Contemporary Warfare Discourse in Russia’s Military Thought

Abstract

This article analyses the Russian concept of contemporary warfare after the 2008 Russia–Georgia war and the changes that have occurred in the wake of the 2014 military conflict in Eastern Ukraine. This concept is shaped through a dissection of public texts and speeches by Russian military officers, experts and analysts. The article attempts to measure the impact of Russia’s military practice in Eastern Ukraine in its stance on contemporary warfare and see what new types of warfare (terminologically speaking) are appearing in Russia’s military vocabulary. A vision of the future of types of Russian war is presented, complete with arguments regarding the most plausible case of future local war with respect to Russia. The article furthermore provides a detailed analysis of the interpretations of asymmetrical, network-centric, hybrid warfare, colour revolutions, controlled chaos, and information and electromagnetic warfare in Russia’s military thought, which is understood as forms of realisation of contemporary warfare. A quest for the origin of these warfare ideas shows that Russia tends to emulate the military experience of western powers, the US in particular, instead of doing the opposite and acting adaptively and conceptualising its most recent military experience as a vision of modern warfare.