War as a Factor in the Historical Transformation of Frontiers

Abstract

The concept of frontier conveys the semantic content of the moving border phenomenon. It is not only about the interstate border. At all stages of world history, intercivilizational boundaries were mobile. The Balkans and Ukraine, as examples of such intercivilizational borders between the Christian and Muslim worlds, have been in conflict at various stages of world history. The article is devoted to the problem of the influence of the historical phenomenon of war on the change of frontiers. The specificity of local wars, in contrast to world wars, lies in the limitation of political goals, the scale of military operations, and the means of armed struggle in a specific strategy and tactic. World wars are essentially the clashes of civilians dressed in overcoats. A world war should have significant global consequences for the whole world. The main feature of a world war is the participation in it of the most powerful military states and major international groups. The socio-historical concept of a world war is defined according to various signs. From a socio-historical point of view, this type of war is a consequence of the transition to general military duty and the dominance of technical means of warfare. It is the technical progress of the 20th century. humanity owes bloody wars that affected the whole society, including the rear. In addition to the social and psychological sources of conflicts, which can be considered as the embodiment of the social phenomenon of wars, cultural, ethnic and political sources of conflicts have no less importance, as evidenced by the rich experience of history. The way out of a military conflict is related to the goals of its participants and the means they use. Its duration and intensity depends on the aspirations of the opponents and their resources of time and effort needed to develop a peaceful solution. Agreements, in which the goals of the warring parties are clearly recorded and the moment of the end of the struggle is specified, reduce the duration of the conflict. Such a blitzkrieg is also possible if one of the parties achieved its goal relatively quickly, and the other opposing party accepted this fact as a sign of its defeat. Therefore, the potential winner must imagine a blow based on which symbols the opponent will perceive as his defeat. In a limited war, its participants proceed from the understanding that the conflict between them should not affect their existence. Total war is a struggle for destruction. The fighters are ready to use any measures to destroy the enemy. During the Cold War, there was a danger of a direct clash between the largest states and military-political groups, or the risk of a local conflict gradually turning into a global one. Putin's war against Ukraine is also a war against liberal democracy and against the new rise of the West, which would be able in such a case to modernize the Russian autocracy according to the liberal-democratic model.