The Russian understanding of war: blurring the lines between war and peace

摘要

The United States has been at war since September 2001, killing or advising the killing of jihadists from West Africa to East Asia, and yet its presidents uniformly dissemble about whether they are at war, even as they proudly proclaim that they have ended endless wars. President Obama declared sixteen times that there were no boots on the ground in Syria and Iraq by 2015, even as the U.S. led a coalition to crush the Islamic State's caliphate with its local partners.1 One can only conclude that U.S. political leaders have a very high bar for considering when military efforts using violence to achieve political objectives should be considered war. In great contrast, the Russians - according to Oscar Jonsson's book on their understanding of war - have come to the recent conclusion that even the most mundane, non-violent political advocacy is evidence that they are the victims of a wide-scale societal war. This disconnect between two important states (and their respective partners) naturally inspires two questions: which of these two views are correct (if either), and what does this mean for the prospects of global peace in an already disruptive era of pandemic and climate change?