Contours of Conflict in the 21st Century

RUSSIAN LANGUAGE PERSPECTIVES: RESURGENT AND DIVERSIFIEDEurope and other countries. But despite its power, America is unlikely tobe able to withstand the consequences of its global militarism. Internalconsolidation in the face of an external ‘mortal enemy’ against the threatof terrorist attacks does not lead the country out of impending economicand social crisis. This could instead lead to the country slipping towardsa veiled internal dictatorship. In this case, the risk increases of regional– and in the long-term also of various global armed confrontationsincluding the use of nuclear weapons’. 131The national and (especially) sub-regional aspects of conflicts scorerelatively low in the Russian domain: ‘Military conflicts of the near futurewill not be global but local. Their goal will not be to defeat or destroy theenemy or to seize its territory. The most frequent target of such conflictswill be to change the policy of the enemy’. 132This leads one Russian expert to assert that ‘the prospect of deteriorationand increase in intra-state conflict becomes more likely’. 133Russian military foresight studies interestingly enough seem to be focusedprimarily on the national, domestic and regional dimensions of conflict.There are no clearly discernable trends over time or across types on thisparameter.131 Zoran Vidoevich, ‘Globalizacija, haotizacija i konflikty v sovremennom mire’ [Globalization,Chaotization and Conlicts in the Modern World], 2005, http://www.ecsocman.edu.ru/data/507/874/1216/03Vidoevich.pdf.132 O.A. Kolobov, ed., Bezopasnost’ lichnosti, obshhestva, gosudarstva [Security of the Person,Society and the State], vol. 1, 2 vols. (Nizhnij Novgorod, 2008), http://www.unn.ru/rus/fmo/Archive/books/monografii/Bezopasnost_lichnosti_obchestva_gosudarstva/tom_1.pdf.133 Kaganov, Mir vokrug Rossii: 2017. Kontury nedalekogo budushhego [The World Around Russia:2017. Contours of the Nearest Future].102 Contours of Conflict in the 21 st Century