On War of the Past and the Present: the Evolution of Means of Armed Struggle and Military Thought in the Conditions of Global Confrontation

War as a political and social phenomenon is one of the central subjects in political science and international studies. This is one issue where theory and practice are intertwined most closely and updated most frequently since each new military conflict discovers new facets of war and peace for researchers, military and policy-making circles. This theme nests a number of related disciplines and subtopics some of which have become especially relevant amidst growing interstate rivalry on a global scale and in certain regions of the world. What do “containment” and “escalation” mean today? To what extent is a state’s foreign policy strategy determined by its “strategic culture”? How relevant are the ideas of the great military thinkers of the past to modern and future wars? At the center of all these stories is the issue of the evolution of means of armed struggle: how they are changing and what humanity can come to as a result of the “arrogance of force” of some states. To discuss these and other matters, Comparative Politics Russia sat down with Dr. Kokoshin, one of Russia’s leading experts in the field of military-political, socio-economic and technological aspects of international and national security.

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