with its capital in the city of the same name) was plundered and destroyed by the Romans; almost the entire population was slaughtered or taken into slavery, 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 enemies. According to Titus Livy, "his cruelty reached the inhumanity<...>. He knew neither truth nor virtue, he was not afraid of the gods, he did not keep oaths, he did not respect sacred things., a just cause for retribution), but expressed regret about the destruction of Corinth by the Romans In 146 BC. e. the ancient Greek policy of Corinth was destroyed and burned by the Romans, and the inhabitants were killed or sold into slavery, after which Greece becomes a Roman province. considering this step as a mistake.

“The enemies are those who we or whom we have publicly declared war on. The rest are thieves and robbers.”

According to the classical commentator on Roman law of the 2nd century AD, the jurist Sextus Pomponius, “enemies are those who 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, the citizens of Rome, captured during the war declared by the Roman people, were considered to have temporarily lost their freedom and remained in this status until the conclusion of peace, while the Romans, who were taken hostage by pirates (as happened once with Julius Caesar), lost their personal freedom and suffered any damage to their honor were not considered.

As for the attitude towards weapons, in the Roman army units of archers and sling throwers were considered auxiliary troops and received less salary than legionnaires. In this sense, the Roman military machine maintained a disdainful attitude towards weapons that allowed killing at a distance.

The Roman Empire. Spread of Christianity

Ethical Issues: Refraining from Violence, Correcting 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 rather non-trivial. A comprehensive view of the question of the attitude of the Christian world to the war was presented by Blessed Augustine. In his reasoning These arguments are contained in the treatise "On the City of God", in the interpretations of the Semituch 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 to the earthly city. In addition, according to Blessed Augustine, war, like any action of a Christian, must be guided by the right intentions. Such intention may be the desire to stop evil and restore justice. At the same time, even when restoring justice and repaying 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 the conduct of war and only supplemented it with a Christian interpretation of actions, where not only actions are important, but also correct intentions. They formed the basis of the prevailing approaches in Western Europe to questions of war and peace. In any case, if we talk specifically about understanding the problems of war, and not about the actual methods of waging it, it is difficult to say how much Augustine's considerations influenced military practice: the circle of educated people who could get acquainted with them was too narrow and was largely limited to monastic book centers.

The fights were supposed to be as visual as possible, for which the battle sites were set in advance - usually on the banks of rivers

At that time, the attitude to the war was largely determined by the traditions of the German barbarian tribes, who gradually seized power over the territory of Western Europe and established their kingdoms there. They looked at war as a variant of God's judgment: the result of the battle was to determine who was right and who was wrong in the ensuing bickering. This determined many features of the conduct of the war - in particular, the battles had to be as visual as possible. The battle sites were set in advance - usually on the banks of the rivers (although this was by no means always explained by tactical necessity). At a safe distance, the surrounding and not participating in the battle "sympathizers" of one side or the other could observe what was happening in order to be witnesses of how "justice" was being administered. This view of the war as a way of defining the right side imposed certain restrictions on the methods of warfare, deterring from methods that would be considered "dishonorable". In a subconscious form, these views continue to be influential today.

European Middle Ages

Ethical issues: just war, secular nature of war, limitation of violence against the population, looting, oath, truce, firearms


Siege of Orleans. Miniature from the Vigil on the Death of King Charles VII. End of the 15th century Bibliothèque nationale de France

By the XIV century, with the development of literacy, 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 "The sum of theology", XIII century. and the teaching of Blessed Augustine, war must have a just cause (that is, pursue the goal of protection from evil, restoration of justice or compensation for damage, etc.), the 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. Medieval scholastic discussions 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 an incentive to change the worldview.

The clergy in Western Europe became one of the initiators of the introduction of direct restrictions on the use of violence during armed conflicts. This was partly due to the fact that the Catholic Church turned out to be the only structure operating throughout the entire space of the Western world, divided by feudal civil 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 at the initiative of the French bishops, demanded that all those involved in various feudal conflicts refrain from robbing peasants and church property and violence against clerics. The knights were required to take an oath to fulfill their promises (this was partly achieved by coercion on the part of those secular rulers who were interested in limiting conflicts). At the same time, the "God's Truce" was also introduced, ordering the conflicting parties to refrain from war on certain days. In fact, it was in the documents of the church "movement of God's peace" that the concept was first formulated that non-combatants, that is, persons not directly participating in the war, should not be victims of violence, and their property should also be protected. Later, these ideas were included in the Western European chivalric codes, which ordered the "ideal" warrior to protect the lives and property of civilians.

Robin the Hood. 16th century engraving National Library of Scotland

The attitude towards onions in the Middle Ages continued to be dismissive. It was not considered a decent weapon for a knight (who, however, was allowed to use a bow while hunting wild animals). The detachments of archers that were in the medieval troops were recruited from commoners, and even archers who entered the legends, such as Robin Hood or William Tell, were treated accordingly. With all their prowess, these are, first of all, commoners, moreover, in the case of Robin Hood, they are engaged in robbery.

The attitude towards archers, such as Robin Hood, was dismissive: for all their valor, they are primarily commoners, moreover, engaged in robbery

An even more negative attitude has formed towards the crossbow. A weapon that easily pierced knight's armor from a distance was considered almost like an "invention of the devil" Such an assessment of the crossbow is given in the writings of the Byzantine princess and historian Anna Komnina.. In the West, in 1139, the bow and crossbow became the occasion for a special decree of the Second Lateran Council of the Catholic Church. These weapons, being too destructive and dishonorable, 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 weapon at the level of an international agreement.

A similar attitude towards firearms continued for a long time - starting from the 14th century, when gunpowder became more and more widely used in hostilities in Europe and Asia. Shooting from heavy and awkward devices that spewing smoke and hitting the enemy from a distance was also not considered a worthy way of fighting. In the East, the first primitive shooting devices were often assigned to service slaves. In Russia, the archery army was also recruited from commoners and served for a fee. In the early days of the use of firearms, those who used them could be treated with extreme cruelty. It is known that the Italian condottiere of the 15th century, 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 it ceased to be subjected to moral assessment.

The era of the Reformation. 16th - early 17th century

Ethical issues: non-involvement of the civilian population, professionalization of the army

The era of the Reformation and religious wars led to a deep crisis of chivalrous ideas about the methods of warfare. As the inhabitants of Europe began to belong to different religious formations, many 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 little restrained cruelty on both sides.


Hanged tree. Etching by Jacques Callot from the Great Disasters of War series. 1622-1623 years Art Gallery of New South Wales

The nightmare of inter-religious warfare led to a whole series of shifts in the philosophical and political thought of Europe, and in particular to the birth of international law in the form in which it currently exists - including, among other things, granting sovereign rulers full power on their territory. After that, the belonging of European countries and their rulers to different Christian denominations was no longer considered a reason for waging wars.

It was the robberies of local residents, arranged during the invasion of Prussia by the Russian army, that largely determined the attitude towards it in Europe.

The American historian Roland Bainton draws attention to the fact that the great literature of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century, including the works of Shakespeare, practically does not know the theme of pity for the fate of civilians in the 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. At the same time, it was the 18th century that in many respects became a model of “restrained” wars, in which the civilian population was minimally affected. This was partly facilitated by the very structure of the armed forces and the reasons that prompted the European states to fight each other. After the establishment of the Westphalian system of international relations Recognition as one of the key "principle of national state sovereignty", when each state has full power in 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 England and Holland, who participated in these wars of the 18th century, this definition does not fit. for a balance of power and interests, often (as in the case of the War of the Spanish Succession) having complex dynastic relations as a pretext. The armies that fought in these wars were professional, replenished by recruitment or for 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 following the orders of the commander and without delay following the orders to reorganize the battle formations.

The harsh drill required to turn a soldier into a clockwork also contributed to the fact that the armies were amazingly disciplined and showed a minimum of violence towards civilians. By the way, it was precisely the robberies of local residents organized during the invasion of Prussia during the Seven Years' War by the Russian army that became one of the important factors in the emergence of attitudes towards it in Europe as a wild and hostile force - this behavior deviated greatly from the 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 "The Law of Nations" by the Swiss lawyer Emmerich de Vattel, the army of a monarch is a separate legal entity authorized to wage war. All rights and obligations arising from this are associated with belonging to this corporation. Those who did not join the army should not be involved in the conflict.

Golden 18th century

Ethical Issues: Honor

The manner of warfare in the 18th century, when disciplined armies performed complex maneuvers (often really more important than the battles themselves), being only a tool in the disputes of their monarchs, contributed to the fact that the war was accompanied by numerous various kinds of chivalrous conventions. The officers of the enemy troops could sometimes salute the illustrious commander-in-chief of the enemy and politely decide whose army would fire the first volley. The attitude to war as the "sport of kings" helped to reduce bitterness. Captured officers could be left with personal freedom if they gave their word of honor not to try to escape. At the same time, the prisoner was released only at the end of hostilities and upon payment of a ransom. For a long time, the payment of this ransom by an officer was considered a risk of the profession and was carried out at the expense of the prisoner's personal funds; it was not until the second half of the 18th century that governments began to assume 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 old law, from imposing indemnities on occupied cities, and sometimes completely plundering a captured enemy camp or fortress. The combination of custom and the direct possibilities of warfare thus did not exclude cruelty and injustice (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 into certain limits.

The beginning of the era of scientific progress. "Big 19th century"

Ethical Issues: People's War, Ideological Struggle, Persecution of Enemies, Partisans, Hero Cult, Struggle for Existence, Increasing Lethality, Underside of War, Humane Treatment of the Wounded, Restriction of Certain Weapons, Economics of Warfare, Beauty of War

The cruel spirit of war was once again unleashed by scientific progress and the socio-political processes that took place during the “great 19th century,” as it is sometimes called the period between the start of the French Revolution of 1789 and the start of the First World War in 1914.


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 French Revolution was the transformation of the war into the business of the whole nation. The 1792 call to citizens to take up arms, which launched the revolutionary wars, allowing the first anti-French coalition to be crushed, was the first example of war as a national effort. The revolution radically changed the approach to war - it was no longer the business of the monarch, the French people became the sovereign, who, in accordance with revolutionary logic, made the decision to go to war. At the same time, the war received an ideological content. It could and should have been carried on for the dissemination of new ideals. Accordingly, those who did not accept the new ideals in the territories occupied by the French could be considered an enemy (theoretically, not the French, but their own people, to whom the French brought liberation), and therefore the severe 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 entitled to reorder the fate of Europe.

The entry of the masses into the arena of history, and hence 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 is permissible and what is not permissible in the course of a war. Although many of the customs of war - including the humane treatment of prisoners and civilians - during the era of the Napoleonic Wars could be preserved in clashes between regular armies, in the event that the war took on a truly popular character, any restrictions ceased to operate: the actions of guerrillas in Spain or peasant partisan detachments in Russia were distinguished by monstrous cruelty, and the French did not miss the opportunity to pay back in kind. The established rules, which assumed that only armies had the right to wage war, placed the guerrillas outside of 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 norms associated with the war. A brilliant military theorist and graduate of the Prussian army, guardian of the traditions of Frederick the Great, Clausewitz was very upset by the defeat of Prussia by Napoleon in 1806, the reason for which he considered, among other things, the rigidity of the Prussian military machine. Clausewitz was the first to suggest approaching war based on its internal nature, that is, considering it an instrument of violence limited only by objective conditions and 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"

Many factors influenced the gradual growth of the popularity of ideas about war as an occupation that does not tolerate external restraints, and about the inapplicability of everyday ethics to war. One of them was romanticism, which put the cult of heroes at the forefront. For some, the introduction of the Darwinian concept of “struggle for existence” into scientific circulation also turned out to be a shock to the foundations of the worldview and a reason to consider the relationship between countries and peoples from the point of view of an endless fight for the survival of the strongest. Superimposed on these ideas and the general crisis of religious morality and those concepts of the unacceptable, which were determined by Christian teaching.

Nevertheless, the belief in progress that defined the worldview of the 19th century also assumed the belief in the ultimate triumph of humanity, the possibility for mankind to agree on common rules of 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 ever more lethal types of weapons, the general anxiety about what was happening made it necessary to look for ways to ward off the specter of total war - that is, military actions that were not restrained by any rules and considering any objects and all categories of the population in enemy territory as legitimate targets if this helps to win.

Faith in progress also implied faith in the triumph of humanity, the possibility for humanity to come to an agreement and the disappearance of wars in the future.

Harvest of Death: Fallen Federal Army Soldiers on the Battle of Gettysburg. Photograph by Timothy O'Sullivan. USA, 1863 Library of Congress

The experience of the first major armed conflicts that took place in the post-Napoleonic era, such as the American Civil War, the struggle for the unification of Italy and the Crimean War, showed that the use of new, much more deadly weapons - breech-loading rifled rifles 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, another information age had begun: the wire telegraph allowed military journalists to deliver news from the theaters of war with speed unimaginable before. Their reports often vividly described the underside of the war, with the suffering of the wounded and the unenviable fate of the prisoners, which had not previously been a reality of daily news.

In 1864, the First Geneva Convention was developed and signed: the states that signed it undertake to exclude military hospitals from military purposes, to ensure humane treatment of the wounded and prisoners of war of the opposing side, and to protect civilians assisting 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 conduct in war. In a situation where the authority and influence of former non-state structures that regulate moral issues, such as the church, were no longer strong enough, and massive conscription armies and the use of unprecedented weapons limited the strength of many of the unspoken intra-corporate codes that were in force in the armies of previous centuries, it was necessary to create new documents governing 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. Its initiator was the Russian Emperor Nicholas II, apparently really worried 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 a real decision on disarmament, 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 determined the rule of mandatory prior notification of the outbreak of war, provided for the obligations of humane treatment of prisoners of war and the protection of the rights of civilians in the occupied territories. In addition, the Hague Conventions tried to regulate the use of various types of 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 when the suffocating properties were a side effect of conventional explosives., reshaped expansion bullets (known as "dum-dum" bullets) were also banned due to their crippling effect.


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 a 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 was in this sense that they remained relevant in the First and Second World Wars. The subsequent expansion and addition of these documents following the results of wars, which eventually embodied in the signing of the Geneva Convention of 1949, which condemned aggression in principle, changed little in the very principle of regulating the conduct of wars.

A rather restrained attitude in the European armies for a long time was maintained towards the machine gun - it was taken 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 pointed out that the "mechanical work" of the shooter changes the whole idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe military craft and, for some reason, it seemed unlikely that the soldier would like it. This was all the more true for officers and generals, who are much more comfortable "preparing for previous wars", that is, relying on the prowess of a proven weapon. Therefore, everything that did not fit into the logic of the battles of previous years could be rejected as insignificant. As an early 20th-century British army manual put it rather eloquently, "It must be taken as a principle that a rifle, however effective, cannot replace the effect produced by the speed of the horse, the magnetism of the horse's attack, and the horror of cold steel." . As can be seen, the compilers of the manual also took into account not only rational considerations, but also the "beauty" of the traditionally accepted ways of fighting.

World War I

Ethical issues: chemical weapons, trench warfare


Gassed. Painting by John Singer Sargent. England, 1919 Imperial War Museums

The question of the use of toxic substances until the beginning of the 20th century was considered from the point of view of some single actions The poisoned blade is the tool of a spy and a hired killer, that is, an occupation that is deliberately 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, they mentioned the prohibition of poisoned weapons, since they cause unjustified damage and suffering to people. Poisoning water sources was considered the same vile and unacceptable act in wars.. The poison was rather a "piece" product. The advances in chemistry and the industrial revolution dramatically changed this state of affairs. The chemical industry could release chlorine and other poisonous gases in sufficient quantities to carry out military operations. The very idea of ​​using gas in the war was explained by the stalemate of trench warfare, which by 1915 had become the First 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 in April 1915, in the area of ​​the Belgian city of Ypres, the Germans first used a chlorine attack, 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 operation 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 soon began to be massively used by all the main warring parties, were not the most deadly weapons of the First World War. His victims were only three percent of the total number of those who died on the fronts of the war. Nevertheless, the very principle of its operation, when people were literally poisoned like rats, evoked the idea of ​​something fundamentally unacceptable.

After the First World War, 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, dishonorable and inappropriate use of science. It carries 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 banned. This is probably the first time in the history of mankind when, apart from some excesses, a ban on the use of an entire class of weapons has been successful and held 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, standing 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 the 19th century. Along with it, the attitude towards war in Western culture has also changed radically. 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, standing still for years, gave rise to the idea that there would be no end to the war. The characteristics of trench life themselves also influenced the assessment of the war: in fact, in the absence of active hostilities, soldiers spent their days in deep cracks stretching across half the continent to the Swiss border. They, if they were not at an observation post or at a firing position, saw almost nothing but a strip of sky above them. Only at night could separate groups move out of the trenches to repair damaged structures. At the same time, the enemy, who was in the same trenches on the other side of the neutral zone, was also out of sight all the time. As one of the participants in the war, Charles Carrington, recalled, “you could spend several weeks in the trenches and never see the enemy.” Only sometimes, on the other side, especially attentive observers noticed “a silhouette flashing in the distance” or “through the rifle embrasure - the head and shoulders jumping over a gap in the enemy parapet”..

The immobility of the front at the same time led to another feature: a few kilometers from the front, the rear was already beginning, where there was little to remind of the war. This sharp contrast between a space where people spend months and years underground and periodically massacre each other, and another, the former world, starting at arm's length, was too cruel and convincing model of the senselessness and inhumanity of any war that influenced the moods of generations. who had similar trench experience. The hopeless attempts to break through the lines of defense on both sides, which led to enormous losses and often did not bring results, the struggle for miserable plots 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 common. “The best sight I saw on the Somme was two brigadier generals lying dead in the same shell hole,” a British trench officer once remarked. and in general to the rear bosses as soulless bloodsuckers, a special feeling of front-line brotherhood, the perception of war as a collective traumatic experience - that is, all that has become an accepted pacifist canon in Western culture.

The Second World War

Ethical issues: Condemnation of war-starting regimes and specific crimes against humanity, nuclear weapons, Cold War


Defendants at the Nuremberg trials, 1945-1946 First row, left to right: Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel; second row, 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 outcomes of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials - that is, precedents with the condemnation of the political regimes of Germany and Japan that unleashed 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 process was, to what extent it was a “trial of the victors” and, moreover, whether all the crimes of the Second World War were considered and condemned by them, nevertheless, it turned out to be the experience is inscribed when brutal crimes committed in war become the subject of an international judicial investigation. We can continue the long debate about how this mechanism actually works, how selective and effective it is. But the notion that brutality in war can be a crime against humanity, and that its perpetrators can and should be tried, now seems like a commonly shared principle (at least in theory).

Another "gift" of World War II was nuclear weapons. The very fact that humanity now possesses the technical power to destroy hundreds of thousands of lives in an instant may have united ethicists and pragmatists for the first time in the assessment that war is becoming something unacceptable in relations between countries. When it comes to the possibility of endangering human civilization itself, the contradictions between the ethical and technocratic assessments of war disappear. In part, fear of the use of nuclear weapons as a “doomsday device” led to the fact that, despite the fact that the main controllers of the Cold War nuclear arsenals - the United States and the USSR - as well as other open and covert possessors of these weapons, invested huge amounts of money in staging weapons of all new devices, they nevertheless never dared to use it. And nuclear disarmament initiatives have consistently received much stronger public support than the general talk of abolishing weapons altogether.

The end of the XX - the beginning of the XXI century

Ethical issues: terrorism, torture, drones

At the end of the century, when terrorism has become a global phenomenon, the motivation of the participants in the movement, 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 appearance of a prison for captured terrorists at the Guantanamo base show that the status of captured members of terrorist organizations is practically not regulated by any legal or ethical framework. They do not have the status of prisoners of war. At the same time, 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. Actually, the emergence of such a category of adversary as “terrorist” again made torture the 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.


MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle PA Images / TASS

Separate questions are also raised by the complex combat operations now carried out with the help of unmanned vehicles. The drone “hunting for terrorists” that US intelligence agencies have carried out and continue to carry out in various remote corners of the earth again raises the question of how “moral” a war looks, in which the drone operator who makes the decision to deliver a fatal blow is in the known safety . These are the same questions that were discussed after the invention of the bow and crossbow, and they affect the attitude towards those who use such weapons in the same way. In any case, from time to time in the American press they write that specialists involved in drone control feel somewhat dismissive on the part of pilots of conventional aircraft (and this partly affects the popularity of this profession). But these situations are not much different from the questions that have arisen before with the advent of weapons that provide fundamentally new ways to kill (you can recall how Arthur Wilson, who commanded the British Mediterranean Fleet in the early 20th century, called the first submarines commissioned "insidious, dishonest and damned un-English "weapons). So the evolution of the ethical evaluation of war continues along with the evolution of wars themselves.

Can war be "normal"?

Many politicians, scientists and thinkers have tried to unravel the nature of war. Their opinions have always been extremely diverse. As part of the life of the people, war has long been conceived as something divine, admirably lofty; she was considered the joy of a warrior and the greatest pride of the winner. As the Russian philosopher A.E. wrote about a hundred years ago, Snesarev, "before the war, the masses bowed in respectful recognition."

However, admiration for the war, for the heroic deeds of warriors, often closed the terrible consequences for people, society and the economy.

Some of the thinkers of the past considered war and the violence associated with it as an inherent condition of the human community. Thus, the Greek philosopher Plato considered war to be the “natural state of peoples” and that in nature itself war reigns between all states, and peace is an empty phrase. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes associated war with the nature of man, who has in common with the wolf breed, supposedly always ready to tear each other to pieces.

The Russian military theorist and educator, infantry general Mikhail Dragomirov noted that "... everything in nature is based on struggle, therefore a person wages wars, not being able to rise above any of the laws of nature." The Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov believed that even from the point of view of justifying the good, war cannot be considered subject to immediate and complete abolition.

That is, while recognizing the destructive nature of war, many Russian and foreign thinkers considered war to be an objective social phenomenon. In other words: war takes place in life because society periodically needs it.

Note the existence of the opposite point of view. Thus, the writer Leo Tolstoy considered the war an event contrary to the human mind and all human nature, despite the fact that it was he who wrote a large book (“War and Peace”) about the war and preparations for it. The Russian philosopher Semyon Frank wrote that war has become an anachronism in our time. The famous scientist, doctor, teacher and public figure, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Pirogov considered the war a traumatic epidemic.

These thinkers denied war and believed that people should do everything possible to eradicate war from their own lives.

However, many scientists and thinkers noted the dual nature of the war. This opinion was successfully formulated by the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky: “It is not always necessary to preach peace alone, and not in the world alone, by all means, salvation, and sometimes even in war it is.”

Various explanations of the phenomenon of war are due to several reasons.

First, war has many consequences. People die in war, and many people are diverted from economic activities to participate in it. Buildings, property and other material values ​​are destroyed.

Secondly, the war has always produced a great emotional impact on people, especially on impressionable ones. Therefore, it is difficult to understand the significance of war for the whole society. Pictures of heroism and, at the same time, mass death of people always come to the fore in the minds of people.

Third, virtually everyone who writes about the war is a biased observer. Soldiers themselves or their relatives rarely write about the war. As a rule, they get negative impressions from the war: the loss of loved ones, cruelty, the suspension or loss of their work, distrust or anger of loved ones, and much more.

For example, our great commander Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov published Memoirs and Reflections twenty-four years after the end of the Great Patriotic War. Therefore, as a rule, civilians write about the war, whose position always differs from the opinion of professional military men.

Conclusion: war is a complex social phenomenon with a variety of manifestations. Far from all people and far from always being able to understand its causes, the motives of its participants and realize its consequences.

I encourage readers to think for themselves about the following questions:

1. How are war and evil related?

2. How are war and goodness related?

3. How are war and peace related?

In a figurative sense, anachronism is a relic of antiquity, obsolete, obsolete views, customs, judgments that do not fit with modern views.

To be continued.