Abstract

This article is devoted to the methodological problems and manipulative mechanisms of hybrid warfare. Owing to the polemological approach the authors managed to systematize and summarize the theories of war and peace, clarify contemporary western concepts of warfare, outline the specifi cs of the Russian view on the hybrid war concept, assess the signifi cance of information and manipulation technologies for hybrid wars, analyze a number of geopolitical and socio-cultural dimensions of modern hybrid wars. The polemology is a branch of science, which studies the nature of armed confl icts and wars, their role in time and space, cycles, intensity, scope, scale, and causative relations and their classifi cation. Polemology deals with the wars and armed confl icts of the past, present and future. Novel hybrid wars take a respective place among them. They involve using all available warfare, regular and irregular, cyber and those allowing for the use of weapons of mass destruction, and also information, psychological and propaganda war using the latest information and media technologies. According to the classical approach, the state is the only subject of military actions, but today its role has changed dramatically under the infl uence of other political and economic supranational and trans-border factors. For the purpose of studying wars and armed confl icts from the polemological perspective it means the need to focus on social changes in all the areas of human life, on considering various elements of the political, economic or even technological context, which infl uence the war as a social phenomenon.