Contours of Conflict in the 21st Century

RUSSIAN LANGUAGE PERSPECTIVES: RESURGENT AND DIVERSIFIED’synergetics’ 110 – which has so far received surprisingly little attention inthe Western literature, despite interesting overlaps with recent Westernthinking applying complexity theory on conflict and war 111 – is also wellrepresented in our sample.A third observation is that this resurgent and still remarkably vibrantresearch community – in stark contrast to its Soviet (even late Soviet)predecessors – currently truly spans the entire ideological space fromliberals to right wing Eurasianists. There is much legitimate discussionabout important changes in the freedom of the press in many parts ofthe former Soviet Union, but this dataset still suggests that the debateon these – often politically quite sensitive – issues continues in books,academic journals and on internet publications. Since 2005, a fewselected military observers and commentators have also joined this debatewith some fairly outspoken views, suggesting they now feel comfortableenough to assert their own interests and views. A final noteworthy trend isthat Russian NGOs have become somewhat more active in this area, bothforeign-supported and indigenous ones, although they are still far fromplaying the role they do in the Western debate.5.2 ParametersThe Russian language domain pays most attention to the following fouraspects of future conflict, in decreasing order of importance:• The domain in which conflict may erupt, which is clearly the mostdominant aspect in the Russian literature and is also on the rise in recentstudies (including in the military).• The means they would use (and here the underlying data show that theimportance of this parameter seems to be declining somewhat inimportance in the Russian domain, even though the military continuesto focus on it).• The geographical scope within which it may take place.• The actors who might engage in it.110 Sergej Kurdjumov, ‘Chto takoe sinergetika’ [What is Synergetics], http://spkurdyumov.narod.ru/Syn.htm.111 Bryan Hanson and L. Deborah Sword, ‘Chaos, Complexity and Conflict (Special Issue),’Emergence : complexity and organization 10, no. 4 (2008).HCSS Report 89