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Regional conflict (using the example of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict)

Concept and types of conflicts. Regional conflict: concept and features. Forecasting and resolving regional conflicts. The main groups of preconditions for regional conflicts in the CIS. Georgian-Abkhaz conflict: causes, history and consequences.

Ministry of Education and Science Russian Federation

Moscow State University named after. Lomonosov

Faculty of Law

Regional conflict (for exampleGruzino-AbkhazskWowconflictA)

Moscow 2006

• INTRODUCTION 3
• 1 Concept and types of conflicts 5
• 2 Regional conflict: concept and features 10
• 3 Forecasting and resolving regional conflicts 11
• 4 Main groups of preconditions for regional conflicts in the CIS 14
• 5 Georgian-Abkhaz conflict: causes, history and consequences 16
• Conclusions 21
• Literature 23
• Appendix A 25

INTRODUCTION

The problem of regional conflicts and modern challenges and threats to global security around the world today is already a tangle of intractable issues that are of vital importance for all regions of the planet.

Due to modern geopolitical specifics, global competition becomes implicit, being realized in individual, limited in scope, that is, regional, formally unrelated conflicts that acquire a long-term, smoldering character. Their activation and attracting the attention of world public opinion to them creates new fields on the “great chessboard”.

In the past, the competition between the two systems was primarily not economic, but ideological. The struggle was primarily for the “souls of people”, to attract more supporters to their side. Today " force field", guiding global competition, is the awareness of the insufficiency of natural resources to continue development at the same pace based on previous technologies. Civilizational competition thus turns into a struggle for resources.

Resource famine (still potential for most countries of the world) spurs expansion and directs it to regions with “orphan” wealth, that is, with those that the states that possess them cannot develop. First of all, this is Africa and the post-Soviet space, including Russia.

A new challenge to global stability and security after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Soviet Union began the development of conflict and crisis situations at the regional and domestic levels. Currently, it is difficult to find any region without a potential, smoldering or active armed conflict.

In the context of developing processes of globalization and the growing interdependence of countries around the world, the stability of the Caucasus and the problems faced here clearly have an impact on security on a global scale. In this regard, the study of conflict situations in the Caucasus, their prevention and timely prevention is a priority task for all interested states.

For 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the countries of the Caucasus have been experiencing a difficult period of their independent development, which is often accompanied by various social, economic and political upheavals, the development of interethnic and territorial conflicts, the manifestation of terrorism, religious extremism, etc.

Despite the efforts of the international community and the states of the region themselves, old conflicts continue to develop in the Caucasus and new ones emerge. An effective regional security structure has not yet been created that would allow the countries of the region to develop specific approaches to preventing conflict situations and countering modern challenges and security threats on a regional scale.

The general reason for the growing tension in the area is, of course, economic reasons. Almost all states in the region are faced with the problem of deindustrialization. Today, we are all characterized not so much by the beeps of factories and factories, but by the noise of mini and mega markets, as well as a noticeable growth in the service sector. While maintaining a certain level of employment in the agricultural sector, the surplus of labor has led to the displacement of a significant part of the rural population to cities, where they cannot find a stable income. Finding themselves, as a rule, in the sphere of trade and services, villagers brought into the city a system of village relations that conflicted with the city’s functioning model.

The social sphere is in an extremely difficult situation. The problem of paying pensions and benefits and the inability to maintain the healthcare and education systems at a sufficient level have led to the emergence of re-traditionalization tendencies.

All of the above is relevant and actually conceals sources of threats to the life of the region, in particular, reasons for the emergence of new and the flare-up of old regional conflicts.

1 Concept and types of conflicts

In modern science, conflict is understood as a clash of divergent, sometimes opposing interests, actions, views of individuals, political parties, public organizations, socio-political and socio-economic systems. Conflicts differ by subject, by level of conflict relations and by object. They can be economic, social, external and internal political, territorial, interfaith, linguistic, etc.

Conflicts may vary in the degree of maturity, nature and severity of their resolution. Depending on the specific historical situation, the conflict may tend either to self-liquidation, to resolution as a result of a subjective factor, or to aggravation conflict situation, to escalation. The latter consists in involving ever larger masses of people in the confrontation, in expanding the conflict zone, in the transition from its “civilized” forms to more problematic, sometimes harsh ones, reaching the point of armed struggle and the emergence of an extreme situation for the very existence of the warring parties.

In the very general view Conflicts are usually classified on the following grounds. Yamskov A. Interethnic conflicts in Transcaucasia. Prerequisites for emergence and development trends // Political studies. No. 2. - M. 1991.:

* from the point of view of zones and areas of their manifestation. Here, first of all, external and internal political conflicts are distinguished, which in turn are divided into a whole range of various crises and contradictions;

* according to the degree and nature of their normative regulation;

* according to qualitative characteristics, reflecting different degrees of involvement of the parties, the intensity of crises and contradictions;

* according to temporal (time) characteristics: long-term and short-term. Some conflicts in political life can be resolved within an extremely short time, while others can be related to the life of entire generations;

* in relation to the desire and organization of the regime of government. In this case, vertical (characterizing the relationships between subjects belonging to different levels of government) and horizontal (revealing the connections of one number of subjects with the bearers of power) are distinguished as governmental conflicts.

The idea of ​​internal inconsistency and conflict in politics has been established in science since the 19th century. A. Tocqueville, K. Marx, G. Simmel, and subsequently K. Boulding, L. Coser, A. Bentley and other theorists considered conflict as the leading source of politics underlying the changes occurring in it and thereby determining the boundaries and nature of existence this area of ​​public life.

At the same time, in political science there is an opposite opinion. E. Durkheim, M. Webvre, D. Dewey and a number of other authors proceed from the secondary nature of conflict to understand the essence of politics and its subordination to basic social values ​​that unite the population and integrate society into political system. From their point of view, the unity of ideals and socio cultural values allows you to resolve existing conflicts and ensure stability of the government regime. In this regard, many conflicts were considered by them as anomalies of the political process, and politics, in turn, was endowed with the goals of maintaining “social stability” (E. Durkheim), or providing a “pedagogical influence” on society (D. Dewey) to prevent conflicts.

Generally political conflict is nothing more than a type (and result) of competitive interaction between two or more parties (groups, states, individuals) challenging each other for the distribution of power or resources. Conflict, signaling to society and the authorities about existing contradictions, disagreements, and discrepancies in positions, stimulates actions that can bring the situation under control. Therefore, the destabilization of power and the disintegration of society arise not because conflicts arise, but because of the inability to resolve political contradictions or simply ignoring these conflicts.

Conflictologists believe that if people’s energy is scattered to solve many power-significant problems, rather than concentrated on any one conflict, such social and political systems, as a rule, retain a greater ability to maintain the stability of their development. Only certain types of political conflicts are truly destructive to society. In countries with a flexible and developed system of representation, identifying and resolving conflicts makes it possible to effectively maintain the integrity of the political system.

Under interethnic conflict it is possible to simultaneously understand the complementary realities coexisting on two different levels. On the one hand, at the level of public consciousness, it means a certain type of attitude towards another people, which is distinguished by a confrontational attitude. Passive rejection is replaced by a relationship of active opposition. On the other hand, we can talk about interethnic conflict, as a real phenomenon of the political process, when a relatively influential national movement arises and is formed, with the goal of changing the previously existing situation. A distinctive feature of an interethnic conflict is that at least one of its parties relies on social structures, i.e. primarily on self-organizing professionals.

A political conflict based on the discrepancy between national relations will have an interstate nature if independent states openly act as warring parties. In emergency situations - pogroms, murders, expulsion of compatriots from a neighboring republic, they can use control over transport routes and communications, and armed formations for their own purposes. Interstate conflicts can be classified as armed or unarmed. Armed conflicts represent an attempt to achieve the realization of one’s interests through military force. Their danger lies in the possibility of involving new forces and getting out of control. Unarmed interstate conflicts manifest themselves as diplomatic confrontation, as customs, financial and other actions expressing the economic and political interests of certain states.

Ethnic conflict. Ethnic conflict is a particular form of conflict. Depending on the characteristics of the conflicting parties, 2 classes of ethnic conflicts are distinguished.

1) “horizontal” conflicts between ethnic groups (for example, the Ossetian-Ingush conflict or the Ferghana conflict between Uzbeks and Meskhetian Turks);

2) “vertical” conflicts between an ethnic group and the state (for example, the Chechen or Karabakh conflicts). In his definition, A. Yamskov focuses on the specific actions of the participants in the conflict: “An ethnic conflict is a dynamically changing socio-political situation generated by the rejection of the previously established status quo by a significant part of the representatives of one (several) local ethnic groups and manifested in the form of at least one of the following actions of members of this group:

a) the beginning of ethno-selective emigration from the region (“exodus”, “mass relocation”), significantly changing the local ethno-demographic balance in favor of “other” remaining ethnic groups;

b) the creation of a political organization (“national” or “cultural” movement, party), declaring the need to change the existing situation in the interests of the specified ethnic group (groups) and thereby provoking counteraction from the authorities and/or political mobilization of another (other) local ethnic group groups in defense of the status quo, which completely satisfies the latter;

c) spontaneous... protests against infringement of their interests by representatives of another local ethnic group and/or authorities state power in the form of mass rallies, processions, pogroms” Yamskov A. Interethnic conflicts in Transcaucasia. Prerequisites for emergence and development trends // Political studies. No. 2. - M. 1991. P. 66. .

Ethnic conflict is understood as a social situation caused by the discrepancy between the interests and goals of individual ethnic groups within a single ethnic space or ethnic group (groups), on the one hand, and the state, on the other, at the intersection of ethnic and political space, expressed in the aspirations of the ethnic group ( groups) to change existing ethnic inequalities or political space in its territorial dimension.

Under ethno-territorial conflict refers to any claim to territory (residence, ownership, administration) claimed by another party, but only if this claim is made “on behalf of” an ethnic group.

Back in 1991, 76 ethno-territorial disputes were recorded within the USSR, a year later (at post-Soviet space) their number has increased to 180. To date, about 140 ethno-territorial claims remain relevant.

In a number of cases, these claims are supported by the “force of arms”: since the late 80s, five “ethnic” wars have been recorded on the territory of the USSR - long-term armed clashes with the participation of regular troops and the use of heavy weapons (Karabakh, Abkhaz, South Ossetian, Transnistrian and Chechen conflicts) and about 20 short-term armed clashes, accompanied by casualties among civilians (the most significant of them are the Fergana, Osh, Ossetian-Ingush conflicts, as well as the Baku and Sumgait pogroms). The approximate number of people killed in these conflicts is about 100,000 people, but the armed confrontation affected a much larger number of people - at least 10 million people live in the zones of bloody conflicts.

It should be noted that modern international law prohibits states from resorting to war for settlement.

One type of political conflict is regional conflict. Let's look at it in more detail.

2 Regional conflict: concept and features

In general, a regional conflict is nothing more than the result of competitive interaction between two or more states challenging each other for the distribution of power, territory or resources. This interaction can be carried out in different ways: diplomatic negotiations, the inclusion of a third party, armed intervention, etc. Ibraeva G. Media in military-political conflicts of the twentieth century // http://psyfactor.org/lib/infowar3.htm The twentieth century was the most destructive and bloody in the history of mankind. The First and Second World Wars claimed millions of lives. The Cold War period was no less difficult.

What is a regional armed conflict - war? A regional war is a limited conflict, the cause of which is unresolved contradictions on a regional scale. It is localized within the boundaries of the region, but its political and economic consequences can affect far beyond these borders. In such a conflict, the participation of countries not related to this region is not excluded (supply of military equipment, sending advisers or volunteers) Olegin A. NATO: maximum efficiency with minimal means // Domestic Notes, 2002, No. 4-5. P. 63. .

In total, from 1945 to 1988. 170 major regional conflicts occurred, while over the previous almost six decades (1898-1945) there were 116 wars and conflicts, i.e. one third less. All major powers were involved in regional conflicts in one form or another: in almost 100 regional conflicts they were directly involved in hostilities. In the second half of the 60s. the number of regional conflicts reached its annual maximum, the danger of global military chaos arose, although of a regional focal nature, but with the localization of simultaneous outbreaks. This is largely facilitated by the spread in the 70-80s. There is an arms race in third world countries, including modern weapons systems and radio-electronic equipment, and control equipment. The international arms trade is of a conflict-provoking nature, the main suppliers of which are, first of all, the United States and Russia.

A regional conflict has the following characteristics: political or military-political; controlled or uncontrolled; localized as internal or aggravated by external interference; the presence of external forces acting with both a “plus” and a “minus” sign; differentiation of internal forces into moderates and radicals, dynamics of changes in their influence; balance of armed forces, mobilization potential, possibility of military support (supply of weapons); features of national psychology (persistence, sacrifice, level of organization) Artsibasov I. Armed conflict: law, politics, diplomacy. - M. 1989. P. 157. .

3 Forecasting and resolving regional conflicts

Due to the frequent occurrence of conflicts in various regions of the world, recently there has been a need to predict them and develop settlement models.

A forecast is a probabilistic scientifically based judgment regarding the observed state of an object at a certain point in time. The process of developing a forecast is called forecasting. Forecasting a political conflict sets itself the following tasks: to determine the possibility of a conflict occurring ahead of time; identify options for the development of the conflict; define possible options behavior of the parties to the conflict; identify possible ways to resolve the conflict,

The task of the forecast does not include obtaining an answer to the question “what will happen”, it answers the question “what will happen if certain reasons exist” Ibid. P. 182. . In the case when a regional conflict has developed and acquired its own political, and sometimes military-political dynamics, the course of its development and possible prospects for its implementation and resolution are already predicted.

Authorities can choose one of three models of behavior: ignoring the conflict, giving it the opportunity to smolder and renew itself; avoid clear public assessment of its nature; actively participate in conflict resolution.

The democratic process of control over conflict situations involves a number of special procedures:

1. Mutual and prompt exchange of information about the interests, intentions, and next steps of the parties involved in the conflict.

2. Conscious mutual abstinence from the use of force or the threat of force, which could make the conflict situation uncontrollable.

3. Declaration of a mutual moratorium on actions that aggravate the conflict.

4. Involvement of arbitrators, whose impartial approach to the conflict is guaranteed, and recommendations are accepted as the basis for compromise actions.

5. The use of existing or adoption of new legal norms, administrative or other procedures that contribute to the rapprochement of the positions of the parties involved in the conflict.

6. Creating and maintaining an atmosphere of business partnership, and then trusting relationships as prerequisites for settling the current conflict and preventing similar conflicts in the future.

The conflict may turn out to be unresolved, then a situation is created that does not lead to its end, but to a kind of “circular movement.” This situation requires the search for a new strategy and tactics for controlling the conflict. The conflict can be resolved on its own, without attempts to consciously regulate it (due to the loss of relevance of the subject of the dispute, fatigue of political subjects, depletion of resources, etc.).

The political and legal settlement mechanism must be built on an integrated basis and at various levels, including:

* mechanism for resolving the conflict between its direct participants;

ѕ multilateral mechanism settlements with the participation of all interested parties, regardless of their regional affiliation;

* a universal mechanism within institutions and organizational structures.

The resolution of regional conflicts involves the development of various political models and forms of settlement. The development of such models and forms is carried out by states through diplomatic channels with the participation of the UN. Such models include: a ceasefire in an interstate war through negotiations and reaching agreement using mediation functions Secretary General UN, with the participation of diplomacy from the three countries concerned. This model was used in the Iran-Iraq War; bilateral and multilateral settlement with the participation of guarantor states and partial participation of the UN - used in the Afghan conflict (the USA and the USSR are guarantors); interstate - settlement through the mediation of a third party; political settlement of the conflict based on dialogue. The most common means of achieving reconciliation between the parties, used in conflict management and resolution technologies, is negotiations Lebedeva M. The process of international negotiations. - M., 1993. P. 39. .

As a rule, regional conflicts involve not only its direct participants, but also major powers, thereby creating a general conflict chain in world politics as a whole. Regional conflicts require careful study, forecasting the potential causes of their occurrence, studying their movement from inception to escalation, and creating mechanisms for their control and resolution. Conflict resolution has proven to be a difficult task. Today, any progress in this area is important both for the CIS countries and for the entire world community as a whole.

The modern prominent sociologist and researcher M. Castells in his book “The Information Age: Economy, Society, Culture” writes that in developed democratic countries they quickly came to three conclusions regarding the conditions necessary to make war more or less acceptable for society Castells M Information Age: Economy, Society, Culture. - M., 2000. P. 607. .

1. It should not affect ordinary citizens, i.e. should be conducted by a professional army, forced recruitment should be resorted to only in case of truly extraordinary circumstances, and these are assumed to be unlikely.

2. It must be short, even instantaneous, so that results are not long in coming, draining human and economic resources and raising questions about the justification of military action.

3. It must be clean, surgical, with a reasonable amount of destruction (even to the enemy) and hidden from public view as much as possible, resulting in a close connection between information processing, image creation and warfare.

However, instantaneous - surgical, closed, technological - wars are the privilege of technologically dominant nations. Everywhere in the world, half-forgotten brutal wars, often waged by primitive means, drag on year after year, although the global proliferation of high-tech weapons is also capturing this market.

4 Main groups of preconditions for regional conflicts in the CIS

Regional conflicts in the CIS may have different prerequisites depending on the nature of the regional conflict itself. Let's look at this in more detail.

Socio-economic conflict. It develops under the slogan of equalizing inequality in living standards, centralized distribution of funds, or the comparative social and professional status of peoples;

Cultural and linguistic conflicts. Associated with the tasks of protecting or enhancing the functions of the native language, national culture and ensuring the rights to real cultural autonomy.

Territorial and status conflicts. Their participants demand changes in borders, increased status, increased scope of rights, or the creation of new national-state (administrative) entities;

Separatist conflicts. Driven by demands complete independence History of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict // http://conflicts.aznet.org/conflicts/konf/konf_k1.htm#gruppi.

The national movement of Chechnya, Georgia and Armenia approached the fourth type in 1990. To the second - the situation is Greek-Georgian, Talysh-Azerbaijani, Lezgian-Azerbaijani. Due to religious and cultural proximity and small numbers, aggravation of the situation and escalation of the conflict can be avoided.

Conflict situations of the first type are not so noticeable due to the abundance and severity of more serious confrontations, but if sufficiently numerous peoples are involved in them, conflict situations that, as a rule, arise with signs of the first and second types tend to deepen and acquire the features of the third and even fourth types. An example is the Karabakh crisis: initially it was localized in the NKAO and was distinguished by the interweaving of the first two types of conflicts. Later, the conflict drew the population of Armenia, and then Azerbaijan, into its orbit, acquiring features of the third type. After the direct involvement of the Union government in the events, the conflict came close to a situation of the fourth type.

Probably, the very fact of living of representatives of several nations in one state, due to the uneven development of different regions and different social strata characteristic of all countries and eras, causes the emergence of interethnic conflicts of the first and second types. At the same time, the tendency, often observed in the USSR, for such conflicts to develop into the third type, as well as the very existence of territorial-status conflicts, are determined, first of all, by the totality of outdated principles of the country’s national-state structure. This level of interethnic conflicts, intermediate between the demands of full cultural autonomy, social equality and, on the other hand, one’s own isolated statehood, could apparently be absent or manifest weaker under a different state structure.

5 Georgian-Abkhaz conflict: causes, history and consequences

On the southern borders of Russia, Christianity coexists with Islam, and the Slavs coexist with Georgians, Armenians, Turkic and Iranian peoples. The result is an incredible mixture of peoples and religions. The Abkhaz, a Turkic-speaking and largely Muslim people, fell under Georgian rule a millennium ago. Georgia itself was absorbed Russian Empire in the 19th century.

Abkhazia, like Chechnya, fought with Russia in the 19th century, and after the revolution in Russia it also established Soviet power. Moreover, due to the weakness of Russia at that time, the Georgian Mensheviks overthrew Soviet power in Abkhazia and annexed it to Georgia. With the Sovietization of Georgia (February 1921), the independent Abkhazian Soviet Republic was formed (March 3, 1921) and concluded an agreement with Georgia, becoming part of it. In April 1925, the Abkhaz Congress of Soviets approved the Constitution of the republic. As soon as the political possibility of joining Russia arose (after the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine), the Abkhazians began a political struggle for their annexation to the Krasnodar Territory. But the leader of Georgia, Mzhavanadze, confidently promised to annex all those dissatisfied to the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

10 years later, already under Eduard Shevardnadze, the Abkhazians again became more active politically, but the Georgian president took control of the situation. At the end of the 80s, an armed confrontation between Abkhazians and Georgians began, but the dying USSR was able to stop the blood. The collapse of the USSR and the weakness of Russia gave Georgia a second chance, as in the 20s, to again annex Abkhazia.

On March 31, 1991, a referendum was held in Georgia, including Abkhazia, on the restoration of state sovereignty. In the Abkhaz ASSR, 61.27% of voters took part in the referendum, 97.73% of whom voted for the state sovereignty of Georgia, which amounted to 59.84% of total number voters of Abkhazia. Only 1.42% of those who took part in the vote, that is, 1.37% of the total number of voters, voted against. Throughout Georgia, 90.79% of voters took part in the referendum, 99.08% of whom voted for the restoration of state sovereignty of Georgia. Based on the results of the referendum, the Supreme Council of Georgia on April 9, 1991 proclaimed the Declaration on the restoration of state sovereignty of the Republic of Georgia.

So, in 1991, Georgia regained its independence. But its first leader, elected by the people, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was forcibly removed from his post, and his supporters long time fought against government forces. And so in 1992, Abkhaz separatists declared independence, despite the fact that only 18 percent of the people living in Abkhazia belong to the indigenous nationality.

Abkhazia is an autonomy within Georgia, most of whose territory was not controlled by the Tbilisi authorities as a result of the ethnic conflict of 1992-1994. An independent republic was proclaimed in Sukhumi (it is not recognized by the world community, but the Sukhumi authorities have an army, police and other attributes of statehood. The next elections to the parliament of Abkhazia that took place in March 2002 were regarded by the UN mission in Georgia as illegitimate).

The war in Abkhazia was complicated by the intervention of Russian troops stationed at military bases in the autonomous republic. Georgia agreed to provide Russia with four military bases on its territory, unofficially conditioning this decision on the fact that Russia must take a certain (pro-Georgian) position in the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-South Ossetian conflicts. In exchange for Russian military assistance Georgia agreed to join the CIS. At the same time, according to the Georgian side, Russia did not fulfill its obligations and did not help Tbilisi enough. At the same time, irregular armed formations directed by the radical Confederation of Peoples of the Caucasus (in particular, one of such units was commanded by the then little-known Shamil Basayev) acted on the side of the Abkhaz formations.

In 1994, the Abkhazians pushed Georgian troops out of the republic. From 1996 until the fall of 2001, there were no large-scale armed clashes in Abkhazia. At the same time, sporadic clashes occur constantly. On the militarized Georgian-Abkhaz border, smugglers and drug dealers seem to feel free, and in the Kodori Gorge, the only region of Abkhazia over which Georgia has established partial control, the so-called “power line business”—that is, extortion—is thriving.” for the protection of the Kavkasia power line from Russia.

The situation around Abkhazia gradually began to escalate in 2001. In September there was a leak of information about possible application Georgia using force to resolve the Abkhaz problem. Partial mobilization was announced in Abkhazia, local television spoke about the beginning of hostilities. On September 25, more than 400 people entered the Kodori Gorge area, which is controlled by the Georgian side. Chechen militants(it was alleged that they arrived in Georgian army trucks, accompanied by Georgian police). Clashes occurred, after which regular Georgian troops were brought into Kodori. This was a violation of the 1994 Moscow Agreement. The UN opposed their presence there because it is another factor of instability in the region, and Abkhazia refuses any negotiations on a settlement, demanding the unconditional withdrawal of Georgian armed forces.

Russian peacekeepers and UN observers are currently stationed in Abkhazia, but both groups are forced to limit their activities for fear of being hit by mines or coming under guerrilla fire. In total, there are 107 military observers from 23 countries in the conflict zone, who, together with CIS peacekeepers, are trying to ensure security. Patrolling along the demarcation line is carried out daily. As of June 2002, over eight years, 93 Russian servicemen from the Collective Peacekeeping Forces (CPKF) were killed in the zone of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict. Another 248 Russian peacekeepers received gunshot and shrapnel wounds. Razorenova M., Dzindzibadze K. Abkhaz conflict in Georgian periodicals // http://www.abkhazeti.ru/pages/42.html.

For Western politicians, Georgia's arguments about the need to protect its territorial sovereignty sound quite convincing. The United States supports all efforts aimed at a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Georgia. The keys to resolving the Abkhaz-Georgian conflict lie in Russia. However, for the most part, Russian experience is associated with counterinsurgency operations rather than peacekeeping operations.

The public has already become accustomed to reports from the Abkhaz-Georgian conflict zone about regular buses and equipment of the Collective Peacekeeping Forces being blown up by mines, the deaths of civilians and Russian peacekeepers, and the mining of roads by Georgian saboteurs from formations such as the “White Legion” and “Forest Brothers” in Gali , Tkuarchal and Ochamchira regions, shelling of checkpoints, etc. Against the background of the events of the bloody Abkhaz-Georgian war of 1992-1993. such an environment is sometimes characterized by a false calm. Meanwhile, judging by the materials of the Russian, Georgian and Abkhaz press, as well as the sentiments of the local population, tension in the Georgia-Abkhazia conflict zone is growing.

The threat to the integrity of Russia from Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus is very real, since there is a high ethnic population density, problems of historical development, a large number of unaccounted for weapons, etc. Russia's geopolitical rivals skillfully take advantage of this.

The main problem of Abkhazia is that it does not fit into the world order of the 21st century. according to the US scenario, that the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict threatens the implementation of US plans to organize the Silk Road in the North Caucasus and the functioning of the oil pipeline. Firstly, Abkhazia is located next to these routes; secondly, pro-Russian sentiments are very strong in this republic; thirdly, the precedent of Abkhazia’s secession from Georgia violates the integrity of this republic. The Abkhazians, in turn, flatly refuse to stay. The desire to weaken Russia's influence in the Caucasus region is seen in the build-up of NATO's military presence in the Black Sea zone. So, if in 1990 there were five ships of NATO states here, then in 1996 there were already 27. In the spring of 1998, joint exercises of the Georgian and Turkish navies were held in the waters of Poti and Batumi.

Open Press Today Considers Three possible scenarios development of military operations in this region. In all three, the main ideas are the same: to achieve the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from the security zone, replace them with NATO ones or from CIS countries friendly to the West, and then draw in the alliance’s contingents. Seize at least part of the Gali region, install an “Abkhazian government in exile” there, which will request help from the West. Neutralize Russia's actions and hold this part of Abkhaz territory until NATO forces approach. Subsequently, completely absorb Abkhazia and deploy NATO bases on its territory. As a result, Russia loses control over Transcaucasia, and then over the entire North Caucasus.

The statement of the current US President that “the NATO operation against Yugoslavia can be repeated at any time and anywhere in the world” seems very significant for Abkhazia and the South of Russia.

It seems that the solution to the Abkhaz-Georgian conflict is not in the use of military force, but in focused, patient negotiations. And in this regard, the role of Moscow as a long-time friend and partner of the Caucasus and Transcaucasia, as well as the Collective Peacekeeping Forces in the Abkhazia-Georgia conflict zone, is sharply increasing. The departure of the Russian border guards showed that the fuse of a new regional war in this area is smoldering, the mine war on the part of Georgian saboteurs has intensified, and Abkhaz-Georgian maritime incidents have begun with shelling and seizures of seiners.

We must also keep in mind the determination of the military-political leadership of Abkhazia to repel aggression. The open press has already made a statement by representatives of the Confederation of Peoples of the Caucasus about launching attacks on the territory of Georgia from the territory of the Caucasian republics in the event of a new Abkhaz-Georgian conflict. They claim that their attacks will lead to the split of Georgia into 4-6 parts.

In short, a new Abkhaz-Georgian military conflict, if it happens, will be an obvious threat to Russia on its southern borders.

Conclusions

In general, a regional conflict is the result of a competitive interaction between two or more political actors challenging each other for the distribution of power, territory or resources. This interaction can be carried out in different ways: diplomatic negotiations, the inclusion of a third party, armed intervention, etc.

A regional war is a limited conflict, the cause of which is unresolved contradictions on a regional scale. It is localized within the boundaries of the region, but its political and economic consequences can affect far beyond these borders. In such a conflict, the participation of countries not related to this region is possible (supply of military equipment, sending advisers or volunteers)

The new era that came with the collapse of the Soviet Union is characterized by many signs, the saddest of which can be called a whole series of conflicts that flared up in the post-Soviet space.

The curtailment of Russia’s external influence, carried out first in the name of “universal human values” (which in practice meant the interests of our strategic competitors), then for the sake of reducing the budget deficit, ultimately bore fruit: Russia lost significant influence outside the territory of the former USSR. Even representatives of countries that are most favorable to Russia tend to deny its right to protect all its citizens.

Russia's weakness in the international arena has caused a sharp narrowing of the agenda in negotiations with the United States and Europe, which, in turn, increases the importance of regional conflicts. After all, the pressure of global competition is the “great constant” of modern historical development, and states that are not strong enough to participate in global processes, face this competition at a lower, regional level. Those who do not want to defend their interests on distant borders will be forced to defend them on the nearest approaches.

Over the past 15 years, the security of the South Caucasus region has been threatened by the unresolved conflicts in Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and instability in Chechnya and Dagestan. International terrorist networks, religious extremism is used by separatist movements to practice acts of sabotage and recruit new mercenaries. Russia has faced this threat in the form of international terrorism, attempts to provoke conflicts in areas densely populated by certain ethnic minorities, and the export of radical religious movements in the southern regions of the country bordering the North Caucasus. This determines Russia's active participation in resolving regional conflicts in the post-Soviet space.

Poverty, unresolved ethnic and territorial conflicts, authoritarianism and informational secrecy of local communities are the roots of international terrorism and religious extremism. Therefore, measures to promote economic development, affirm the principles of democracy and human rights, and resolve long-standing conflicts in unstable regions are also very important from the mediating peacekeeping side.

Among the potential prerequisites for new interethnic conflicts in the CIS countries are youth unemployment, land shortage, and lumpenization of a significant part of the population. All this can be the reasons for social instability and regional conflicts, nationalism, political speculation, strengthening the position of conservatism and traditionalism. Due to these circumstances, in our opinion, Central Asia and the Caucasus remain the most conflict-ridden regions. Fast growth population, especially its working-age part, will contribute to the displacement of the newcomer population.

In the Russian Federation, interethnic tension still persists in a number of regions due to the fact that the issues of the federal structure and equalization of the rights of the subjects of the federation have not yet been resolved. Considering that Russia is formed both on territorial and ethno-national grounds, the rejection of the ethno-territorial principle of Russian federalism in favor of extraterritorial cultural-national contradictions can lead to conflicts. But this problem also requires separate consideration.

Literature

1. Amelin V.V. ethnopolitical conflicts: types and forms of manifestation, regional features // Credo new, 1997, No. 1.

One of the most important causes of wars and armed conflicts is the lack of mutual understanding between people, social groups, political movements and states.

From the point of view of historical practice, conflicts, if they are not antagonistic, much less armed, are, in principle, a normal phenomenon of social life. A conflict-free life is impossible. Any literate person understands that universal harmony of interests is a myth. At the same time, armed conflicts cannot be considered the norm of a civilized society. The state, society and individual citizens must follow certain rules aimed at their regulation. The meaning of these rules, as noted by the famous Russian sociologist A. G. Zdravomyslov, is to prevent violence as a way of resolving conflicts; find a way out of deadlock situations in cases where violent acts did occur and became a means of deepening conflicts; achieve mutual understanding between the parties opposing the conflict.

Those who are substantively involved in issues of social security should clearly understand the essence and content of modern regional armed conflicts, the causes of their occurrence and possible consequences, the prerequisites for escalating into local wars, ways of their localization and termination, as well as know the strategy of human behavior and the main methods of protecting it in a zone of armed conflict. This will promote a conscious attitude towards military conflicts of various levels and manifestations and will help develop skills to protect against their destructive consequences.

Essence and characteristics

From a sociological point of view, a conflict is a clash between parties that arises as a result of differences in their position in society and is caused by contradictory interests, goals and values. It is the result of the development (exacerbation) of contradictions between individuals (intragroup), social groups (intergroup) and individuals and social groups. The conflict is resolved through various forms of struggle (peaceful, non-peaceful, mixed) between factions, during which the conflicting parties strive to neutralize or even destroy their opponents in order to achieve their desired goals.

Conflicts can have both positive and negative impacts on the development of society. On the one hand, conflict is the source and form of manifestation of socio-political changes, preventing stagnation and ossification of social systems, stimulating the modification of social relations, structures and institutions. In this sense, it acts as a form of regulation of the conflicting interests of various groups of society and helps eliminate tension in relations between them. On the other hand, conflict poses a serious threat to destabilize society and can lead to catastrophic consequences– anarchy, revolutions, wars.

Impact of the conflict on social structure largely depends on the organization of society. In a totalitarian (closed) society with strict social divisions, conflict occurs in acute forms and has more destructive consequences, often leading to destabilization of the system of relations. In a pluralistic (open) society, where social barriers are less rigid, there are a large number of intermediate groups and institutions, and communication channels are branched, conflicts are not so destructive and occur in a less acute form.

If at the same time there are conflicts of varying degrees of intensity that intersect with each other, this leads to their mutual weakening and dispersion, which helps prevent the split of the entire society along any one basis. In a democratic society, the presence of forms social control(elections, parliamentary institutions, pluralism of political parties, etc.) creates a real opportunity for legal regulation of conflicts with a view to their timely resolution. They become manageable.

In addition to conflicts that arise within society, there are interstate, regional and international conflicts that require special sociological and political analysis. The same applies to interethnic conflicts that have become widespread recently.

One of the most dangerous species conflict is an armed conflict, which is an extremely acute form of resolving contradictions between states or military-political groups within a state, characterized by the bilateral use of military force.

In the broad sense of the word, an armed conflict refers to any military action involving the use of armed force. In a narrow sense, it is an open armed conflict (most often on the state border), associated with its violation, infringement of the sovereignty of a particular state, or arising from political contradictions within the state. In other words, war and armed conflict are, in essence, social phenomena of the same order, differing only in the degree of use of violence to achieve certain political goals.

War, in its essence, is nothing more than a continuation of the policies of certain states ( social groups) by violent means. Any war has a political content, since it is part of state policy (both internal and external). The historical experience of two world wars and hundreds of local wars shows that wars are usually prepared in advance over a long period. This preparation covers the actual political, as well as economic, diplomatic, ideological, military, moral and psychological spheres. It includes intelligence activities, mobilization activities, etc.

War also has its own special, specific content, which is armed struggle - the organized use of the armed forces of states, armed units or other formations of any political groupings to achieve political and military goals. Armed struggle can be carried out in unsanctioned forms (individual military skirmishes, military incidents, terrorist attacks, etc.), as well as in the form of politicized armed conflicts that arise in relations between individual states or within them in the absence of a general state of war.

However, an armed conflict is different from a military skirmish, a military incident, and even more so from a terrorist attack. A military skirmish or military incident, which usually involves small groups of people, often occurs as a result of a misunderstanding, an accidental collision, while an armed conflict is a consequence of the aggressive policy of any military-political forces that deliberately provoke a military clash to achieve their goals . Terrorist actions generally have a different nature (they will be discussed in another chapter).

Since armed conflicts most often cover a certain geographical area, including warring states (a region of the world) or some local territory (region) within a state, they are often called regional. A regional armed conflict arises on the basis of intractable contradictions (historical, territorial, economic, political, interethnic, etc.) between neighboring states or various socio-political groupings within the country. As a rule, it begins suddenly, without an official announcement of the military action being undertaken, and is carried out with small military forces and means. Its political goals are limited and its duration is short. Avoiding solving regional problems leads to an aggravation of the situation in the region and the escalation of a regional conflict into a local war.

A local war is an armed conflict in a separate region of the planet between two or more states, affecting primarily only their interests and carried out with limited political and military-strategic goals, i.e., covering a relatively small number of participants and a limited geographical area.

Local wars and regional armed conflicts certainly have their own characteristics. They differ in the reasons for their occurrence, political and strategic goals, scale, intensity, duration, means of armed struggle, forms and methods of warfare, etc. However, they also have common features, among which the following stand out:

• limited military-political goals due to political isolation and resolution of contradictions through armed violence;

• the dependence of the course and outcome on the intervention of world powers or their coalitions (economic and diplomatic support, participation in military operations on one side or another, supplies of weapons and military equipment, etc.);

• dependence on world public opinion (protests, refusal of international support, economic and political blockade, etc.);

• the involvement, as a rule, of limited armed forces, the conduct of combat operations by conventional means with the constant threat of the parties using other, more powerful weapons;

• the focal nature of military operations;

• uncertainty about the duration of hostilities;

• massive use of information processing of enemy troops and population, etc.

As already noted, local wars and armed conflicts arise on socio-political, economic, interethnic grounds, as a result of violation of territorial integrity or infringement of sovereignty. The cessation of them and the settlement of related problems occurs at the state level, diplomatically, with the help of third countries, international organizations, using the policy of national reconciliation, etc.

The danger of these socio-political phenomena is that they often become protracted (the Middle East, Yugoslavia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Chechnya, etc.), tend to expand the number of participants, internationalize in scale and develop into wars with broader political goals. Military events in the Middle East, Yugoslavia and some other regions of the planet clearly show that local wars and military conflicts create a threat of the use of weapons of mass destruction with unpredictable political, socio-economic and environmental consequences. Consequently, the differences between them are becoming more and more arbitrary, although the existing classification of wars and military conflicts according to socio-political and military-technical characteristics generally retains its fundamental importance.

In wars and military conflicts, two main factors are involved - people and weapons. Therefore, the radical way to eliminate these phenomena from the life of modern society is to decisively reduce armed forces and weapons, to demilitarize international relations and to pursue a policy of peace by all states. However, after the euphoria of the late 1980s and early 1990s of the last century, associated with the end of the confrontation between socialism and capitalism, the USSR and the USA, new military threats appeared. Their sources were international terrorism in the face of Muslim fundamentalism, US claims to leadership in the modern world and NATO’s advance to the east - directly to the borders of Russia, which is quite clearly stated in the Concept national security RF.

Modern socio-political practice shows that after the collapse of the USSR, in many of its former “hot” spots - in the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Abkhazia, Chechnya), in Tajikistan, Transnistria, armed conflicts began to arise on the basis of regional contradictions, threatening to develop into local wars. These conflicts are usually of an interethnic nature.

Similar phenomena have occurred and are occurring not only in the territory of the former USSR. A striking example conflicts of this kind are events of the recent past in Yugoslavia. The armed conflict in Afghanistan had an interethnic and religious overtones.

As the experience of many countries and regions of the former USSR (Transcaucasia, Transnistria) shows, ethno-territorial conflicts pose the greatest danger. The main prerequisite for their emergence is the presence of compactly settled national minorities. Quite legitimate demands for national-territorial autonomy become potentially dangerous if the area inhabited by national minorities directly borders the main ethnic massif in a neighboring state and autonomy can serve as a step towards “reunification”. For this reason, international agreements on the rights of minorities do not include territorial autonomy among their inalienable rights, in contrast to cultural autonomy and the principle of equality. The desire to secede in order to create one’s own state or join another is fraught with even more serious consequences, even civil war with a national slant.

Let us dwell in more detail on the armed conflicts that took place on the territory of Russia and in neighboring countries, since they affect the interests of millions of our fellow citizens, present and former. Armed conflicts in the USSR began in the late 1980s. At that time, 76 territorial-ethnic disputes were recorded that flared up and were still flaring up, in addition, 80 were on the verge of entering the active stage. Then the USSR disappeared, but disagreements intensified even more, and thousands of people died as a result of armed clashes. One third of the former USSR with a population of 30 million people was involved in territorial redistribution, accompanied by conflicts that flared up and then died out.

Interethnic armed conflict, as a rule, does not break out immediately. It appears unnoticed. To imagine the stages of its growth, let’s analyze how events developed in “hot spots” in the USSR, and after its collapse, in the CIS.

Usually they began on the territory of some territorial-ethnic entity. Russians and the Russian-speaking population were discriminated against: their rights in employment and education were infringed. Further, social contradictions sharply aggravated, national armed formations were created, forceful and moral pressure was exerted on government bodies, primarily the courts, the prosecutor's office, the police, and various government and life support bodies of cities and other populated areas. Criminal elements tried to penetrate into government and administrative bodies. There were exchanges of fire between police and armed forces, with each side blaming the other for the attack. The crime situation sharply worsened, the number of serious crimes and murders increased, and their detection rate sharply decreased.

Despite the still peaceful relations between the two warring parties or newly formed states, the roads became increasingly dangerous. Murders and robberies reached unprecedented proportions. On the borders of the former republics, everyone without exception was searched for weapons. The civilian population was actively drawn into the armed conflict.

In the conflict zone, outright acts of terrorism, murders, looting, and waves of pogroms are not uncommon. The number of internally displaced persons and refugees is increasing. This intensifies the crime situation, especially since there is rapid, uncontrolled arming of the civilian population. Militia groups are often spontaneously created. Store shelves are emptying, food is becoming more and more expensive and it is becoming more and more difficult to get it. It becomes dangerous to go out in the evenings. The confrontation is increasingly taking on the character of a real war.

Every citizen, first of all, should know that war, like any type of activity in a civilized society, is regulated by law. Legal norms prescribing the rules of war are aimed at maximizing the rights of military personnel and protecting civilians caught in a combat zone. Ultimately, this legislation is designed to make the conflict as difficult as possible between parties who have agreed to apply civilized norms.

The rules of international law are enshrined in the Hague Conventions concerning the Laws and Customs of War (1899,1907), the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Victims of War (1949), the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954), the Convention on the Non-Application of the Statute of Limitations for War Crimes and crimes against humanity, adopted by the UN General Assembly (1968). All these documents are recognized by the Russian Federation, but they deal with international armed conflicts. In our country and in the neighboring countries, these conflicts were and are mainly of an international (interethnic) nature. It should be emphasized that in this case, the parties are obliged to comply with international legal norms regarding the conduct of military operations. However, in all armed conflicts that took place on the territory of the former USSR, these norms were violated by almost all warring parties.

This also applies to the largest armed conflict on Russian territory – the Chechen one. At the hands of militants, many not only military personnel, but also civilians died, hostage-taking became the norm, and federal troops often attacked areas where civilians were located and carried out massive “cleansing operations.” A gross violation of international law was also the fact that the civilian population was not withdrawn from the areas of hostilities. The regime of internment of civilians, which presupposes the fulfillment by both sides of the rights and obligations associated with the provision of temporary housing, the right of correspondence, etc., was not applied in this conflict. But, despite these costs, norms of international law related to the conduct of military operations exist , and no one has canceled responsibility for their violation.

Thus, it can be stated that conflicts in various areas of public life and varying degrees intensity is a fairly common phenomenon in the modern world, but armed conflicts pose the greatest danger. They cover certain regions of the world or states, but are fraught with expansion of the sphere of distribution and a transition to more brutal methods of conducting military operations. These conflicts develop into local wars, which, as history shows, can precede a world war. Specialists in the field of life safety must clearly and clearly understand the nature of this kind of social phenomena, know the strategy and methods of survival of the population in the area of ​​​​combat operations.

Object of regional conflictology– regional conflict as a special form of regional politics.

Regional conflicts– variety social conflicts. Social conflicts are conflicts that occur in society, associated with the struggle for values ​​and with claims to status, power and resources, during this struggle opponents neutralize, damage or eliminate their rivals***. Thus, regional conflicts are various kinds of social conflicts that arise between participants separated by an administrative boundary within a single state, and conflicts between the center and the regions.

Regional conflicts necessarily have a spatial characteristic and involve a significant number of people in them.

Regional conflicts are based on contradictions in the sphere of economics, politics, religion, ideology, and they, as a rule, flow in the direction of national-ethnic and religious clashes. Such conflicts are protracted and have a direct impact on the system of international relations.

Regional conflicts differ in the composition of the subjects. Regional conflicts are contradictions in situations where at least one of the conflicting parties is a region (as a formal or informal entity).

Regional conflicts are characterized by certain dynamics.

The roots of conflict situations often go back to the distant historical past and are associated with the traditions of peoples, their socio-economic and cultural development.

The formation of an image of a conflict situation is directed political elite with the active use of the media, as well as means and methods of information warfare.

Open conflict interaction in regional conflicts can take place in various forms: ideological confrontation, economic sanctions, war and armed conflicts.

Regional conflicts are protracted. As a rule, they go through several cycles in their development.

The resolution of such conflicts is very difficult and is gradual. International organizations (UN, OSCE) often participate in their resolution. The resolution of regional conflicts is always accompanied by the signing of treaties, agreements and other documents.

The place of regional conflicts in the system of social conflicts is determined by the above-mentioned feature of regional conflicts in the form of the basis for their occurrence, which may include contradictions both in the sphere of economics and politics, religion, ideology, etc. Thus, regional conflicts regarding objects intersect with such types of conflicts as political, economic, ethnic, environmental, informational, and spiritual.

What is the subject of regional conflictology?

The subject of regional conflictology is the sources and causes, manifestations, patterns of dynamics and consequences of regional conflict, as well as methods and mechanisms for its resolution and regulation.

The subject of regional conflictology is the study of:

1. conflicts between different regions that are parts of a state (for example, the conflict between Kosovo and Serbia, which were parts of the state of Yugoslavia);

2. conflicts between the region and the state as such (RF and Chechnya);

3. conflicts between states regarding any region (for example, the conflict between Russia and Japan regarding the Kuril Islands).

(The course does not study conflicts between blocs of countries and between individual states that arise as a result of clashes of national interests. Also, the subject of regional conflictology is not the study of conflicts within a region).

4. conflicts between the region and the area as it integral part(for example, the conflict between regional and municipal authorities in the Yaroslavl region).

Based on the fact that conflictology is the science of the laws of the emergence, development, and completion of conflicts, as well as the principles, methods and techniques of their constructive regulation, accordingly, regional conflictology is the science of the laws of the emergence, development, and completion of regional conflicts, as well as the methods and methods of their constructive regulation.

Expanding the subject of regional conflictology in more detail, we will highlight the structural characteristics of a regional conflict:

1. Conflict boundaries: spatial (region); temporary;

2. Subjects: state authorities, local governments, specific government representatives, public organizations, ethnic groups, citizens, groups of citizens;

3. The object of the conflict is something that attracts the attention and aspiration of the subjects of the conflict and at the same time contrasts them, acting as the objective basis for the emergence of conflict situations.

4. The subject of the conflict is the characteristics of the object about which the subjects are opposed.

The problem of regional conflicts and modern challenges and threats to global security around the world today is already a tangle of intractable issues that are of vital importance for all regions of the planet.
Due to modern geopolitical specifics, global competition becomes implicit, being realized in individual, limited in scope, that is, regional, formally unrelated conflicts that acquire a long-term, smoldering character. Their activation and attracting the attention of world public opinion to them creates new fields on the “great chessboard”.
In the past, the competition between the two systems was primarily not economic, but ideological. The struggle was primarily for the “souls of people”, to attract more supporters to their side. Today, the “force field” guiding global competition is the awareness of the insufficiency of natural resources to continue development at the same pace based on previous technologies. Civilizational competition thus turns into a struggle for resources.
Resource famine (still potential for most countries of the world) spurs expansion and directs it to regions with “orphan” wealth, that is, with those that the states that possess them cannot develop. First of all, this is Africa and the post-Soviet space, including Russia.
A new challenge to global stability and security after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union was the development of conflict and crisis situations at the regional and domestic levels. Currently, it is difficult to find any region without a potential, smoldering or active armed conflict.
In the context of developing processes of globalization and the growing interdependence of countries around the world, the stability of the Caucasus and the problems faced here clearly have an impact on security on a global scale. In this regard, the study of conflict situations in the Caucasus, their prevention and timely prevention is a priority task for all interested states.
For 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the countries of the Caucasus have been experiencing a difficult period of their independent development, which is often accompanied by various social, economic and political upheavals, the development of interethnic and territorial conflicts, the manifestation of terrorism, religious extremism, etc.
Despite the efforts of the international community and the states of the region themselves, old conflicts continue to develop in the Caucasus and new ones emerge. An effective regional security structure has not yet been created that would allow the countries of the region to develop specific approaches to preventing conflict situations and countering modern challenges and security threats on a regional scale.
The general reason for the growing tension in the area is, of course, economic reasons. Almost all states in the region are faced with the problem of deindustrialization. Today, we are all characterized not so much by the beeps of factories and factories, but by the noise of mini and mega markets, as well as a noticeable growth in the service sector. While maintaining a certain level of employment in the agricultural sector, the surplus of labor has led to the displacement of a significant part of the rural population to cities, where they cannot find a stable income. Finding themselves, as a rule, in the sphere of trade and services, villagers brought into the city a system of village relations that conflicted with the city’s functioning model.
The social sphere is in an extremely difficult situation. The problem of paying pensions and benefits and the inability to maintain the healthcare and education systems at a sufficient level have led to the emergence of re-traditionalization tendencies.
All of the above is relevant and actually conceals sources of threats to the life of the region, in particular, the reasons for the emergence of new and the flare-up of old regional conflicts.

1 Concept and types of conflicts

In modern science, conflict is understood as a clash of divergent, sometimes opposing interests, actions, views of individuals, political parties, public organizations, socio-political and socio-economic systems. Conflicts differ by subject, by level of conflict relations and by object. They can be economic, social, external and internal political, territorial, interfaith, linguistic, etc.
Conflicts may vary in the degree of maturity, nature and severity of their resolution. Depending on the specific historical situation, the conflict may tend either to self-liquidation, to resolution as a result of a subjective factor, or to aggravation of the conflict situation, to escalation. The latter consists in involving ever larger masses of people in the confrontation, in expanding the conflict zone, in the transition from its “civilized” forms to more problematic, sometimes harsh ones, reaching the point of armed struggle and the emergence of an extreme situation for the very existence of the warring parties.
In the most general form, conflicts are usually classified according to the following grounds: 1:

from the point of view of zones and areas of their manifestation. Here, first of all, external and internal political conflicts are distinguished, which in turn are divided into a whole range of various crises and contradictions;
by the degree and nature of their normative regulation;
according to qualitative characteristics, reflecting different degrees of involvement of the parties, the intensity of crises and contradictions;
according to temporal (time) characteristics: long-term and short-term. Some conflicts in political life can be resolved within an extremely short time, while others can be related to the life of entire generations;
in relation to the desire and organization of the regime of government. In this case, vertical (characterizing the relationships between subjects belonging to different levels of government) and horizontal (revealing the connections of one number of subjects with the bearers of power) are distinguished as governmental conflicts.

The idea of ​​internal inconsistency and conflict in politics has been established in science since the 19th century. A. Tocqueville, K. Marx, G. Simmel, and subsequently K. Boulding, L. Coser, A. Bentley and other theorists considered conflict as the leading source of politics underlying the changes occurring in it and thereby determining the boundaries and nature of existence this area of ​​public life.
However, in political science there is an opposite opinion. E. Durkheim, M. Webvre, D. Dewey and a number of other authors proceed from the secondary nature of conflict to understand the essence of politics and its subordination to basic social values ​​that unite the population and integrate society into the political system. From their point of view, the unity of ideals and sociocultural values ​​makes it possible to resolve existing conflicts and ensure the stability of the government regime. In this regard, many conflicts were considered by them as anomalies of the political process, and politics, in turn, was endowed with the goals of maintaining “social stability” (E. Durkheim), or providing a “pedagogical influence” on society (D. Dewey) to prevent conflicts.
Generally political conflict is nothing more than a type (and result) of competitive interaction between two or more parties (groups, states, individuals) challenging each other for the distribution of power or resources. Conflict, signaling to society and the authorities about existing contradictions, disagreements, and discrepancies in positions, stimulates actions that can bring the situation under control. Therefore, the destabilization of power and the disintegration of society arise not because conflicts arise, but because of the inability to resolve political contradictions or simply ignoring these conflicts.
Conflictologists believe that if people’s energy is scattered to solve many power-significant problems, rather than concentrated on any one conflict, such social and political systems, as a rule, retain a greater ability to maintain the stability of their development. Only certain types of political conflicts are truly destructive to society. In countries with a flexible and developed system of representation, identifying and resolving conflicts makes it possible to effectively maintain the integrity of the political system.
Under interethnic conflict it is possible to simultaneously understand the complementary realities coexisting on two different levels. On the one hand, at the level of public consciousness, it means a certain type of attitude towards another people, which is distinguished by a confrontational attitude. Passive rejection is replaced by a relationship of active opposition. On the other hand, we can talk about interethnic conflict, as a real phenomenon of the political process, when a relatively influential national movement arises and is formed, with the goal of changing the previously existing situation. A distinctive feature of an interethnic conflict is that at least one of its parties relies on social structures, i.e. primarily on self-organizing professionals.
A political conflict based on the discrepancy between national relations will have an interstate nature if independent states openly act as warring parties. In emergency situations - pogroms, murders, expulsion of compatriots from a neighboring republic, they can use control over transport routes and communications, and armed formations for their own purposes. Interstate conflicts can be classified as armed or unarmed. Armed conflicts represent an attempt to achieve the realization of one’s interests through military force. Their danger lies in the possibility of involving new forces and getting out of control. Unarmed interstate conflicts manifest themselves as diplomatic confrontation, as customs, financial and other actions expressing the economic and political interests of certain states.
Ethnic conflict. Ethnic conflict is a particular form of conflict. Depending on the characteristics of the conflicting parties, 2 classes of ethnic conflicts are distinguished.
1) “horizontal” conflicts between ethnic groups (for example, the Ossetian-Ingush conflict or the Ferghana conflict between Uzbeks and Meskhetian Turks);
2) “vertical” conflicts between an ethnic group and the state (for example, the Chechen or Karabakh conflicts). In his definition, A. Yamskov focuses on the specific actions of the participants in the conflict: “An ethnic conflict is a dynamically changing socio-political situation, generated by the rejection of the previously established status quo by a significant part of the representatives of one (several) local ethnic groups and manifested in the form of at least one of the following actions by members of this group:
a) the beginning of ethno-selective emigration from the region (“exodus”, “mass relocation”), significantly changing the local ethno-demographic balance in favor of “other” remaining ethnic groups;
b) the creation of a political organization (“national” or “cultural” movement, party), declaring the need to change the existing situation in the interests of the specified ethnic group (groups) and thereby provoking counteraction from the authorities and/or political mobilization of another (other) local ethnic group groups in defense of the status quo, which completely satisfies the latter;
c) spontaneous... protests against infringement of their interests by representatives of another local ethnic group and/or government bodies in the form of mass rallies, processions, pogroms” 2.
Ethnic conflict is understood as a social situation caused by the discrepancy between the interests and goals of individual ethnic groups within a single ethnic space or ethnic group (groups), on the one hand, and the state, on the other, at the intersection of ethnic and political space, expressed in the aspirations of the ethnic group ( groups) to change existing ethnic inequalities or political space in its territorial dimension.
Under ethno-territorial conflict refers to any claim to territory (residence, ownership, administration) claimed by another party, but only if this claim is made “on behalf of” an ethnic group.
Back in 1991, 76 ethno-territorial disputes were recorded within the USSR; a year later (in the post-Soviet space), their number increased to 180. To date, about 140 ethno-territorial claims remain relevant.
In a number of cases, these claims are supported by “force of arms”: since the late 80s, five “ethnic” wars have been recorded on the territory of the USSR - long-term armed clashes with the participation of regular troops and the use of heavy weapons (Karabakh, Abkhaz, South Ossetian, Transnistrian and Chechen conflicts) and about 20 short-term armed clashes, accompanied by casualties among the civilian population (the most significant of them are the Fergana, Osh, Ossetian-Ingush conflicts, as well as the Baku and Sumgait pogroms). The approximate number of people killed in these conflicts is about 100,000 people, but the armed confrontation affected a much larger number of people - at least 10 million people live in the zones of bloody conflicts.
It should be noted that modern international law prohibits states from resorting to war for settlement.
One type of political conflict is regional conflict. Let's look at it in more detail.

2 Regional conflict: concept and features

In general, a regional conflict is nothing more than the result of competitive interaction between two or more states challenging each other for the distribution of power, territory or resources. This interaction can be carried out in different ways: diplomatic negotiations, the inclusion of a third party, armed intervention, etc. 3 The twentieth century was the most destructive and bloody in the history of mankind. The First and Second World Wars claimed millions of lives. The Cold War period was no less difficult.
What is a regional armed conflict - war? A regional war is a limited conflict, the cause of which is unresolved contradictions on a regional scale. It is localized within the boundaries of the region, but its political and economic consequences can affect far beyond these borders. In such a conflict, it is possible that countries outside the region may participate (supplying military equipment, sending advisers or volunteers) 4 .
In total, from 1945 to 1988. 170 major regional conflicts occurred, while over the previous almost six decades (1898-1945) there were 116 wars and conflicts, i.e. one third less. All major powers were involved in regional conflicts in one form or another: in almost 100 regional conflicts they were directly involved in hostilities. In the second half of the 60s. the number of regional conflicts reached its annual maximum, the danger of global military chaos arose, although of a regional focal nature, but with the localization of simultaneous outbreaks. This is largely facilitated by the spread in the 70-80s. There is an arms race in third world countries, including modern weapons systems and radio-electronic equipment, and control equipment. The international arms trade is of a conflict-provoking nature, the main suppliers of which are, first of all, the United States and Russia.
A regional conflict has the following characteristics: political or military-political; controlled or uncontrolled; localized as internal or aggravated by external interference; the presence of external forces acting with both a “plus” and a “minus” sign; differentiation of internal forces into moderates and radicals, dynamics of changes in their influence; balance of armed forces, mobilization potential, possibility of military support (supply of weapons); features of national psychology (persistence, sacrifice, level of organization) 5.

3 Forecasting and resolving regional conflicts

Due to the frequent occurrence of conflicts in various regions of the world, recently there has been a need to predict them and develop settlement models.
A forecast is a probabilistic scientifically based judgment regarding the observed state of an object at a certain point in time. The process of developing a forecast is called forecasting. Forecasting a political conflict sets itself the following tasks: to determine the possibility of a conflict occurring ahead of time; identify options for the development of the conflict; determine possible options for the behavior of the parties to the conflict; identify possible ways to resolve the conflict,
The task of a forecast does not include obtaining an answer to the question “what will happen,” it answers the question “what will happen if certain reasons exist” 6 . In the case when a regional conflict has developed and acquired its own political, and sometimes military-political dynamics, the course of its development and possible prospects for its implementation and resolution are already predicted.
Authorities can choose one of three models of behavior: ignoring the conflict, giving it the opportunity to smolder and renew itself; avoid clear public assessment of its nature; actively participate in conflict resolution.
The democratic process of control over conflict situations involves a number of special procedures:

Mutual and prompt exchange of information about the interests, intentions, and next steps of the parties involved in the conflict.
Conscious mutual abstinence from the use of force or the threat of use of force that could make a conflict situation uncontrollable.
Declaring a mutual moratorium on actions that aggravate the conflict.
The involvement of arbitrators, whose impartial approach to the conflict is guaranteed, and whose recommendations are accepted as the basis for compromise actions.
The use of existing or adoption of new legal norms, administrative or other procedures that contribute to the rapprochement of the positions of the parties involved in the conflict.
Creating and maintaining an atmosphere of business partnership, and then trusting relationships as prerequisites for settling the current conflict and preventing similar conflicts in the future.

The conflict may turn out to be unresolved, then a situation is created that does not lead to its end, but to a kind of “circular movement.” This situation requires the search for a new strategy and tactics for controlling the conflict. The conflict can be resolved on its own, without attempts to consciously regulate it (due to the loss of relevance of the subject of the dispute, fatigue of political subjects, depletion of resources, etc.).
The political and legal settlement mechanism must be built on an integrated basis and at various levels, including:

mechanism for resolving the conflict between its direct participants;
a multilateral settlement mechanism with the participation of all interested parties, regardless of their regional affiliation;
a universal mechanism within institutions and organizational structures.

The resolution of regional conflicts involves the development of various political models and forms of settlement. The development of such models and forms is carried out by states through diplomatic channels with the participation of the UN. Such models include: a ceasefire in an interstate war through negotiations and reaching agreement using the mediation functions of the UN Secretary-General, with the participation of the diplomacy of the three interested countries. This model was used in the Iran-Iraq War; bilateral and multilateral settlement with the participation of guarantor states and partial participation of the UN - used in the Afghan conflict (the USA and the USSR are guarantors); interstate - settlement through the mediation of a third party; political settlement of the conflict based on dialogue. The most common means of achieving reconciliation between the parties used in conflict management and resolution technologies is negotiations 7 .
As a rule, regional conflicts involve not only its direct participants, but also major powers, thereby creating a general conflict chain in world politics as a whole. Regional conflicts require careful study, forecasting the potential causes of their occurrence, studying their movement from inception to escalation, and creating mechanisms for their control and resolution. Conflict resolution has proven to be a difficult task. Today, any progress in this area is important both for the CIS countries and for the entire world community as a whole.
The modern prominent sociologist and researcher M. Castells in his book “The Information Age: Economy, Society, Culture” writes that in developed democratic countries they quickly came to three conclusions regarding the conditions necessary to make war more or less acceptable to society 8 .
1. It should not affect ordinary citizens, i.e. should be conducted by a professional army, forced recruitment should be resorted to only in case of truly extraordinary circumstances, and these are assumed to be unlikely.
2. It must be short, even instantaneous, so that results are not long in coming, draining human and economic resources and raising questions about the justification of military action.
3. It must be clean, surgical, with a reasonable amount of destruction (even to the enemy) and hidden from public view as much as possible, resulting in a close connection between information processing, image creation and warfare.
However, instantaneous - surgical, closed, technological - wars are the privilege of technologically dominant nations. Everywhere in the world, half-forgotten brutal wars, often waged by primitive means, drag on year after year, although the global proliferation of high-tech weapons is also capturing this market.

4 Main groups of preconditions for regional conflicts in the CIS

Regional conflicts in the CIS may have different prerequisites depending on the nature of the regional conflict itself. Let's look at this in more detail.
Socio-economic conflict. It develops under the slogan of equalizing inequality in living standards, centralized distribution of funds, or the comparative social and professional status of peoples;
Cultural and linguistic conflicts. Associated with the tasks of protecting or enhancing the functions of the native language, national culture and ensuring the rights to real cultural autonomy.
Territorial and status conflicts. Their participants demand changes in borders, increased status, increased scope of rights, or the creation of new national-state (administrative) entities;
Separatist conflicts. Caused by demands for complete independence 9 .
The national movement of Chechnya, Georgia and Armenia approached the fourth type in 1990. To the second - the situation is Greek-Georgian, Talysh-Azerbaijani, Lezgian-Azerbaijani. Due to religious and cultural proximity and small numbers, aggravation of the situation and escalation of the conflict can be avoided.
Conflict situations of the first type are not so noticeable due to the abundance and severity of more serious confrontations, but if sufficiently numerous peoples are involved in them, conflict situations that, as a rule, arise with signs of the first and second types tend to deepen and acquire the features of the third and even fourth types. An example is the Karabakh crisis: initially it was localized in the NKAO and was distinguished by the interweaving of the first two types of conflicts. Later, the conflict drew the population of Armenia, and then Azerbaijan, into its orbit, acquiring features of the third type. After the direct involvement of the Union government in the events, the conflict came close to a situation of the fourth type.
Probably, the very fact of living of representatives of several nations in one state, due to the uneven development of different regions and different social strata characteristic of all countries and eras, causes the emergence of interethnic conflicts of the first and second types. However, the tendency often observed in the USSR for such conflicts to develop into the third type, as well as the very existence of territorial-status conflicts, are determined, first of all, by the totality of outdated principles of the country’s national-state structure. This level of interethnic conflicts, intermediate between the demands of full cultural autonomy, social equality and, on the other hand, one’s own isolated statehood, could apparently be absent or manifest weaker under a different state structure.

5 Georgian-Abkhaz conflict: causes, history and consequences

On the southern borders of Russia, Christianity coexists with Islam, and the Slavs coexist with Georgians, Armenians, Turkic and Iranian peoples. The result is an incredible mixture of peoples and religions. The Abkhaz, a Turkic-speaking and largely Muslim people, fell under Georgian rule a millennium ago. Georgia itself was absorbed into the Russian Empire in the 19th century.
Abkhazia, like Chechnya, fought with Russia in the 19th century, and after the revolution in Russia it also established Soviet power. However, due to the weakness of Russia at that time, the Georgian Mensheviks overthrew Soviet power in Abkhazia and annexed it to Georgia. With the Sovietization of Georgia (February 1921), the independent Abkhazian Soviet Republic was formed (March 3, 1921) and concluded an agreement with Georgia, becoming part of it. In April 1925, the Abkhaz Congress of Soviets approved the Constitution of the republic. As soon as the political possibility of joining Russia arose (after the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine), the Abkhazians began a political struggle for their annexation to the Krasnodar Territory. But the leader of Georgia, Mzhavanadze, confidently promised to annex all those dissatisfied to the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
etc.............

The problem of global and regional conflicts is one of the complex and insufficiently developed in conflictology. It goes beyond the sociology of conflict and is directly related to the global problems of our time, which are essentially philosophical. In this topic we will consider the essence and some features of global and regional conflicts.

Self-study material

Concept of global conflicts

The word “global” means covering the entire globe, worldwide, planetary. Therefore, when we talk about a global conflict, we mean a conflict that is planetary in scale and affects the interests of all humanity.

Global conflicts pose a threat to the existence of humanity or individual civilizations. Examples of such conflicts can be found in biblical stories, myths and traditions. For example, the Flood is widely known as a catastrophe that became a manifestation of the conflict between people and God. This is how the Flood is presented in Andre Parro’s book “The Flood and Noah’s Ark” (translation by S. Apt): “...And now, seeing how much human evil is on earth and that all human thoughts are nothing but everyday evil, the Lord He regretted that he had created man on earth, and he was saddened in his heart and said:

I will wipe out from the face of the earth the man whom I created, I will wipe out everyone, from people to cattle, to creeping things and birds of the air, because it is a pity that I created them...

And there was a downpour on the earth for forty days and forty nights... And there was a flood on the earth for forty days... Everything in which the breath of life was on the dry land died. So he erased everything on earth. From man to cattle, to creeping things, to birds of the air - everything was wiped out from the face of the earth, and only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained.”*

Even at the beginning of the 20th century, the problem of global conflicts was quite abstract and was reflected in the works of a number of scientists (V.I. Vernadsky, E. Leroy, A. Schweitzer, etc.) only as a staged issue in science. Today, humanity is closely faced with the possibility of global conflicts that could develop, for example, into a global nuclear missile war or an environmental disaster. Other forms of such conflicts are also possible. All of them are associated with problems of a special kind, which in philosophical interpretation are called global problems modernity.

Based on the above, we can give the following definition of the phenomenon under consideration.

By global conflicts we will understand conflicts caused by global problems of our time, affecting the interests of all humanity and threatening existence of civilization.

The above definition allows us to highlight a number of features of global conflicts.

1. Global conflicts are conflicts on a civilizational, planetary scale. They affect the interests and destinies of all people on the planet. Within the framework of such conflicts, the opposing subjects are inseparable from humanity as a single, integral social organism.

2. The danger of global conflicts appears at a certain stage of human development - in the middle of the 20th century, when the development of science and technology significantly expanded the boundaries of human intervention in nature and radically changed the principles of social interaction of people, their needs and spiritual culture. During this period, problems began to appear clearly that posed a threat to the existence of the very foundations of the life of intelligent civilization, the natural development of living and inanimate nature. In this regard, it is important to note that the term “global problems” first appeared in the late 60s in the West and became widespread thanks to the activities of the Club of Rome*.

*Cit. by: Khlopin I.N. What happened before the flood? - L.: Lenizdat, 1990. - P. 109-110.

3. Global conflicts are dysfunctional and pose a threat to the existence of humanity. Therefore, the main task facing the world community is to prevent the emergence and development of such conflicts.

4. Global conflicts have symptoms that are no less dangerous for humanity than the conflicts themselves. Such symptoms appear in the form of aggravation of contradictions in the “man-nature”, “man-technology” systems, as well as in interstate relations. More tangible and serious symptoms of global conflicts are manifested in accidents and disasters with a large number of casualties. An example of this is the accident at Chernobyl nuclear power plant, an accident at a large chemical plant in Slovakia, which led to extremely dangerous contamination of the Danube waters, etc.

One of the significant features of global conflicts is that the image of conflict situations, as one of the structural elements of any conflict, is reflected in the public consciousness of people. A special role in the formation of such an image belongs to the media.

The connection between global conflicts and global problems of our time is presented in Table. 15.1.

Global Conflict Management

The process of managing global conflicts comes down to their prediction and timely prevention. The subjects of such management are individual states, unions of states, international organizations and social movements. But it should be noted that the absence of a single entity for managing global conflicts in the world community does not allow us to effectively solve many problems of a planetary nature. In this regard, it seems reasonable to create a world coordination center on global problems of our time, which would unite the efforts of all states and the world community in the fight for the security of our civilization.

* The Club of Rome is an international public organization. Founded in 1968 with the goal of developing humanity in the era of scientific and technological revolution. Played an important role in attracting the attention of the world community to global problems.

Table 15.1

The relationship between global problems and global conflicts in the modern world

No.	Global problems	Global conflicts (real and possible)	Social consequences
	The problem of war and peace	Military-political confrontation between East and West (“ cold war"in the 1950s-1980s) World thermonuclear war	"Nuclear winter"; the death of civilization; depletion of energy resources during the arms race
	Imbalance in the development of states	Conflicts between developing and developed countries	Exacerbation of spiritual problems, violation of human rights; genocide of peoples; disturbance of ecological balance
	Contradictions in the “society-nature” system (environmental problems)	Ecological crisis Energy crisis	Ecological disaster; death of civilization
	Demographic problems	Demographic crises	Aggravation of the socio-economic situation as a result of overpopulation in developing countries; depopulation in developed countries

The objective basis for predicting global conflicts is the vital contradictions that humanity faced in the process of its socio-cultural development in the middle of the 20th century. The most significant of them are: a) contradictions in the “society-nature” or “man-nature” system; b) contradictions between developed and developing countries; c) contradictions between nuclear powers in the sphere of military-political relations; d) demographic contradictions.

Preventing global conflicts comes down to adequately resolving contradictions of a planetary nature. In this case we're talking about about resolving global problems of our time.

First of all, it should be noted that the resolution of such problems is possible only on the basis of the unification of all humanity in the face of an impending catastrophe. In this sense, the united efforts of people around the world should be aimed at solving a number of problems, which in themselves are of a philosophical nature. The most significant of them are:

Ensuring peaceful conditions for the coexistence of all peoples of the planet, reducing military spending, eliminating weapons of mass destruction.

Overcoming the socio-economic and cultural backwardness of developing countries and creating equal conditions and opportunities for them in a single civilizational development process.

Character change environmental activities people, the formation of a new ecological culture among broad sections of society.

Development of a mutually agreed upon international policy to ensure demographic security.

Managing the process of development of science and technology, education and culture on the basis of a comprehensive forecast of the social consequences of this process.

Regional conflicts

By regional conflicts we will understand those conflicts that arise on the basis of contradictions that arise between individual states, coalitions of states or individual regional subjects of social interaction within the state, and cover large geographical and social spaces.

By regional subjects of social interaction within the state we will understand individual administrative-territorial entities with their own economic, political, spiritual and other interests and values.

Features of regional conflicts

1. Regional conflicts are directly related to global ones. On the one hand, they act as one of the forms of emerging global conflicts, and on the other hand, they can accelerate the process of maturation of such conflicts. For example, local wars as regional conflicts pose the threat of a world nuclear missile war, which in its scale will be a global catastrophe. In addition, local wars significantly aggravate the environmental situation in combat areas; they create the threat of accidents and catastrophes at chemical plants, nuclear power plants and other high-risk facilities.

2. Regional conflicts are based on contradictions in the sphere of economics, politics, religion and ideology, and they, as a rule, flow in the direction of national-ethnic and religious clashes. Such conflicts are protracted and have a direct impact on the system of international relations.

3. Regional conflicts differ in the composition of the subjects, which are administrative-territorial entities or ethnic groups within the state, as well as states or coalitions of states. It is important to keep in mind that the main role among the subjects of regional conflicts is played by political, economic and national-ethnic elites.

4. Regional conflicts also differ in their areas of distribution and influence. Geographically, such conflicts cover large geographical spaces (regions) and draw large masses of people into their orbit, significantly influencing the fate of these people. As a rule, such an influence is negative.

5. Regional conflicts also differ in their dynamics. The roots of conflict situations often go back to the distant historical past and are associated with the traditions of peoples, their socio-economic and cultural development. The formation of an image of a conflict situation among the people is directed by the political elite with the active use in this process of the media, as well as the means and methods of information warfare.

Open conflict interaction in regional conflicts can take place in various forms: ideological confrontation; economic sanctions; war and armed conflicts.

Regional conflicts are protracted. As a rule, they go through several cycles in their development.

The resolution of such conflicts is very difficult and is gradual. International organizations (UN, OSCE, etc.) often actively participate in their resolution. The resolution of regional conflicts is always accompanied by the signing of treaties, agreements and other documents.

Classification of regional conflicts

You can get an idea of ​​the variety of regional conflicts from Table. 15.2.

Of particular interest to us are the interethnic conflicts that arose after the collapse of the USSR, which are essentially regional (Karapetyan, 1996, pp. 73-74). These are primarily conflicts:

Related to the demand for the reunification of united consanguineous ethnic groups that were fragmented in the past (Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, North-Eastern regions, Southern Dagestan, etc.);

Generated by the desire of an ethnic minority to realize their right to self-determination and the creation of an independent state (Abkhazia, Transnistria, Gagauzia);

Related to the restoration of the territorial rights of deported peoples (between Ossetians and Ingush; Crimean Tatars and other peoples of Crimea);

Related to the claim of one state or another to part of the territory of a neighboring state (the desire of Estonia and Latvia to annex a number of districts of the Pskov region);

Arising as a result of arbitrary territorial changes made in Soviet period(Transcaucasia, Central Asia, etc.);

Generated by the long-term stay of deported peoples on the territory of other republics (Meskhetian Turks in Uzbekistan; Chechens in Kazakhstan, etc.);

Caused by discrimination against the Russian-speaking population in a number of countries that emerged in the post-Soviet space (Baltic countries, etc.).

Table 15.2 Types of regional conflicts

Basis of classification	Types of regional conflicts	Reasons
Scale	Conflicts between states, coalitions of states, covering vast regions and entire continents (Europe, Middle East, Southeast Asia, etc.)	Contradictions in various spheres of social reality (economics, politics, etc.), often territorial claims
	Conflicts between various subjects of social interaction, covering certain regions of the country, including conflicts between the center and the region (Russia, Great Britain, Yugoslavia, etc.)	Contradictions between the claims of ethnic groups or other subjects of conflict and the real capabilities of the state to satisfy these claims
Features of the geographical location, as well as the type and level of development of society	Conflicts in Asia, Africa, Latin America and others. Conflicts in the post-socialist space	Contradictions in the sphere of national-ethnic traditions, as well as contradictions based on differences in civilizational development models
Sphere of Manifestation	Economic Political Spiritual-ideological Military	Contradictions in relevant areas of social reality
National-ethnic characteristics	Ethnic conflicts Religious conflicts Ethnopolitical conflicts	Interregional contradictions Nationalism Religious expansionism

Regional Conflict Management

Managing regional conflicts comes down to the main stages of management activities of this kind - forecasting, prevention, regulation and resolution.

It is important to note that management is carried out at the state or international level. The legal basis for managing regional conflicts consists of constitutional norms, as well as norms International law. The main content of regional conflict management is presented in Table. 15.3.

Sources for in-depth study of the topic

1. Antsupov A. Ya., Shipilov A. I. Conflictology. - M.: UNITY,

1999. - Ch. 30.

2. Introduction to philosophy: Textbook for higher educational institutions: In 2 parts. - M.: Politizdat, 1989. - Part 2. - Ch. XVIII.

3. Zdravomyslov A. G. Sociology of conflict. - M.: Aspect Press,

4. Zerkin D.P. Fundamentals of conflictology. - Rostov n/d: Phoenix, 1998. - P. 170-241, 276-327.

5. Kozyrev G.I. Introduction to conflictology. - M.: Vlados, 1999. - Ch. IX-XI.

6. Philosophy: Tutorial/ Ed. prof. V. M. Lavrinenko. - M.: Yurist, 1996. - Ch. V, VI.

Security questions

1. Give a definition of global conflict.

2. List the features of global conflicts.

3. List the main types of global conflicts.

4. What are the prerequisites for the emergence of global conflicts.

5. Reveal the objective basis for forecasting global conflicts.

6. List ways to prevent global conflicts.

7. Give a definition of regional conflicts.

8. List the features of regional conflicts.

9. Name the most acute modern regional conflicts.

10. Expand the content of regional conflict management.

Table 15.3 Regional conflict management

Management stages	The main content of management actions
Forecasting conflict	Study and analysis legal framework relationships between regional subjects of social interaction. Study and analysis of statements by political leaders and political parties. Study and analysis of public opinion in the regions. Studying the history, culture, traditions of the peoples that are part of the regional subjects of social interaction. Analysis of the economic, political and other interests of the regional entities themselves, as well as those states whose interests are manifested in this region
Conflict Prevention	Formation of competent authorities at the state or international level to prevent an impending conflict. Based on an in-depth analysis of the causes and factors of the emerging conflict and take measures to neutralize them. Intensifying meetings and consultations with political leaders representing potential warring parties. Concluding agreements between potential warring parties to mitigate emerging contradictions. Expansion of information connections, exclusion from the information field false information. Expanding measures of trust between subjects of social interaction. Development of means and methods to regulate the emerging conflict
Conflict management	Creation of competent bodies for conflict regulation. Achieving recognition of the reality of the conflict by the conflicting parties. Legitimization of the conflict. Strengthening information exchange between conflicting parties.
	Ensuring communicative interaction between political leaders (negotiations, consultations, etc.). The use of organizational technologies to regulate the conflict that has arisen (military presence, strengthening of the border regime, economic and legal sanctions, etc.)
Conflict resolution	Regional conflicts, depending on their content, conditions and factors, can be resolved in the form of consensus, suppression of one of the parties, mutual reconciliation, or in the form of transferring the struggle into the channel of cooperation. Most often, such conflicts are resolved by reaching consensus or the complete suppression (destruction) of one of the parties. In the first case, consensus is formalized in the form of a contract, protocol, agreement or other document. In the second case, the irreconcilable ruling elite and those forces that offer active resistance are suppressed. It should be borne in mind that such suppression may be fair, legal, or it may be unjust, contrary to the law (the Constitution or International Law)

Lesson 15.1. Seminar-game on the topic: “Global and regional conflicts” (the seminar is held in the form of defending abstracts)

Purpose of the game. Deepening and consolidating students' knowledge on the main problems of global and regional conflicts, developing their skills and developing the ability to prepare abstracts, reviews and reviews, as well as conduct theoretical discussions on the topic under discussion in a playful way.

Game situation. The defense of the abstract takes place at the meeting of the Expert Council. Characters: author of the abstract, opponents, members of the “Expert Council”, chairman of the “Expert Council”. The members of the “Expert Council” are everyone present in the lesson, and its chairman can be the teacher or one of the students. For each abstract it is necessary to appoint two or three opponents. In a two-hour class, two abstracts can be discussed.

Game procedure

Preparatory stage. In two to three weeks, students receive instructions for conducting a seminar in the form of defending abstracts. They should be given a list of questions for independent study and a list of references, as well as topics for essays submitted for defense. It is also necessary to assign roles for the game situation and instruct the actors.

Self-study questions

1. The concept of global problems of our time, their philosophical and sociological meaning.

2. Global conflicts and global problems of our time: correlation and interrelation.

3. Features of global conflicts and their classification.

4. Forecasting and preventing global conflicts.

5. The concept of regional conflicts and their features.

6. The relationship between global and regional conflicts.

7. Classification of regional conflicts.

8. Regional conflict management.

Literature for the seminar

1. Introduction to philosophy: Textbook for higher educational institutions: In 2 parts - M.: Politizdat, 1989. - Part 2. - Ch. 18.

2. Zdravomyslov A.G. Sociology of conflict. - M.: Aspect Press,

1996. - Sec. I, ch. 3; Sec. II, ch. 3; Sec. III, ch. 1; 5.

3. Zerkin D.P. Fundamentals of conflictology. - Rostov n/d: Phoenix, 1998.-S. 170-241;276-327.

4. Kozyrev G.I. Introduction to conflictology. - M.: Vlados, 1999. -

5. The world of philosophy: A book for reading. - M., Politizdat, 1991. - Part 2: Man. Society. Culture. - pp. 497-584 (Fragments of works by V.I. Vernadsky, S.L. Frank, X. Ortega y Gasset, P. Teilhard de Chardin, B. Russell, K. Jaspers).

6. Philosophy: Textbook / Ed. V. N. Lavrinenko. - M.: Yurist, 1996. - Ch. V, VI.

Sample Topics abstracts

1. The relationship between global problems and global conflicts.

2. Environmental disaster as a global conflict and ways to prevent it.

3. Regional conflicts in the post-Soviet space.

4. The problem of war and peace in history and modernity.

5. International cooperation on the problem of preventing environmental disaster.

During the game

Work according to the game scenario.

The Chairman of the “Expert Council” opens the meeting and announces the order of work.

The author of the abstract reports on the main content of the abstract within 10 minutes. After the report, members of the “Expert Council” ask questions on the topic of the abstract, to which the author gives short and comprehensive answers (members of the “Expert Council” prepare questions both in advance, based on familiarity with the topic of the abstract and relevant literature, and impromptu - during the course of the report) .

Then opponents speak with reviews of the abstract (opponents’ reviews are prepared in advance based on familiarity with the text of the abstract and study of the relevant literature). Along with an assessment of the positive aspects of the abstract, they should also contain constructive and critical comments, alternative options solving the problem facing the author of the abstract. Speeches by opponents should not exceed 7-10 minutes.

After this, the author responds to opponents’ comments. Answers are also prepared in advance, based on studying reviews. Answers should be succinct, thorough, specific and at the same time brief, not exceeding 3-5 minutes.

The discussion ends with brief presentations by members of the “Expert Council” on the content of the abstract, the author’s report, his answers and opponents’ speeches.

Summing up the lesson

When summing up the results of the defense, the teacher evaluates the work of the authors of the abstracts, opponents and all members of the “Expert Council”.

Opponents are scored for the content of the review and their presentation.

The work of the members of the “Expert Council” is assessed by their participation in raising questions, as well as by their speeches during the defense.

Lesson 15.2. Topic: “Global and regional conflicts.” Business game

"International coordination"*

Purpose of the game. Show participants the relationship between industrial production and the level of well-being of the population and the state of the environment; strengthen the skills of collective work and possession of financial documentation in a limited time environment.

Preparatory stage. Before starting the game, basic information for each group of participants should be prepared and reproduced in the required quantity. If this is not possible, then the basic information can be written on the chalkboard so that it is available to all participants at any time during the game. Business documentation that is required to make financial and other payments is prepared in advance. The main document of each group is an environmental bulletin, which reflects all the changes occurring in the country’s ecology.

Environmental bulletin

Serial number of the year	Initial ecological state	Environmental damage (%)	Final ecological state
Ferrous metallurgy	Mechanical engineering	Energy industry	Chemical industry	Construction industry	Woodworking industry	Light industrial	Food industry
First
Second
Third
Etc.

To others important document is a product accounting sheet.

* See: Prutchenkov A. S., Samkov V. A. Business game “International coordination”. // Socio-political magazine. - 1995. No. 4 - P. 176-185

Product record sheet

The environmental bulletin is made in one copy per group, and the product accounting sheet is made in eight copies (for each type of product).

Preparatory stage. The teacher-coordinator of the game invites participants to unite in small groups, each of which represents a state. Then each group resolves organizational issues: determines the name of the state (any fictitious or real-life name is possible), selects (appoints) the prime minister, ministers of ferrous metallurgy and mechanical engineering, energy and chemical industry, construction and woodworking, light and food industries.

The Prime Minister organizes the work of the government, conducts meetings, controls the situation and assists ministers in their activities.

Ministers ensure that enterprises in the industry they lead provide the country with their products. For this purpose, each minister maintains a record of production for his industries. The remaining participants are members of the government who, together with the prime minister and ministers, must make decisions about the activities of the state for the coming year.

Note. If the group has fewer members than is required for appointment to all leadership positions in the state, that is, less than four people, they can combine two positions.

After solving organizational issues, the coordinator offers the groups the information necessary for the game (the information sheet that is given to each group is given in the appendix to the game), samples of business documentation and provides basic information for all groups.

“Your groups represent the governments of various states. You are interested in improving the well-being of your people and preserving the country's ecology. All countries need the products of the above industries, since the population needs food (food industry), shoes and clothing (light industry), homes and schools (construction industry), and electricity (energy). But neither houses, nor clothes, nor products can be created without equipment and machinery (mechanical engineering), equipment without metal (ferrous metallurgy), building materials without wood (woodworking industry). Many materials for clothing, cars, and construction are made from artificial chemicals (chemical industry). Thus, all these industries are needed and they must function. But where to place them? Where to build metallurgical plants and chemical plants, where to construct hydro- and nuclear power plants where to build factories and wood processing complexes? All these issues must be resolved by the countries participating in the international community themselves. In this case, the following environmental standards must be taken into account (see Table 15.4).

For next year(one year lasts five minutes of game time) your government must decide how it will maintain or improve the welfare of citizens, how it will preserve the environment, whether it will locate industries on its territory or take advantage of existing ones in its neighbors and etc. When making a decision, you need to take into account the annual needs of the country's population (in conventional units) (see Table 15.5).

To ensure a certain level of well-being of the country's population, government members must make decisions on the location of industries on their territory or enter into international agreements with other countries for the supply of necessary products.

Table 15.4

Degree of environmental hazard

No.

Industry name

Damage (% for 1 year)

Ferrous metallurgy

Mechanical engineering

Energy industry

Chemical industry

Construction industry

Wood industry

Light industry

Food industry

Annual

Table 15.5 needs of the country's population (in conventional units)

Welfare level

Products of industries

Total

Ferrous metallurgy

Mechanical engineering

Energy industry

Chemical industry

Construction industry

Woodworking industry

Light industrial

Food industry

High

h,

Average

Short

If a country decides to locate a certain industry on its territory, this means that it annually produces three times more products from this industry than is necessary for the needs of the population at the highest level of well-being.

For example, the country of Muravia decided to locate ferrous metallurgy and mechanical engineering on its territory. This means that the annual output of these two industries in Muravia will be nine units each. The Minister of Ferrous Metallurgy and Mechanical Engineering must record this data in his production record sheet. Its entry should look like this:

Product record sheet

Ferrous metallurgy_________________

(name of industry)

Product record sheet

Mechanical engineering industry

(name of industry)

In the column “Produced (purchased),” the minister records the quantity of products of each industry (in conventional units) that the country itself produces (if this industry is located by decision of the government on the territory of this state) or exchanged with another country for its products.

The column “Spent for exchange (needs of the population)” records the amount of products of this industry that was required for exchange with other countries for the necessary products and went to the needs of the population in accordance with the standard level of well-being (this level is determined by a government decision).

In the “Remainder” column, the balance of the products of this industry is recorded after each purchase or expenditure. It is advisable for the minister to maintain two separate statements (for each industry for which he is responsible in the government).

Thus, Muravia fully meets the needs of its population with the products of ferrous metallurgy and mechanical engineering, but every year, in accordance with the hazard table, the environmental situation in this country worsens by 17% (ferrous metallurgy worsens the environmental condition by 10% and mechanical engineering by 7%). The corresponding entry in the environmental bulletin is made personally by the Prime Minister.

Note. It is possible to introduce the post of Minister of Ecology, who will maintain an environmental bulletin, freeing the Prime Minister for general management of state affairs.

The environmental bulletin of Muravia after the placement of ferrous metallurgy and mechanical engineering will look as follows.