Luis Lázaro Tijerina
geopolitica.ru
SECURITY AND CONFLICTS / EURASIA
First published on 03.08.2017
"In the 21st century we have seen a tendency toward blurring the lines between the states of war and peace. Wars are no longer declared and, having begun, proceed according to an unfamiliar template….The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness. The focus of applied methods of conflict has altered in the direction of the broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other nonmilitary measures — applied in coordination with the protest potential of the population."
The key phrase we should bear in mind is “application of force” – for that is the kernel of Gerasimov’s energy as applied to modern warfare. In other words, Gerasimov is a pragmatic military leader, not a studious military thinker. From my perspective, he is humble before those military thinkers who preceded him. As he once wrote so poignantly, “The state of Russian military science today cannot be compared with the flowering of military-theoretical thought in our country on the eve of World War II. Of course, there are objective and subjective reasons for this and it is not possible to blame anyone in particular for it. I am not the one who said it is not possible to generate ideas on command. I agree with that, but I also must acknowledge something else: at that time, there were no people with higher degrees and there were no academic schools or departments. There were extraordinary personalities with brilliant ideas. I would call them fanatics in the best sense of the word. Maybe we just don't have enough people like that today”.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
All image captions, pull quotes, appendices, etc. by the editors not the authors.
YOU ARE FREE TO REPRODUCE THIS ARTICLE PROVIDED YOU GIVE PROPER CREDIT TO THE GREANVILLE POST VIA A BACK LIVE LINK.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
[premium_newsticker id="211406"]
Don't forget to sign up for our FREE bulletin. Get The Greanville Post in your mailbox every few days.