The analysis of the consistency of the use of the terms "urban area" and "populated place" in the strategic and doctrinal documents of the Serbian armed forces since 2010

Abstract

By doctrines, the armed forces express ideas and principles in recognizing the elements of the current and future armed conflicts in which they may find themselves. Although modern armed conflicts are increasingly taking place in cities and villages, the documents of the Serbian Armed Forces lack their uniform and precise descriptions, which is a problem. That is why the research was conducted, whose subject was focused on the use of the terms related to urban areas and populated places, with the determination of their consistency in the doctrinal documents of the Serbian Armed Forces. With the limited aim of the research, and without pretensions to define the terms mentioned here, it has been determined how and to what extent they are used in the doctrinal documents of the Serbian Armed Forces, in order to help in a clear understanding of the problem and encourage the clarification of facts and harmonization in further research. The content analysis of documents has shown that in the 2010 Doctrine of the Serbian Armed Forces, urban area is separated from other areas, but it is neither defined in this, nor in any other hierarchically lower document of the Serbian Armed Forces. In the lower level doctrines, it is rarely in use or similar terms are used, which contain the adjectives urban and populated. In relation to the term urban areas, in the hierarchically lower doctrinal documents of the Serbian Armed Forces, most in manuals, the term populated places is most often used, which, like the previous one, is not defined in the Serbian Armed Forces' documents, but it is in the state regulation, that is, in the Law on the Territorial Organization of the Republic of Serbia. On the basis of the revealed result that the term populated places is defined by the state regulation in relation to the term urban areas, which is not officially defined, it can be suggested that the term populated places be used in a consistent way in all doctrinal documents in the future.