THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FUNDAMENTALS OF RESEARCH OF THE CONCEPT OF "WAR"

Abstract

In the article we examined the concept of "war", highlighted its main features and presented a classification of wars by certain features. In particular, we generalized the concept of "war" as a socio-political phenomenon which is the most acute form of resolving socio-political, economic, ideological, national, religious, territorial and other contradictions among states, peoples, nations, classes and social groups by the means of armed violence. It is stated that the main features of the war are the following: a formal act of declaring it; severance of diplomatic relations between the belligerent states, which is a consequence of the declaration of war; cancellation of bilateral agreements, especially political ones; a special legal regime is in place, which characterizes partial restrictions on human rights; the presence of interstate or domestic disputes; bilateral use of weapons; political, economic, ideological, social and other motives. We also considered the classification of military conflicts: socio-political; those on a legal, military-technical and large-scale basis; by quantitative indicators (area, number of states and troops, etc.). Information warfare as a new way of waging war was also studied. Russia's information war against Ukraine is considered as an example. It is noted that the peculiarity of information war (hybrid war) is the conduct of aggressive military actions by illegal (informal) armed groups with the parallel use of a wide range of political, economic (including energy and trade and economic), as well as information and propaganda activities, out of which as a rule, war begins and which accompany it throughout the period of military actions. Military actions have been taking place in eastern Ukraine for six years now, which raises the issue of war research in modern political science.