THE PARADOX OF “LEGALITY-NON-LEGALITY OF THE PARTIZAN” BY K. SCHMITT AND ITS IMPORTANCE FOR UNDERSTANDING MILITARY CONFLICTS IN THE MODERN WORLD-SYSTEM

Abstract

The article analyzes the paradox of “legality-non-legality of the partisan,” which is seen in K. Schmitt’s work “The Theory of the Partisan,” which was written in 1962. But the problem of the status of the partisan as a subject of political processes is gaining great significance today in connection with geopolitical transformations in the world after the collapse of the USSR and especially with the beginning of the 21st century, such as the «Arab Spring», Ukrainian-Russian war, activation of terrorist groups near the Gaza Strip. K. Schmitt emphasizes the telluric nature of the partisan, which makes it an illegal, from the point of view of interstate relations, an armed force that does not belong to the regular army, and therefore is treated as a common criminal. But the partisan, according to K. Schmitt, is a political, not a criminal figure, and given its role in the revolutionary and national liberation wars of the 20th century, a significant figure. This gradually changed the status of the partisan as both a legal and illegal figure, which was reflected even in international legal documents, in particular in the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which expanded the circle of persons equated to regular fighters. Today's terrorist, according to K. Schmitt, is the last step (after the "global partisan" as a fighter of the world socialist revolution) in the evolution of the partisan, who was given new opportunities by technical and industrial progress, but his status in the present and future remains a problematic issue. This is due to the fact that modern wars go beyond the control of the states themselves, canceling the institutionalized "regular" relations between governments, armies and peoples, and mobilizing the so-called "minorities" (ethnic or religious). The fragmentation of modern democratic societies on the basis of the struggle for the expansion of personal rights, to which the segmentation of public communication into Internet communities was added at the beginning of the 21st century, makes state bodies dependent on public sentiments and mass psychology. And this applies not only to Europe and the USA, but also to a number of countries of the East that have embarked on the path of Westernization, in particular, Tunisia, Egypt, where the "Arab Spring" began. On the other hand, "ideological monocentrism" in the form of "Islamic fundamentalism" as a state ideology (Iran) or as a justification for terrorism («Hamas») in the presence of an "external enemy" in the form of the United States or its allies (Israel) creates favorable conditions for the activity of partisan terrorist armed formations.