Modern Conflict Research Articles

“Hybrid war”: рolitical discourse and the international practice

The paper analyzes the content of the term “hybrid war” and its difference from other types of modern military conflicts; stresses that combination of military and non-military methods became a priority means in conducting the U.S. foreign policy; argues that the term “hybrid war” is exploited as a tool of anti-Russian rhetoric.

Model of Tolerance of Intercultural Communication

In this paper a model of tolerance of intercultural communication as a methodology of solving sharp confessional, ethnic and natural conflicts of modernity is built. It's shown that the culture is a system of mental dominants at the level of being; the systems of mental dominants are qualitatively original because the cultures are unique and must be equal; the system of mental dominants and mental nucleus of culture determines intensity to maintenance of own identity; perception of cultural and civilizational phenomena of the other culture is limited by this intensity. So, the space of cultural tolerance opening the possibilities for prosperity and development of each culture and complementary interaction of cultures are possible on condition that each of them awares their own mental originality, status of mental nucleus as a limit of intercultural mutual influence and realizes own individuality and equality of all cultures.

Health issues as security issues

In recent years, the concept of health security has acquired an international dimension. Global health issues incurred as a result of modern conflict, globalization, increased mobility of people, climate change, bioterrorism and emerging infectious diseases pose threats not only to national, but to global security, as well. The potential dangers of epidemics, particularly pandemics, are considered to be threats to national security and as such they have found their place in the national documents and strategies of national security. After the UN Security Council passed the first ever resolution on a health issue in 2000 - Resolution 1308, which recognized the potential of an epidemic to pose a risk to stability and security and declared 'peaceful war against AIDS' - as well as after a SARS outbreak in 2003, a H1N1 pandemic in 2009 and an Ebola outbreak in 2014, which the UN Security Council Resolution 2177 marked as a 'threat to international peace and security', more attention has been given to the concept of global health security. In this paper, we will discuss why health issues are considered to be security issues, and present how health security has been treated in the national security strategies of individual countries, but also in global health security initiatives.

Modern Terrorism as Hybrid Threat and Digital Challenge

Nowadays the world is facing a new security challenge - the hybrid threats and war. Whilst this idea could be addressed as an extension of the Alliance Comprehensive Approach, the combination of conventional and nonconventional methods towards modern warfare is already a fact. The key idea behind is the hybrid nature of the modern conflicts, feeding in the terrorism context. The paper outlies a general model of the terrorism hybrid nature, accentuating on the modern cyber space role and is targeting our authors to go deeper in the problem from both technological and human part, supporting in this way a more secure future world.

Behavior Space Design and Expression by the Theories and Methods of Urban Design—The Yan Dao ancient town of design practice

In recent years, the ancient town of update and development has become a new hot spot, the study of old town renewal of concern is gradually warming. And again there are a lot of space in the middle of the old town renewal design and traditional style, space activities and use the contradiction between population, which becomes a problem urgently to be solved in design stage. The purpose of this study was to explore old town design space and behavior, traditional and modern conflict resolution methods, and to present the town development and design with a design concept. This paper' uses three theories of urban design (The relationship between figure and ground, Contact theory and Place theory) as a real-time monitoring, assessment, comparison of methods, to study Yan Dao Ancient Town, and the space for analysis. In the research, this paper based on the design theory of the three major city as a starting point, detailedly describes the different types in a certain area of difference in the behavior and the properties of space, and the ancient town of Hubei Shennongjia forest region salt path planning and design practice, the ancient town of updating the connotation of the historical context and space behavior of connection. The conclusion of this thesis put forward the method of that based on the space shape of ancient design method of its application in practice.

The Intellectual Property Conundrum: Individual Property Rights v. Cultural Development

The premise behind modern intellectual property rights is to incentivize innovation. However, the modern intellectual property rights regime has three fundamental flaws that cut against its premise to kindle innovation. First, the modern regime conflicts with humans' innate learning and innovating process. Second, the modern regime restricts access to information, which stifles innovation evidenced by empirical studies. Third, the current formation of the social tradeoff is not effective, so it does not benefit society. In sum, the modern regime does not increase technological achievements, i.e. cultural development. These factors suggest alternative legal policies should be adopted, so governments can create laws that foster cultural development. Thus, if the end goal is truly to promote humanity’s wellbeing, then intellectual property rights must be reformed because they stifle innovation and criminalize creativity.

The Feminine Voice in Global Journalism: The Example of Ukraine

This study is designed to identify a discrepancy, if any, between the number of female and male journalists reporting on the crisis in Ukraine. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis, as well as primary and secondary research, the following paper attempts to bring attention to gendered differences in crisis reporting, and explain how those gendered differences affect the interpretation of a conflict. Previous research shows women are more inclined to cover crises from a human interest or human suffering standpoint, whereas men cover crises through politics and violence. The study concludes that while the majority of journalists reporting on the Ukraine crisis for The New York Times are male, it does not find a concrete correlation between the primary focus of the sample articles and the gender of the journalist. The analysis provides a starting point for future research, as well as a new perspective to a modern conflict heavily covered by North American media.

Blast-Related Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A Bayesian Random-Effects Meta-Analysis on the Cognitive Outcomes of Concussion among Military Personnel

Throughout their careers, many soldiers experience repeated blasts exposures from improvised explosive devices, which often involve head injury. Consequentially, blast-related mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) has become prevalent in modern conflicts, often occuring co-morbidly with psychiatric illness (e.g., post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]). In turn, a growing body of research has begun to explore the cognitive and psychiatric sequelae of blast-related mTBI. The current meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the chronic effects of blast-related mTBI on cognitive performance. A systematic review identified 9 studies reporting 12 samples meeting eligibility criteria. A Bayesian random-effects meta-analysis was conducted with cognitive construct and PTSD symptoms explored as moderators. The overall posterior mean effect size and Highest Density Interval (HDI) came to d = -0.12 [-0.21, -0.04], with executive function (-0.16 [-0.31, 0.00]), verbal delayed memory (-0.19 [-0.44, 0.06]) and processing speed (-0.11 [-0.26, 0.01]) presenting as the most sensitive cognitive domains to blast-related mTBI. When dividing executive function into diverse sub-constructs (i.e., working memory, inhibition, set-shifting), set-shifting presented the largest effect size (-0.33 [-0.55, -0.05]). PTSD symptoms did not predict cognitive effects sizes, β PTSD = -0.02 [-0.23, 0.20]. The results indicate a subtle, but chronic cognitive impairment following mTBI, especially in set-shifting, a relevant aspect of executive attention. These findings are consistent with past meta-analyses on multiple mTBI and correspond with past neuroimaging research on the cognitive correlates of white matter damage common in mTBI. However, all studies had cross-sectional designs, which resulted in universally low quality ratings and limited the conclusions inferable from this meta-analysis.

Considerations for animal models of blast-related traumatic brain injury and chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

The association of military blast exposure and brain injury was first appreciated in World War I as commotio cerebri, and later as shell shock. Similar injuries sustained in modern military conflicts are now classified as mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). Recent research has yielded new insights into the mechanisms by which blast exposure leads to acute brain injury and chronic sequelae, including postconcussive syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder, post-traumatic headache, and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a tau protein neurodegenerative disease. Impediments to delivery of effective medical care for individuals affected by blast-related TBI include: poor insight into the heterogeneity of neurological insults induced by blast exposure; limited understanding of the mechanisms by which blast exposure injures the brain and triggers sequelae; failure to appreciate interactive injuries that affect frontal lobe function, pituitary regulation, and neurovegetative homeostasis; unknown influence of genetic risk factors, prior trauma, and comorbidities; absence of validated diagnostic criteria and clinical nosology that differentiate clinical endophenotypes; and lack of empirical evidence to guide medical management and therapeutic intervention. While clinicopathological analysis can provide evidence of correlative association, experimental use of animal models remains the primary tool for establishing causal mechanisms of disease. However, the TBI field is confronted by a welter of animal models with varying clinical relevance, thereby impeding scientific coherence and hindering translational progress. Animal models of blast TBI will be far more translationally useful if experimental emphasis focuses on accurate reproduction of clinically relevant endpoints (output) rather than scaled replication of idealized blast shockwaves (input). The utility of an animal model is dependent on the degree to which the model recapitulates pathophysiological mechanisms, neuropathological features, and neurological sequelae observed in the corresponding human disorder. Understanding the purpose of an animal model and the criteria by which experimental results derived from the model are validated are critical components for useful animal modeling. Animal models that reliably demonstrate clinically relevant endpoints will expedite development of new treatments, diagnostics, preventive measures, and rehabilitative strategies for individuals affected by blast TBI and its aftermath.

Intergroup conflict, ostracism, and the evolution of cooperation under free migration

Theoretical investigations and quasi-experimental evidence from modern conflict areas suggest that intergroup conflict and ostracism play a pivotal role in the evolution of cooperation. However, there is little direct evidence about the influence of intergroup conflict on human social behavior in the presence of endogenous group formation and unrestricted migration. This study introduces an experiment to examine the impact of intergroup conflict and ostracism on group formation, and human cooperation in a dynamic environment where group size, the occurrence of intergroup hostility and the threat of ostracism are endogenously determined. Here, we show that intergroup conflict may inhibit merging into single large human coalitions. The threat of ostracism is shown to increase the average group size and cooperation within the society. In addition, we find that competitive pressure between groups decreases the likelihood of social exclusion. Our results suggest that free migration between groups suppresses the impact of between-group competition on within-group cooperation. Moreover, our results stress the role of ostracism as a means to repress competition within groups and enhance group success in competition against other groups.

Imaging of pediatric pathology during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

United States Armed Forces radiologists deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq in modern military conflicts may encounter pediatric patients as a casualty of war or when providing humanitarian assistance to the indigenous population. Pediatric patients account for 4-7% of admissions at U.S. military hospitals during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. It is pertinent for radiologists in the humanitarian care team to be familiar with imaging pediatric trauma patients, the pathology endemic to the local population, and delayed presentations of congenital and developmental disorders to adequately care for these patients. The radiological manifestations of various pediatric disorders seen in the setting of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts will be explored.

¿Democracia procedimental o democracia sustantiva? La opción por un modelo de integración

En la teoría democrática moderna permanece el conflicto entre dos grandes concepciones de democracia: la procedimental y la sustantiva, las que serán consideradas en términos muy generales y preliminares a los fines de inscribir nuestra argumentación. La pregunta principal consiste en saber si se puede establecer un puente entre ambas concepciones, imbuidas de cierta unilateralidad, para superar las pretensiones minimalistas de la democracia procedimental y las delimitaciones estrictamente sustantivas del orden democrático. En este trabajo se intentará caminar por una especie de comisa intelectual con la intención de buscar un equilibrio, y al mismo tiempo señalar una distinción, entre la democracia procedimental y una definición sustantiva de democracia. Se procura, entonces, aproximarse a esa polémica con una “definición intermedia”, ubicada entre una noción mínima y máxima de democracia, que integra reglas de procedimiento, valores y políticas democráticas.

Redefining Sovereignty for the 21st Century

In confronting the transformative nature of international institutions and global norms, this paper will address implications for sovereignty in the 21st century. Driven by transformative global human rights and humanitarian norms, multipolar alignment of power, authority and legitimacy, and the increasing influence of non-state actors, sovereignty has taken on characteristics previously unimagined, and is likely to align with continuing developments in human rights and democratic governance.Using rights-based analysis, emerging notions of sovereignty will be explored with particular reference to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm. The effects of interdependency on sovereignty will be examined, in addition to the changing nature of the relationship between state and non-state actors. Furthermore, the relationship between the Global North and South will be explored to demonstrate hierarchies of power and claims to legitimacy in the inter-state system. As modern conflicts take on increasingly irregular, asymmetric, and intra-state characteristics, claims to absolute authority by states have begun to be formally subordinated by international human rights and humanitarian norms. Conceived as a liberal compromise between absolute mutual non-interference and the international society’s obligation to protect civilians from mass atrocities, the role of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm will be assessed as a major development in the emergence of post-national sovereignty.

Legal asymmetries in asymmetric war

AbstractStandard conceptions of the relationship between international law and war in International Relations (IR) mostly oscillate between the sceptical view that law is mostly irrelevant in times of conflict, and the optimistic view that law is a meaningful moral standard that effectively constrains violence. Modern asymmetric conflicts between liberal democratic states and non-state actors such as the Taliban,al-Qaeda, orHamaschallenge these conceptions, however, as they are at once increasingly legal and extremely violent. Drawing inspiration from IR and International Law (IL) scholarship from multiple theoretical paradigms, this article examines the legal asymmetries before, during, and after asymmetric conflict. Noting that law is at once a useful tool and a strong normative force, it argues that a good understanding of legal asymmetries can supplement existing theories of asymmetric war, continue the dissolution of false dichotomies and open up interesting avenues of research in IR, and help both scholars and policymakers understand how international law influences modern asymmetric conflict against non-state actors.

Moral tribes: emotion, reason, and the gap between us and them

Our brains were designed for tribal life, for getting along with a select group of others (Us), and for fighting off everyone else (Them). But modern life has thrust the world's tribes into a shared space, creating conflicts of interest and clashes of values, along with unprecedented opportunities. As the world shrinks, the moral lines that divide us become more salient and more puzzling. We fight over everything from tax codes to gay marriage to global warming, and we wonder where, if at all, we can find our common ground. A grand synthesis of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, Moral Tribes reveals the underlying causes of modern conflict and lights a way forward. Our emotions make us social animals, turning Me into Us. But they also make us tribal animals, turning Us against Them. Our tribal emotions make us fight, sometimes with bombs, sometimes with words, and often with life-and-death stakes. Drawing inspiration from moral philosophy and cutting-edge science, Moral Tribes shows when we should trust our instincts, when we should reason, and how the right kind of reasoning can move us forward. Joshua Greene is the director of Harvard University's Moral Cognition Lab, a pioneering scientist, a philosopher, and an acclaimed teacher. The great challenge of Moral Tribes is this: How can we get along with Them when what they want feels so wrong? Finally, Greene offers a surprisingly simple set of maxims for navigating the modern moral terrain, a practical road map for solving problems and living better lives.

Helmet liner evaluation to mitigate head response from primary blast exposure

Head injury resulting from blast loading, including mild traumatic brain injury, has been identified as an important blast-related injury in modern conflict zones. A study was undertaken to investigate potential protective ballistic helmet liner materials to mitigate primary blast injury using a detailed sagittal plane head finite element model, developed and validated against previous studies of head kinematics resulting from blast exposure. Five measures reflecting the potential for brain injury that were investigated included intracranial pressure, brain tissue strain, head acceleration (linear and rotational) and the head injury criterion. In simulations, these measures provided consistent predictions for typical blast loading scenarios. Considering mitigation, various characteristics of foam material response were investigated and a factor analysis was performed which showed that the four most significant were the interaction effects between modulus and hysteretic response, stress–strain response, damping factor and density. Candidate materials were then identified using the predicted optimal material values. Polymeric foam was found to meet the density and modulus requirements; however, for all significant parameters, higher strength foams, such as aluminum foam, were found to provide the highest reduction in the potential for injury when compared against the unprotected head.

Climate change and health in Earth's future

AbstractThreats to health from climate change are increasingly recognized, yet little research into the effects upon health systems is published. However, additional demands on health systems are increasingly documented. Pathways include direct weather impacts, such as amplified heat stress, and altered ecological relationships, including alterations to the distribution and activity of pathogens and vectors. The greatest driver of demand on future health systems from climate change may be the alterations to socioeconomic systems; however, these “tertiary effects” have received less attention in the health literature. Increasing demands on health systems from climate change will impede health system capacity. Changing weather patterns and sea‐level rise will reduce food production in many developing countries, thus fostering undernutrition and concomitant disease susceptibility. Associated poverty will impede people's ability to access and support health systems. Climate change will increase migration, potentially exposing migrants to endemic diseases for which they have limited resistance, transporting diseases and fostering conditions conducive to disease transmission. Specific predictions of timing and locations of migration remain elusive, hampering planning and misaligning needs and infrastructure. Food shortages, migration, falling economic activity, and failing government legitimacy following climate change are also “risk multipliers” for conflict. Injuries to combatants, undernutrition, and increased infectious disease will result. Modern conflict often sees health personnel and infrastructure deliberately targeted and disease surveillance and eradication programs obstructed. Climate change will substantially impede economic growth, reducing health system funding and limiting health system adaptation. Modern medical care may be snatched away from millions who recently obtained it.

Writing Against the Current: The New Jewish Woman, Modernity, and the Critique of National Ideology in Y. Bershadsky's Novel <em>Neged hazerem</em>

This essay examines the figure of the New Jewish Woman in Yeshiahu Bershadsky’s nearly forgotten novel Neged hazerem (Against the Current; 1901). Whereas most Hebrew literature at the opening of the twentieth century turned to the smaller genres of the sketch, short story, or novella, Neged hazerem took on the expansive form of the novel to represent the larger social and spiritual transformations of the 1880s and 1890s, namely, the decline of the Haskalah movement, the undermining of Jewish tradition, and the rise of the Zionist Hibbat Tsiyon movement. The novel also diverges from much Hebrew literature of the period by drawing on the modernist figure of the New Woman, together with contemporaneous discourses on female sexuality, as the central vehicle for exploring the conflicts of Jewish modernity. This essay considers how Bershadsky adopts the figure of the New Woman from modernist discourse within a Jewish context to illustrate how the questions of secularization and the conflict between assimilation and tradition are presented as a drama that plays out around these female figures. It also considers how the New Jewish Woman is central to the novel’s representation of the national idea, where fantasies of the female body become imbricated within the national vision that the novel both constructs and explores. This essay argues that Neged hazerem draws on this figure and fantasies about her to engage in an intertextual dialogue with early Zionist texts, from Abraham Mapu’s Ahavat tziyon and Hibbat Tsiyon poetry, to the Zionist utopias that began to flourish at this time. Bershadsky, who did not join the Zionist movement, and remained critical of it, employs these New Jewish Woman figures to offer a vision of Jewish modernity that runs counter to the emerging national narrative, and points to the city in the Diaspora as the privileged locus for the reformulation of modern Jewish gendered identities.

Enemy Enticements: A Habsburg Artist in Süleyman's Capital City

Throughout the early modern era, the confrontation and conflict with the Ottoman Empire shaped notions of Europe as a place as well as emerging European identities. This said, trade and other cross-cultural encounters often smoothed conflicts between the Muslim-majority Ottoman realms and the Christian realms of Europe. The standard-bearers of the military confrontation with the Ottoman empire were the Habsburgs, based on their stature and obligations as Holy Roman Emperors, as well as on their dynastic territorial interests. From the early sixteenth century onward, the Spanish Habsburgs embraced this role as defenders of the faith. Spanish perception of the Ottomans and their Islamic allies, generalized as “Turks,” was informed by the historical memories of Christian-Muslim clashes during the Reconquista, followed by the persecution and eventual expulsion of the Moriscos (ca. 1568-1609). Other Europeans, unburdened by the Habsburg self-conception as Christendom’s line of defense against Islam in Europe, proposed less bellicose conceptions of the Turks. At times, those attitudes took on an almost friendly character, at least on the level of everyday experience, such as commercial and diplomatic interaction. England under the Tudors, for instance, had close connections with Saadi Morocco, the two realms being united in their common aim of curbing the Spanish in the last decades of the sixteenth century. France, for its part, maintained a direct military alliance with Constantinople for a large part of the century, motivated by a shared rivalry with the Holy Roman Empire. Aware as they were of these cases of negotiation or accommodation, the Habsburgs and their allies viewed themselves as the real bulwark against the Ottoman Turks and their Muslim client states.

Religious Freedom in Early Modern Germany: Theology, Philosophy, and Legal Casuistry

It is sometimes presumed that early modern religious conflict can be understood (and judged) on the basis of philosophical principles of religious freedom that display the irrationality of such conflict. Some derive these principles from Lockean and Kantian doctrines purporting to show that religions can be a matter of free rational choice and mutual toleration. Others derive them from Thomistic and communitarian traditions that purport to show that religions can learn mutual toleration by viewing each other as independent virtue-realizing communities. In this article I provide some historical reasons for thinking that conflicting forms of early modern religious identity were embedded in religious cultures whose force was such that they swept such philosophical principles along with them, giving rise to partisan philosophies that were themselves incommensurate and incapable of resolving the conflicts. This incommensurateness applied to the principles of religious freedom themselves, which appeared in rival forms. In the German empire a culture of religious pluralism emerged not from philosophy but from the institutions and practices of public law, during the period between the treaties of Augsburg (1555) and Osnabrück (1648). I argue that this juridical culture was not grounded in a particular philosophy or ideology but arose instead from the institutional habitus of public law under the exigencies of polarized religious conflict, and that it was issued not in principles of religious freedom but in a casuistry for resolving the conflict between such principles.