To clarify the relationship between the concepts of “war” and “civilizational challenge,” let us turn to the basic terms of this problem. The concept of “challenge” is an element of the more general category of “danger.” A number of researchers propose a binary system of hazard classification—division into “challenge” and “threat.” These were the terms used in the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation until 2020 to describe the state of national security. In it, in the absence of a definition of “challenge,” only a definition of “threat to national security” is given. It is defined as “direct or indirect possibility of causing damage to constitutional rights, freedoms, decent quality and standard of living of citizens, sovereignty and territorial integrity, sustainable development of the Russian Federation, defense and security of the state.”
Insufficient development of the concept of “challenge,” as well as related concepts necessary for a clearer description of the multifactorial state of state security, complicates the assessment of the dynamics of the transition from a challenge to a threat. Therefore, some researchers propose a detailed conceptual scheme of this phenomenon: risk, challenge, danger, threat (V.F. Nitsevich, V.L. Manilov, M.I. Dzlieva). They offer the following definition of a challenge: “opposition to the realization of national values, interests and goals, to the solution of national security tasks in the form of official and unofficial political and diplomatic actions, trade and economic expansion, etc.” In our opinion, this definition is not quite complete, as it does not take into account some essential aspects of this phenomenon. For example, provoking someone to a duel, competition, or refusal to submit to the authority of someone or something, and so forth. It also seems to us that the consideration of such a concept as “civilizational challenge” deserves attention in theoretical terms.
The civilizational challenge is understood as “everything that in connection with the development of civilization leads to an increasing threat to the security of nature, man and society and implies one or another form of human response to this threat. In the modern world, a special danger is civilizational challenges: economic, technological, informational, energy, nationalistic, spiritual, medical and social, demographic, moral, legal, etc.”
Currently, there is a tendency to expand the interpretation of the concept of “civilizational challenge.” As such, we meet, especially in the media, these examples: “protection of the family as a civilizational challenge of the 21st century”; “on the threshold of the seizure of the Lavra: a civilizational challenge to Russia”; “the legalization of same-sex marriage has thrown the world a civilizational challenge,” and so on.
What can really be called a “civilizational challenge”, and what level of this challenge can lead to war between political actors as a response to it? Apparently, it is necessary to assess the situation here depending on the state of structural and conjunctural factors in a particular situation. As a rule, the means used to resolve a conflict situation should be commensurate with the importance of the problem at hand. War is a very serious instrument of politics, a kind of “ultima ratio” designed to resolve a conflict when other arguments have been exhausted. To understand the essence of the problem, it is necessary to delve into the political discourse based on the category of “civilization”.
There are different points of view on the introduction of the term civilization into scientific circulation. French historian Lucien Febvre was one of the first in his work “Civilization: Evolution of a Word and a Group of Ideas” tried to establish the time of appearance of the term “civilization.” He noted that the first to use it was the French engineer Boulanger, who used the term in his work Antiquity Exposed in its Customs [L’Antiquité dévoilée par ses usages] (1766). In it, the word “civilization” was used once, so it was not reasonable to claim that it was he who introduced this concept into scientific circulation. Proceeding from this, Febvre on the basis of further research comes to the opinion that the more probable author is the encyclopedist Paul Thiry d’Holbach, who repeatedly used the term “civilization” and its derivatives “civilize,” “civilized,” in his works Système Social (System of Society) and System of Nature. In 1789 the term was included in the Dictionary of the Academy.
However, there are other points of view on the primacy of the scientific use of the term “civilization.” For example, the Swiss cultural historian Zh. Starobinsky does not even mention the names of Boulanger and d’Holbach, and believes that the authorship of the introduction of the term into scientific circulation belongs to the Marquis V. de Mirabeau, who used it in his work Friend of Mankind (1757).
The French linguist Emile Benveniste also believed that Mirabeau was the author of the term. At the same time, he noted that the substantivization of the French verb “civiliser” (“to introduce to culture,” “to enlighten,” “to soften morals”), which had been used in French for a long time, was not an easy matter, especially since the transition to the meaning of “state” was at that time rather an exception to the established practice of word formation.
But the main thing, perhaps, is that both Febvre and Benveniste point to the essential feature of this term – it had a legal meaning: a judicial decision, transferring criminal proceedings into the category of civil proceedings. However, over time, this meaning was lost.
The term “civilization” appeared in the English-speaking scientific literature with the publication in 1767 of the work An Essay on the History of Civil Society by Adam Ferguson. His merit was that he used the concept of “civilization” for theoretical periodization of world history, contrasting it with “savagery” and “barbarism.” Following Ferguson, the American ethnologist and sociologist Lewis Henry Morgan supported the civilization model of periodization of history, which included three stages (savagery, barbarism and civilization), examining in detail the features of savagery and barbarism. In its final form, he presented his views on the problem in the book, Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization. Morgan formulated the fundamental idea of his theory of a single progressive path of human development. The materialistic approach to the study of the phenomenon was positively evaluated by Friedrich Engels, who used Morgan’s data and inferences when writing the famous work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
The civilizational model of understanding the development of mankind has always had supporters and opponents, which does not prevent its application to describe the phenomena inherent in human society, even by those who criticize it. For example, despite the critical attitude to the cognitive value of the concept of “civilization,” Immanuel Wallerstein in his work After Liberalism repeatedly mentions the term “civilization” in a positive sense.
War refers to civilizational phenomena, so the relationship between civilization and war is of interest from the point of view of their mutual determination. The first question that arises is what came first: war or civilization? There is no unambiguous answer to this question. If we consider it in the Marxist paradigm, it turns out that war appears together with the state, the division into classes, and the emergence of politics. At the same time, we understand that it is not easy to determine the starting point in the emergence of such a social phenomenon as war, and it depends on the methodological basis of periodization. Were there wars among savages and barbarians? In this regard, the German historian Hans Delbrück wrote: “The history of military art is one of the threads in the fabric of universal history, and begins with the latter. But it is best studied not from the moment of emergence from the prehistoric twilight of the first small-malisky clear outlines, it is best to begin the study from the moment of historical sources that give a full and clear picture of the events. Such a moment comes for us for the first time only with the epoch of the Persian wars. From that point, however, we can, by means of a continuous series of testimonies, trace the evolution down to the present day, each successive period contributing to the illumination of all previous ones. Of none of the earlier military events do we have so clear a picture. The Persian Wars are therefore the natural starting point for the history of the art of war.”
It is interesting how warfare changed in civilizational terms: in terms of culture and one of the meanings of the verb “civiliser” mentioned by Emile Benveniste—“to soften manners.” Wars of the prehistoric (pre-civilization) period are characterized by many researchers (M.S. Averbukh, P. Klastr, etc.) as extremely cruel due to the fact that slavery was not economically justified, as it was not always possible to feed captives/slaves. As early as the 18th and 19th centuries, peoples at the pre-industrial stage of development experienced complete or near-complete extermination of their opponents after devastating tribal wars. Something similar happened in the twentieth century, in one of the local conflicts described by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1993: “The nature of warfare has changed to such an extent that 90% of those directly affected are no longer combatants as before, but civilians.” The brutality with which combatants treated civilians, the wounded and prisoners of war is shocking. ICRC delegates on the scene testify: “Then the shelling stopped, but the killings continued. Soldiers broke into nearby houses, smashing, beating and looting. After that, the dead, dying and survivors were loaded all together onto trucks. On the way to the hospital, sliding in pools of blood, the soldiers continued their atrocities, bayoneting those who were still moving. Some of the victims survived only because they were loaded first and protected by the bodies that covered them.”
Heraclitus’ assertion that everything is subject to change has long been commonplace in discourse on the changeability of the world: “The living and the dead, the awake and the sleeping, the young and the old, are one and the same in us, for these opposites, having changed, are these, and these, having changed again, are these.” He is also the author of the statement: “War is the father of all, the king of all: it declares some to be gods, others to be men, some to be slaves, others to be free.” From this we can conclude that war is for the philosopher the basis of all things; in addition, war is multifaceted in its manifestations and can change over time, due to circumstances, as well as due to the struggle of opposites.
The primacy of war, its changeability was reflected by the Romans in the cult of the god Janus. This two-faced god of beginnings and endings, entrances and exits, doors—by the name of which the month of January is named – performed, among others, the function of protector and patron of warriors. When a decision was made to start a war, the doors of the temple were opened with a key, and before the faces of the deity passed the squads of soldiers going to war. During the entire war, the doors of the temple were not closed, and only after the conclusion of peace consul locked them on the key.
Speaking about the variability of war, its forms, dynamics and success, French polemologists, as well as modern researchers of this phenomenon often compare war with another mythical hero—Proteus. They are probably based on the claims of Virgil, who spoke of the abilities of this sea deity (son of Poseidon) to assume various guises.
The Eastern tradition, associated with the name of Sun Tzu, perceives war as a changeable state. The “Chinese Clausewitz” (as Sun Tzu is often called) defines its transformations in the following way: ”…The army has no unchanging power, water has no unchanging form. Who knows how to master changes and transformations depending on the enemy and to win victory, he is called a deity.” Carl von Clausewitz no less metaphorically emphasizes the external and internal sources of transformation of war: “So, war is not only a real chameleon, as it in each particular case slightly changes its nature, but also in its general forms in relation to the prevailing tendencies in it, it is a strange trinity, composed of violence as its original element, hatred and enmity.”
With the emergence of civilization and its transformation into a determining factor in the development of military affairs and ideas about war – new types of wars began to appear, the behavior of the warring parties was regulated, the morals of the participants were softened, the cruelty of hostilities was reduced, the desire to protect the civilian population from the consequences of war, humane treatment of prisoners of war, etc. appeared. However, this was far from always and not applied to everyone. For example, Samuel Huntington frankly states that a world in which civilizations clash is inevitably a world with a double morality: one is used in relation to “brotherly countries” and the other in relation to all others . Nevertheless, up to a certain point, the assessment of war trends was optimistic.
Huntington was convinced that belonging to the same civilization reduces the likelihood of violence, as was the case in 1991-1992, when many were concerned about the possibility of a military clash between Russia and Ukraine over disputed territories—primarily Crimea—as well as the Black Sea Fleet, nuclear arsenals and economic problems. He believed that the likelihood of an armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine was not very high, as they are two Slavic, mostly Orthodox nations that have had close ties for centuries. Therefore, in early 1993, despite all the reasons for conflict, the leaders of both countries successfully negotiated, eliminating differences .
Since the publication of the article in 1993, history has not provided a definitive answer to the questions posed. It seems unlikely that we will find any war in pure form from the long list of ideal types of wars that have been proposed by various authors. Nevertheless, we find some coincidences with historical practice. A.S. Panarin, who paid much attention to the problems of orthodox civilization and strategic instability, wrote about the modern struggle between the subjects of international relations: “Today’s confrontation of worlds is interpreted through various concepts, including the “conflict of civilization” (Western) with “Eastern barbarism,” with “fundamentalism and terrorism,” finally, as a struggle of modern “open society” with the archaic of national-patriotism and isolationism.” He believes that the world has already been plunged into a new confrontation, which aims to establish a new world order in which a hierarchical pyramid will be established, with the United States at the top: “The new world war launched by America is a procedure for the class purification of the civilized world from uncivilized elements who, even after the collapse of the superpower that represents them, still have at their disposal such means of self-defense as the nation-state, armies, and ‘fundamentalist ideologies’. All this must be crushed in a ‘global anti-terrorist operation’ organized by the US. The decisive condition for such an operation is the ideological rearmament of the ‘prosperous part of humanity’ on the platform of irreconcilable social racism.”
The period after the end of World War II was a time of accelerated metamorphosis of the war, as within a short historical period the balance of military and political forces on the world stage changed radically. After the war, the creation of two large military blocs led by superpowers (the US and the USSR) possessing nuclear and chemical weapons made it almost impossible for them to clash directly. On the periphery, however, there were various localized conflicts, which were a kind of indirect form of clash between these blocs.
With the onset of perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the restraining potential of bipolarity was lost, which led to an increase in the number and diversity of conflicts that had previously been undeveloped. New types of conflicts, types of armed struggle that have been called wars, have emerged.
Some Western experts claim that the disappearance of the USSR gave birth to the 21st century and brought back the 19th century. Globalization is gaining momentum. As the second industrial revolution once did, the third one has spawned enterprises that bring fortunes to their creators. Human rights and the right to intervene legitimize neo-colonial intervention, as civilization and the duty of “peoples on a higher stage of development” used to. Russian researcher A.M. Pomortseva speaks close to this, but in other words. She uses the terms “civilizational break” (challenge) and “archaization of human consciousness” (response) to explain modernity: “Synergetic processes of the initial phase of the civilizational fault, the lowest point of the fault wave – a challenge that requires from the systems “man” and “culture” an appropriate response in order to prevent the disappearance of the systems themselves.”
Undoubtedly, when a society faces the question of civilizational marginalization and even possible extinction, these societies are ready to go to extreme measures in order to avoid an unfavorable result. In this situation, war is seen as some acceptable tool to resolve the problem.
Toynbee considered the main challenge to Russian civilization to be the systematic pressure on Russia from its neighbors. However, Russia has always been able to find adequate responses to the challenges arising at each historical stage. In our opinion, the concept of “challenge” is very mobile, and can shift from one player to another, as a tennis ball moves from one half of the court to the other. And the end of the “game” does not always indicate the disappearance of the “challenge.” The end of the Cold War was perceived by the U.S. as the loss of the Soviet Union/Russia and the advent of the era of a unipolar world. But when Russia began to return to the global political arena as an equal player, the Americans saw this as a challenge to their dominance, national security and national ego. In response, they have systematically taken a variety of measures against Russia to impose their will on it. For the sake of this, they are willing to escalate relations with Russia to the point of direct or indirect (which is even more profitable) collision. This is done in order to undermine the “civilizational sovereignty” of Russia’s leadership and its citizens. But here they are faced with the so-called “pinch challenge”, when Russian society shows resilience and energy aimed at compensating for the loss of positions in those areas that are threatened.
Toynbee’s civilizational theory is not flawless (indeed, neither are most theories in general), but its value lies in his ability to rise above narrow national ambitions and recognize that the twenty-first century will be marked by challenges from Russia, the Islamic world, and China.
The challenges that countries face in our century are diverse. The most significant are those that disrupt the stability of normal, mutually beneficial functioning of international political and economic relations; those that deliberately harm other actors in interstate and intercivilizational relations in order to create an unjust system of relations between them. Challenges turn into specific threats, which include terrorism, extremism, ethnic enmity, uncontrolled migration, illegal trade in arms, drug trafficking, etc., and other threats. Military and political threats are particularly dangerous, as they can lead to unpredictable consequences.
War can appear in different qualities—as a challenge to civilizations, but also as a response to civilizational challenges, such as the Patriotic War of 1812 and the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union in 1941-1945.
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Featured: Allegory of War, by Frans Francken II; painted in 1608.
