https://doi.org/10.53656/str2023-4-4-soc

Резюме. The erosion of strategic geopolitical stability in all parts of the world is definitely having a strong negative impact on the social sustainability of our planet. Lack of clear rules of political and economic behavior and the growth of confrontation in international relations lead to a total disorientation of global modern social system. Dominant in this direction are not only current wars and permanent threats of local and global conflict situations, but also the non-conventional (information) technologies, methods and means of changing the political regimes. Despite the terminological diversity in this field, in the last few years there has been a need to fill the "blank space" in understanding their nature and metrics. The need for a new meaningful definition of the specific political and economic, technological, social and information solutions and implications appeared mostly in social practice. In the present analysis, our attempt is to give a new interpretation to this specific measuring mechanism of the relations between individual states, which has an extraordinary degree of influence on contemporary social, economic and political relations and processes. In our opinion, the appropriate linguistic construction of this “benchmarkˮ is “Saltation diffusion penetrationˮ (SDP). SDP is a “phenomenonˮ that is becoming a dangerous tool for exerting and realizing socio-political and economic tension. Its real manifestations strike the determinants of a social system, its basic (democratic) state principles, and last but not least are a direct threat to its security.

Ключови думи: social determinants; information environment; information technologies; non-classical methods; political regimes; security

Introduction

To researchers of world political processes, for serious political observers, players and connoisseurs, one of the kind of litmuses for the trends of modern geopolitics is the current and difficult to predict situation of relations between the USA, United Europe, Russia, Great Britain and China. The ill-intentioned political and economic treatment among the mentioned countries and state associations, the frozen dialogue between them and the seriously eroded key mechanisms for trade-economic interaction in a multilateral format, can cause irreparable damage not only to themselves, but also to the whole world (Yakovlev 2021).

The main characteristic features of the growing global political, economic and social crises, such as: insurmountable environmental problems; economic sanctions and trade wars; the lack of real ethical dimensions in cyberspace; destructive demographic trends and uncontrolled migration; transnational organized crime and increasing activity of global non-state actors have a strong and difficult to overcome influence on the political, economic and social situation throughout the world (Kaldor 2012).

As is well known, there are several possible solutions to this situation:

– peaceful coexistence in conditions of goodwill and mutual assistance;

– wars – conventional and non-conventional;

– new technologies and methods for changing “uncomfortable” political regimes.

Peaceful coexistence is for now like an unrealizable mirage, like something that will not soon take a dominant role in interstate relations.

Wars are a phenomenon accompanying humanity from the dawn of its existence to the present day. The map of the world has been repeatedly redrawn by bows and swords, and their modern technological counterparts, reincarnations of various generals, conquerors or generally speaking politicians. They represent deliberate organized violence, using the achievements of science, engineering and technology to oppose other violence. And their ultimate goal has always been the achievement of foreign and domestic political goals and allocation of resources.

The analysis of the implementation of modern (information) technologies and methods for the non-violent change of political regimes and the destructive influence on the political, economic and social determinants of individual social systems is the main goal of this paper. Policy analysts and experts as well as military strategists view new (information) technologies and methods and their threats as the most confounding features of the international security environment, as countering and dealing with them requires flexible, adaptive and large-scale forces and resources (Tsvetkov 2008).

The methods and technologies incl. informational ones, used to (non)forcibly change “inconvenient” political regimes ignore all moral norms, using lies, slander, substitution of facts, falsification of history, etc. (Pavlova 2016). It is a construction of intricately combined actions, beyond the familiar boundaries of traditional characteristics of threats and the use of organized violence. (Denchev, Yordanova 2022).

Fragmentary notes on the classification of conventional and nonconventional wars and conflicts

The author of the most notable military work “On War” (Vom Kriege), the Prussian scientist and military general Carl von Clausewitz (Clausewitz 2014), laid his theory on the interaction between politics, the military and the civilians. He sees wars and politics as one whole and claims that to achieve its goals, the war should remain under the control of political leaders. One of his most cited thoughts is that “War is nothing more than the continuation of politics by other means”.

Each war (military operation or conflict) has its distinctive features, so from the so-called classical point of view, they can even be classified according to different criteria. According to one of the most common classifications, wars can be:

– a war for hegemony – a war for control over the whole world order and domination over the international system on the whole. It can be a world war, a global war, an overall war or a systematic war;

– a total war – characterized by total mobilization of people and resources;

– a limited war – war waged for achieving limited goals;

– a local war – waged in a particular geographical region;

– a nuclear war – a war where nuclear weapon is used;

– a conventional war – war enlisting conventional (non-nuclear) weapons;

– a civil war – war waged on the territory of a single state between representatives of different social, ethnic or other groups and formations (supported or not by external forces);

– an asymmetric war – armed conflict where the involved states have unequal (different) military capabilities;

– a hybrid war – conflict combining conventional and non-conventional actions. Cyber-attacks, psychological and economic influence, disinformation campaigns, infiltration of the information environment, creating panic, financing deliberately created political subjects aiming to change the external political line of designated enemies and other actions for achieving political and strategic goals (Bogdanov 2020).

The revolution in military affairs is marked by the continuous development of strategies and technologies, until the moment when the focus to achieve the ultimate goal shifts from conventional military force to the use of a complex of other, modern measures and means.

Societies in modern countries are faced with challenges that are becoming more and more important these days. These challenges bring to the fore the idea of states protecting and defending themselves from the destructive impact of external interference in the political and economic life of the target state.

An environment for political, economic, social and information security The world order transformation has provoked ambitions, long-standing feuds, worries of the future and hectic efforts to ensure natural resources and technological edge as well as possibly better head start in a “new world”.

In the last decade, the world has started to become multipolar again. Evidence of this is the return to the world stage of contenders like Russia and China. The new geopolitical battle is being waged on the one hand to maintain dominance in the collapsing neoliberal and monopolistic world, and on the other hand, there is the aspiration of world powers to redistribute the main roles to establish a new world order.

Events of the recent past (2013) shook the international political scene with a massive wave of protests and military conflicts as well as those at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 and the war (special military operation) in Ukraine in 2022 has provoked some analysts to conclude that the security environment has undergone grand changes after the Cold War era. From a unipolar model, the world is moving to a new situation, with renewed competition between the great powers to impose a new international order. The main players in this global political game are the United States of America, the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China. To achieve their goals, these and other interested parties use all available conventional and non-conventional resources, including various methods of intimidation, deterrence and warfare. These methods can be a combination of weapons, terrorism and criminal behavior, unregulated tactics – from the oldest known to mankind, to the latest technologies for waging war and maintaining situations of permanent tension.

The Chinese official periodical written in English – Global Times recently published a comprehensive analysis where it claims that with his actions, the US President Jo Biden and his administration have started to push China and Russia to an even closer reconciliation, which will eventually lead to super-tension with the USA with unforeseen consequences. The estimates of the world‘s leading political observers confirm the conclusion of the former US Secretary of State – Henry Kissinger from 1994 that “after the end of the so-called Cold War America is even more tempted to reshape the international environment in its own image and likeness” In addition to Kissinger's finding, later, in 2004, Poland's then Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defense – Radek Sikorski, made the informed conclusion that “the American thirst for power is (yet) unsatisfied.” He claims that, according to American political circles, the dominant view in the US is that the new global order needs a dominant world center of power. Even then, and even today, America's main argument for such thinking and action is its military power. The United States continues to remain true to the position of the first American president, George Washington, for “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace”. “To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.”, says George Washington. Somewhat ironically, however, America‘s wars in the world are most often associated only with American presidents. These are by no means wars of only the heads of state and their administration. They are wars of the military-industrial complex, of the political and economic elite of this country. Along with real, heated military actions, the USA also relies on strong economic coercion – sanctions, embargoes, etc. non-specific economic actions.

As we have already noted, the turbulent political, economic and social security environment in the world, on the one hand, is due to the claims of Russia and China to rearrange the world political scene, and on the other hand, to the desire of the United States to preserve and develop in its own direction the existing status quo. As soon as he stepped into the White House, American President Joe Biden, “wasting no time” took strong political moves to implement the idea of total containment of China. According to Biden and his administration, the efforts of the United States should be primarily focused on turning Asia and the Pacific region into the center of global trade and economy, and that is where America‘s dominance is ensured. However, this is not at all easy. Because unlike most countries in the world, which entered a period of severe stagnation and recession during the COVID-19 pandemic, China's economic growth slowed significantly and perceptibly in its development, but did not stop. In addition to Asia, the Pacific and Europe, Beijing continues to expand its positions in Africa and Latin America.

The strong competitive battle between the two global world economic titans – the USA and China, presents the Russian Federation with extremely complex problems and tasks for the protection of Russian economic, political and social interests and priorities.

If we try to synthesize the analytical conclusions obtained up to this point, we will find that the real environment for the emergence of new, unconventional technologies and methods to change or preserve the existing international order is rooted in the struggle for supremacy between the three global political and economic giants – the United States, China and Russia. In order to thwart the eventual countermeasures of an adversary's advanced attacks, conventional and non-conventional warfare initiators and their satellites employ various means of synchronizing assets with a wide range of tools, technologies, and techniques. It is for this reason that such a “war” may not be “seen” for a long time until its final phase is underway.

Saltation Diffusion Penetration (SDP)

In the scientific and expert literature examining the various aspects of military, political and economic operations, there is an extraordinary variety of definitions and terms for describing and naming such operations. The concepts of hybrid wars, colour revolutions, post-colour revolutions, soft power, intelligent power, etc., have played their role in the processes related to the explanation of non-typical situations of changing political regimes from certain politicaleconomic and military environments (individual states, economic, political and military unions and alliances) in the so-called state targets. Despite this terminological diversity, in the last few years there has been a need to fill the “gap” in understanding them. (Denchev, Yordanova 2022).

The definitions so far have given the major lines of preparation, development and results of a possible change in political regimes in particular countries or other regional (political-economic or military) alliances. Each of these definitions has its specialized field of applicability, topologically complementing every other, overseeing and neglecting the cumulative activity of their actual realization. It should be noted that the definitions of non-conventional technologies, techniques and approaches for changing political regimes in certain countries have played their positive role not only in explaining the current economic and political-military relations in the world, but also they have laid the basis for searching and finding new, intelligent methods and technological solutions for total influence on any political-economic subjects, in the period of modern civilized development of society.

Unfortunately, however, each and every definitions from above, as well as their formally unified combination have ceased to be the “tool” in the hands of experts in the field of “intelligent” unconventional operations, researchers included – theoreticians in the field cannot adequately take into consideration the contemporary stratification of the forces capable of conducting experiments and making irreversible changes both in single countries and in separate regional (political-economic or military) structures (Denchev, Yordanova 2022).

The need for a new, meaningful definition of the above-mentioned specific, political-economic and technological solutions has emerged. The main dominant characteristic of this definition is that, on the one hand, it should contain both separate elements of the previous definitive explanations of the technologies for non-violent change of political regimes, and on the other hand, realize their synergistic shell, directed not specifically to the content of the individual technological solutions, but to the cumulative component of the objective functions of each previous content of the resulting socio-economic invention.

In this regard, we will take the liberty to give a new interpretation of these conflicts, which on the one hand will allow the effective analyses and forecasts of a military-political situation, and on the other hand will help in making strategic decisions.

This new measurement of specific political-economic and military relations both between countries and alliances we shall call Striking Diffuse Penetration (SDP) or Diffusive Social Entropy (DSE). According to the in-depth analysis and our understanding of the essence of the definitions just given, this terminological construction does not have an unambiguous translation in English, therefore we propose that the focus of its mass use in English should be directed to the following linguistic construction – “Saltation diffusion penetration“ (SDP). With a high degree of influence on the contemporary social, economic and political relations and processes, “Saltation Diffusion Penetration” is a “phenomenon” which is turning into an ever more dangerous tool for imposing and realization of socio-political and economic tension. The actual manifestations of SDP wreak havoc in the unity of a social system, its basic (democratic) state principles becoming a direct threat to a country’s security. Like the pattern of spreading a dangerous viral infection that affects cells in living organisms and causes them to become lifeless, the rapid and diffuse penetration of technologies and mechanisms used in modern political campaigns affects the entire living organism not only in a particular target country, but in modern society as a whole.

From the reflections made so far, the following brief definition can be formulated:

SDP is a conceptual frame, a mixture of smart approaches and technological solutions of pre-planned or incidental political and/or economic operations that cause destructive influence in contemporary social relations and lead to their detrimental degeneration or total destruction.

The SDP model undermines the integrity of a social system and its basic state-establishing principles, its successful implementation being a direct threat to the security of a selected or specified target state or other consolidated sociopolitical structure.

Undoubtedly, this concept needs not only a definition, but also a classification and typology, as well as the development of a methodological apparatus that would allow studying this phenomenon in the environment of its existence.

This conceptual framework implies the definition of its structural and functional characteristics by specifying the object, subject, purpose and tasks of its real application in current social practice. (Denchev, Yordanova 2022).

Conclusion

In the conditions of a changing security environment, a result of globalization and the rapid development of communication technologies, facilitating the implementation of new forms and methods of destabilizing the political regimes of target states, understanding this security environment is a matter of political responsibility.

Counteracting models for non-violent change of political regimes should be seen as an invariable part of the national security policy of each individual country. At the state level, the attitude to this problem should be realized, with a purposeful search for effective means to counteract the models for violent or non-violent change of political regimes. After all, any such shift leads to a change or complete denial of the existing or foreseeable short-term social determinants.

Naturally, abolishing political regimes is nothing new in the history of humanity. It was the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle who studied a similar analysis of existing states, their shortcomings and the reasons for coups d'état. But the relevance of this problem is still on the agenda nowadays. In the recent past, the well-known traditional tools combined different techniques for changing political regimes. On the other hand, international pressure, which formally does not allow the use of violence, as well as the 21st century irreversible technological advance, has allowed contemporary technologies to replace armed coups d’état with a new, more intelligent set of tools for achieving the designated political, economic and social goals solely on the basis of the “normal” civilized choice.

And here we have to ask ourselves the question – can the so-called civilizational synthesis in the conditions of the modern information environment turn out to be the basis of the solution to the problem of maintaining peace in the world with all the ways and means? However, there is the inevitable need for basic respect and simple social tolerance. This approach has its foundations throughout human history in the form of the interpenetration and enrichment of cultures, because problems arise only when a cultural paradigm claims universality and brutally imposes its own practices on other civilized cultural realities.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the NSP DS program, which has received funding from the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Bulgaria under the grant agreement no. Д01-74/19.05.2022.

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