Powrót wyniszczających wojen pozycyjnych w warunkach konfliktu systemowego? Refleksje po trzech latach pełnoskalowej wojny ukraińsko-rosyjskiej

Abstract

THE RETURN OF ATTRITIONAL POSITIONAL WARFARE IN THE CONTEXT OF SYSTEMIC CONFLICT? REFLECTIONS AFTER THREE YEARS OF THE FULL-SCALE RUSSIAN–UKRAINIAN WAR

Over the past thirty-odd years, Europe and its societies have been plunged into the illusory belief that a full-scale war of a systemic nature would be permanently eliminated from the existing international system and order. Of course, the conflict phenomena that erupted around the world after 1989 were not overlooked. However, they were quite commonly diagnosed as peripheral conflicts, dictated by drivers of past phenomena such as ethnic, religious and even tribal tensions. Additionally, they were perceived as occurring in remote areas of the world. This last observation should be situated not only in a geographical, but perhaps above all in a cultural and civilisational context. Wars in the former Yugoslavia or in the post-Soviet area were treated as endemic phenomena in areas alien to developed Western civilisations. Such labelling placed them in the same category as wars in Africa or the Middle East. Paradoxically, despite the announcement of the falsification of Fukuyama’s thesis of the end of history, in the domain of wars and armed conflicts, Europe mentally remained in this interpretation of reality. The use of armed violence in relations between states and nations was considered anachronistic and marked by a “lack of modernity” and civilisational backwardness. Pointed out as recently as the 1990s as a counter-paradigm, the picture of clashes of civilisations, after all still finding huge numbers of adherents today, abstracts, like the previous one, from the perception of war as a tool for contesting the international order and system and fighting for political position. A much belated reflection, which has only taken hold for good since 2022, refers to neoclassical depictions of war as an extreme tool for achieving political goals, regardless of the civilisational sophistication of its participants. The analysis of a full-scale war, which has been fought for more than two years, has consumed enormous human and material resources, generates huge costs and, last but not least, causes large economies to switch to war mode, prompts questions about the topicality of the problem of total wars, perhaps not industrial (industrial) wars – but certainly ‘infrastructural’ wars (a concept that will come to be explained in more detail in later sections of the text), as well as an attempt at prognosis.