THE PHILOSOPHY OF WAR AS AN ACTUAL WORLDVIEW PROBLEM

Abstract

With the beginning of Russia's military aggression against Ukraine, the war ceased to be only a political phenomenon for Ukrainians, but acquired a worldview significance for us. Even ordinary citizens have questions that might seem paradoxical recently. Namely: how did the state, which was one of the guarantors of the sovereignty and security of Ukraine, end up as the aggressor?; how did the state that, as the legal successor of the former USSR, was the state most affected by fascist aggression during the Second World War, become the aggressor? Without hoping to give a comprehensive answer to the mentioned questions, the author of the article makes an attempt to determine the philosophical principles, worldview approaches to understanding war as a social phenomenon, in particular, the importance of the world-system methodology for understanding the evolution of views on the essence of military conflicts, determining the criteria of a just-unjust war. Emphasis is placed on the fact that neither communist nor liberal ideologies have withstood the test of time in relation to their own anti-war guidelines. The «Cold War» between two ideologically opposed systems did not save humanity from «hot wars», although it somewhat changed their geopolitical location. Back in the early 60s of the 20th century, the conservative German philosopher K. Schmitt predicted such a possibility, explaining it by the fact that states need nuclear weapons not in order to get rid of military conflicts in the world at all, but in order to initiate and control military conflicts «low intensity». The researcher of this concept, M. van Creveld, names the following among the main features of such conflicts: they rarely involve regular armies on both sides, but mostly partisans, terrorists, and the civilian population, including women and children. Regarding the further evolution of relations between the state and armed formations, M. van Creveld makes an assumption that modern states will either master low-intensity conflicts or disappear. Among the criteria of justice-injustice of war, in particular, of Russian aggression against Ukraine, it is important to take into account not only the legal aspect, but also the moral and psychological aspect, which M. Van Creveld defines as the only possible criterion of just wars, namely «war for survival».