Contemporary Warfare Discourse: War Studies (Polemology) in the Modern Education System of Ukraine

Abstract

The article is devoted to the justification of the introduction of a special system of knowledge about war into the renewed system of higher education of Ukraine, its connection with the modern armed world, the policy of the ruling circles of aggressive states with the aim of intellectual resistance to war based on a deep understanding of its socio-political and humanitarian aspects. Russian aggression against Ukraine has created an existential danger for Ukrainians, the meaning of which is not only an attempt to implement the shameful statement "I will destroy you", but also an encroachment on the world order and the right for security. The authors insist that the initial knowledge at the level of the school program for the protection of the Motherland and the minimum knowledge about war ("tinitet") is not enough to understand the essence, content, anti-human consequences of new modes of wars - unprovoked aggressions and wars of the "new generation". The authors focus on the fact that the idea of creating a polemology course by the French thinker G. Butul was distorted by Russian interpreters, who began to see war as an "effective way of communication between civilizations" and justified it as a "substitute" in a "softer form of "special operations", denied rational, de-ideological knowledge of the meaning and consequences of wars, which would serve the transition to a just peace and a peaceful dialogue of cultures. The totality of such knowledge is due to the filling of scientific gaps in the development of the "Polemology" course, which is based on the empirical facts of past wars and everyday armed struggle. The article emphasizes the creation of a synthetic system of knowledge that combines the work of political conflictology, military science, social psychology and other rational ways of understanding war, including the generating ideas of works of art and military diaries of combatants, so that this knowledge has epistemological value and moral-political focus on intellectual resistance to the occupiers.