Game imperative of modern warfare

Abstract

Modern trends of instability, uncertainty and inconsistency of social phenomena objectively complicate the life conditions of a person and society. Such trends began to be used by certain world actors in almost all dimensions and senses of influence and spheres of human life, especially in those where there is a clash of geopolitical interests of such subjects. The consequence of this was the actualization of a multilateral, polycentric, global world order, in which the role and importance of the strategy of asymmetric influences gradually increased. The geopolitical struggle is increasingly acquiring the character of a game – large-scale, insidious, multi-scripted, hybrid. In the clashes of modern world players, the fundamental attributes of the game as a universal ontophenomenal form of human being and society are fully manifested; an integral factor of self-realization of the subject; his tool of intellectual modeling and practice of actions; cultural function of competition, including war, warfare. The game in the modern world has finally acquired signs of the implicity of its aspects in mulitaspect dynamics of being. It has become a fundamental tool for the implementation of any subject’s activity on conditions of risk and uncertainty, especially in potential and manifested danger. In the scale of processes of both world and domestic levels, it substantially permeates the whole space of both actual and those that bear the latent, unacceptable nature of antagonistic collisions of any nature. Under such conditions, the game becomes an imperative of modern confrontation. The game gains this status in the process and thanks to the evolution of the means of military confrontation and resources-means of scientific rationality, which ontogenetically and complementarily define, support and direct their interdependent development. The chronology of military development indicates that it occurs as a continuous, gradual and diversified increase and complication of the means of warfare and clearly coincides with the chronology of scientific development. At the same time, the mutual penetration of military aspects into scientific ones and vice versa with time becomes so synchronized and integrated that it is difficult to find borders beyond which some turn into others. This paradox is explained by the fact that the instability, uncertainty and inconsistency of the modern world finally led to the appearance of a systemic, dissipative, synergetic effect, when the global system and processes in it begin to balance themselves. Such dynamics chronologically coincided with the emergence and strengthening of the post-non-classical period of development of scientific knowledge. This objectively affects the development of the ontological picture of military systems and determines their content. At the same time, it becomes clear that the development of military affairs fully corresponds to the stages of the types transformation of scientific rationality. Therefore, the modern post-non-classical stage has become the logical embodiment of the adaptation of scientific, primarily psychological knowledge, to the requirements of the current environment, especially on critical conditions of military confrontation. The post-nonclassical mode of warfare unfolds in the historical space as a taxonomic modernization of all previous stages of development. Through the logic and content of the classical principles of conventionality, talion and agonism, the disclosure of agonistic, competitive mode of the game, the attributes of the proto-war and the classic type of war are formed. The embodiment of the key principles of non-classical rationality and the appropriate implementation of probabilistic (probable) and imitation modes of the game based on aspects of the classical type of warfare, its non-classical type becomes relevant. Finally, through the integration of nonclassical and post-non-classical principles, the combination of the modes of the game in the “castle” of hedonia as alpha and omega of achieving the subject’s everyday homeostasis arises a post-non-classical type of rationalization of the  war phenomenon. Therefore, the post-non-classical mode-invariant of military-political confrontation (war) is attributively realized through the fulfillment of the principles of: 1) conventionality; 2) talion; 3) complementarity; 4) compliance; 5) uncertainty; 6) observability; 7) superposition; 8) systemic self-development, 9) anthropocentricity, and 10) intersubjectivity. Moreover, in the contexts of game modeling, it is advisable to perceive the superposition as the initial cooperative-intentional subject’s lifeactivity state on any conditions, especially in conflict. The modern arsenal of military means of confrontation, especially its cluster of strategic communications, was finally filled with funds that fully ensure the fulfillment of the game imperative, which determines that the maximum goals of the confrontation must be achieved in an optimal way, at a minimum price, implicitly and covertly. Such an essence of military competition in its enrichment with post-non-classical principles gives the universal “game” imperative value and emphasizes its status as a cultural function of war, warfare.