WAR AND POSTMODERNITY: THE SPACE OF COMPLEX OPERATIONS (ISIL-SYRIAN COMBINATORICS)1

A kind of sinister intellectual superiority accrued to those... who turned their minds to this task of disruption, which often extended to the development of new methods of finance, trade, war, and social organization...

Karl Polanyi "The Great Transformation"

The twentieth century was a century of permanent revolution, and the twenty-first century risks becoming a time of permanent war. Postmodernity transforms the space of combat operations, forming a new norm, applying new tools, creating new threats. Hybrid warfare is a synthesis of aggressive actions using a wide range of means that create complex combinations of direct and indirect threats, expand the capabilities of conventional politics and are aimed at deconstructing undesirable circumstances, subordinating or destroying the enemy in order to reorganize the existing or establish a different order. An example of a complex / hybrid plot is the situation in Syria, where several dimensions of the topic intersect: global, regional, confessional, ethno-national, and postmodern. The integration of these spaces in the public consciousness is connected with their territorial fixation and the phenomenon of the Islamic State (DAESH), which presents the world with the outline of an innovative political organism, being a challenge to the values of modernity, and not only from confessional and traditionalist interpretations. It is also a kind of postmodern challenge, i.e. a simulacrum containing its own game and value component.

Key words: postmodernity, hybrid war, Syria, Islamic State, DAESH, preadaptation.

WAR AND PEACE IN POST-MODERN WORLD. CASE OF DAESH-SYRIAN COMPLEXITY

The twentieth century was the century of permanent revolution; the twenty first century risks becoming a time of permanent war. The concept of "hybrid warfare" reflects the set of aggressive manipulations, application of a wide range of tools that create complex combinations of direct and indirect threats to the enemy. Such "war" extends the capabilities of

Alexander Ivanovich NEKLESSA-Head of the North-South Laboratory of the Institute of Africa of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the Commission on Social and Cultural Problems of Globalization, member of the Bureau of the Scientific Council "History of World Culture" under the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Alexander Neklessa - Chairman of the Commission on Social and Cultural Problems of Globalization, member of the Bureau of the Scientific Council "History of World Culture" at the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS); Head of the "North-South" Laboratory, Institute for African Studies, RAS. neklessa@intelros.ru.

1 The article is based on a report at the conference "The Arab Crisis: Risks and Threats of a Major War", Moscow, December 8-9, 2015, Center for Civilizational and Regional Studies of the IAfr RAS, Laboratory for Monitoring the Risks of Socio-Political Destabilization of the National Research University "Higher School of Economics".

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conventional politics and focuses on the deconstruction of adverse circumstances, submission or decomposition of the enemy with the purpose of reorganization of the existing and/or establishment of a new political order. The situation in Syria is an example of such complex situation. It crossed several dimensions: global, regional, confessional, ethnic-national, postmodern. The phenomenon of the ISIS (Daesh) presents the world an innovative political organism, challenging the values of modernity. This is a specific post-modern challenge, a simulacrum, containing its own play and value components, presenting a traumatic inclusion in the modern text in the form of post-colonial post-imperial limitrophe states.

Keywords: postmodernity, hybrid warfare, Syria, ISIS (Daesh), complexity, preadaptation.

In a complex world, different plots are implemented. Futur-history casts a multiple shadow, while the choice of scenario depends on interpretation and position. From the era of industrialism, humanity is migrating to a new world, in which the category of quantity loses its former meaning, and the category of complexity becomes a universal value, permeating various aspects of reality: political organisms, social and economic constructs, mechanisms of action. The Black Queen lectured Alice through the Looking Glass: "You need to run very fast to stay in place, and you need to run twice as fast to advance." However, the advice turned out to be ambiguous, it is akin to the philosophy of upgrading, i.e. improving the existing one. A truer maxim today sounds, perhaps, as follows:"It is not so important the speed with which you move, as the direction of movement." With the correct application of this thesis, the turtle confidently overtakes Achilles.

The reconstruction of the sociocosm is accompanied by an axiological and epistemological crisis, the destruction of the framework of normative discourse ("Overton windows"), overcoming the psychophysiological barrier, stimulating an active representation of the future, a radical reorganization of thought practice and the creative process. There is a renewal of organizational structures and problems of intellectual corporations, forms of knowledge translation, methods of cognition-action-management and a re-evaluation of the role of intangible assets, resulting in the genesis of a complex personality, its development of new cognitive spaces and codes of highly adaptive self-organization.

The future, like the entire universe of social practice, is created by people. A politician who once had the opportunity to effectively influence the status quo imagined the world as follows::

"Today is not like yesterday - that's the main thing to understand... At every moment, something new happens in the world. Everything is in a state of motion, panta rei, in the words of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus... Neither in nature, nor in history, nor in the material world, nor in the spiritual world, in society and the state, nothing stands still. Routine is the statesman's first enemy. It is necessary to declare war on routine, outdated patterns of action and thought. We must have full knowledge of the world - and see the world as it is today, not as it was yesterday, or as we would like it to be" (Ben Gurion) [Navon, 2008, p. 4].

Entering the historical transition connects the aspirations of civilization with the multiplicity of cryptograms of the modern world:

* transformation of the global political system and the cultural / countercultural revolution;

* high-industrial breakthrough and crisis of the resource economy;

* financial criticality and horizons for the development of cyberspace as a virtual sociality;

* The likelihood of American neo-isolationism and partial disintegration or reconstruction of the European Union;

* China's future forks, Trans-Pacific partnership scenarios, South American integration forecasts, and the genesis of a new "development generation";

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* the metamorphosis of Islam coupled with Shiite-Sunni contradictions;

* The exodus of people from the South and European fears of "Frankenstein syndrome" - a possible change in lifestyle, modification of migration and federal statuses, democracy and security regimes;

* perturbations in the hydrocarbon energy sector and the ecological and climatic barrier;

* demographic challenge and epidemiological problems.

In addition, the emergence of a number of situations is associated with security tensions: ISIL-the Syrian combinatorics; the conflict in Europe - in Ukraine and the general crisis of the post-Soviet space; the North Korean breakthrough in the field of nuclear missile technologies.

Modernization of institutions, tools, and technologies is being replaced by a revision of the entire system of interactions. Cross-border mobility is growing, risks are increasing, a diverse and less defined universe is being formed, and its elite umbrella is becoming more complex. In the active universe, a social and legal consensus is being formed, changing the architecture and architectonics of civilization. In a dispersed environment, sociocultural gravity (attraction) becomes more relevant, the role of the anthropological factor increases, and there is an active redistribution of human resources on the planet.

Correcting the prescriptions of reality lags behind what is happening, and as a result, we fall into the traps of an intellectual crisis, inaccurate maps, and a shortage of names for the surging novelty.

HYBRID METAMORPHOSIS

The words used to describe the human universe are preserved for quite a long time: state, security, war, etc., but the meaning invested in them changes, sometimes significantly. As a result, we find ourselves trapped in metaphors and ambiguities, and the old categories begin to weigh down our awareness of change.

The nation-state is undergoing transformation and profanation. Deprived of its former ability to manage human trajectories, it loses its universality, while retaining the qualities and benefits of a sovereign legal community. At the same time, innovative forms of political organization are emerging: global regulatory bodies, country systems, various kinds of subsidiary autonomies and separatist entities, quasi-sovereign states, geo-economic entities, state corporations, weakly formalized but influential communities (anthroposocial structures). Approximately the same applies to the institute of war. Medieval wars, battles of the Enlightenment, and industrial battles differ quite noticeably, but their specifics are not as significant as the transformation that is currently taking place in this area. And one that we have yet to experience.

After the world wars of the twentieth century, it would seem, there was a long pause: the deadly legacy itself became a deterrent, forcing us to look for workarounds for forceful interventions. There were sporadic military and political conflicts on the planet, and local and creeping wars were fought on the periphery, often of low intensity, but with a significant total number of victims. Most of the events were integrated into a complex called the "cold war", whose content is still a subject of debate: is this a different format of real war with its own logic, technologies, battles, victims, or is it a grandiose metaphor - "a world that is not peace" (J. Orwell), which filled the pause before the next outbreak of the "real" Third World War?

War is a surgery of change, a form of violence and a crisis self-realization of the political organism in critical and rapid circumstances. It aims to change the existing order in a certain direction or reorganize it

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in a particular area. Moreover, the choice of the nature, means and direction of transformations is sometimes more important than the completeness of the execution of the plan.

Habitual patterns often obscure the meaning and circumstances that gave rise to them. Thus, in the context of a global consensus and a powerful technological envelope of civilization, territorial-power thinking associated with geopolitics is becoming less relevant and effective. Modern wars are not aimed at occupying territories - control over the situation or managing resources is acquired in a different and less costly way, although relapses do occur. Planning and expansion are guided by drafts of everyday life or prescriptions from the arsenal of universal concepts other than geopolitics: geoeconomics, geoculture, and geoanthropology. There is a re-evaluation of the category of force, changing the objects, methods and spaces of its projection. A war machine is a power that can influence situations, not only spewing fire and iron, but also casting an influential (effective) shadow.

In line with a diversified approach to security, it is logical to expect a re-evaluation and redistribution of national resources, taking into account both the change in the quantitative and qualitative balance, the interpenetration of internal and external aspects, and the criticality of a number of military-technical means. The increase in the cost of modern military equipment exceeds the growth rate of the military budget, and the cost of service increases even faster, and most of this equipment is never used on the battlefield. This initiates a reassessment of the expediency of its former nomenclature, as well as production volumes, which is a problem and creates the prerequisites for a serious conflict.

Hybrid metamorphosis, which is popular today, can be considered as a correction of the lethal, kinetic format of violence, achieved by systematically implanting unconventional and extraordinary measures in the fabric of everyday life. It is careful in its own way about the amount of physical damage and the number of victims. At the same time, however, there is a flattening of the law and discrediting of its canons, which is also fraught with a rethinking of fundamental solidarity. In other words, hybrid warfare, in addition to achieving its specific goals in a given situation, has a negative overall impact on society, its morals and norms. In the context of emerging situations, jurisprudence turns out to be a relative, market-oriented, and partly "market-oriented" category, rather than a worldview, i.e., a value category. Introducing significant distortions in the harmonics of communication, hybrid stylistics thus affects the very model of civilized relations and the proportions of reality, destroying, in essence, not so much the world as its cultural foundations, the semantic picture.

"In the XXI century, there is a tendency to erase the differences between the state of war and peace. Wars are no longer declared, and once they start, they do not follow the usual pattern. ...The "rules of war" have changed significantly. The role of non-military methods in achieving political and strategic goals, which in some cases significantly exceeded the effectiveness of weapons, has increased. The emphasis of the methods of confrontation used is shifting towards the widespread use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian and other non-military measures implemented with the use of the protest potential of the population. All this is complemented by covert military measures, including the implementation of information warfare measures and the actions of special operations forces. The open use of force, often under the guise of peacekeeping and crisis management, is only used at some stage, mainly to achieve final success in the conflict, " Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the Russian General Staff, summed up the changes in the nature of military operations back in January 2013 (i.e., about a year before the deployment of the Ukrainian plot). [Gerasimov, 2013, p. 4].

In addition, the complex nature of military operations implies not only a variety of tools used to perform a particular task, but also a combination of heterogeneous entities that pursue different goals, but also act

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due to the current circumstances, approximately in the same direction. A demonstration of this state of affairs can be observed in Syria.

The current paravo agenda is the expansion of the culture of death and cross-border terrorism, which takes advantage of distributed organization and network management (Undernet), which increases adaptability and evolutionary capabilities. Without touching on the problem of suicidal terrorism in detail, I would like to note that "shaheedism" should hardly be considered as an exclusively Islamist phenomenon, its roots are probably deeper, and quasi-Islam probably hides more dangerous forms of aggression against modern culture and civilization, colonizing lands where the social and cultural imperative is replaced by a psychological dominant. Such an expansion of the military perspective brings back the problem of distinguishing between effort and violence.

The features of the phenomenon partly resemble the course of infectious diseases or the behavior of permanently attacked populations. Accordingly, an effective ("hyper-ecological") strategy for their relief can be based not only on the success of military operations proper, but also mainly on understanding the phenomenon and modifying the environment.

ENTERPRISE FOR THE PRODUCTION OF SECURITY

War is indeed becoming too complex an enterprise "to be entrusted only to the military" (Talleyrand), and this is reflected in the structure of the main "enterprise" for ensuring external security. Not only its top management - the commander-in-Chief, the Minister of Defense-are increasingly civilians, but also some complex and unforeseen situations are resolved by civilian specialists. The privilege of the military, i.e. "technical specialists", is direct management of traditional combat tools - updated armed forces.

The holding company operates by developing and applying modifications of the means of domination that are not necessarily related to the direct use of troops, involving various types of private enterprises and venture organizations in the process. Considerable attention is paid to advanced developments, as well as the adaptation of technologies flowing into the military sphere from the civilian one. Including high humanitarian technologies - high hume. During the period after the "hot" World War, several methodological formats related to the analysis of complex situations and management of large-scale events changed: operations research, system analysis, system (industrial) dynamics, matrix management, indirect management, and synergy management. Based on these methodologies, effective methodological and technological tools are created that are used in the planning and implementation of military operations.

So, during Operation Desert Storm, the technique of reflexive enemy control was used: taking into account Saddam Hussein's mentality when planning events assumed a high probability of changing the nature of the Iraqi defense if there was a probability of US troops moving in the direction of Baghdad rather than Kuwait. As a result, the trajectory of the movement of American units, allegedly directed to the center of the country, formed an arc that pierced the weakened defenses of occupied Kuwait. During the second Iraq campaign ("Iraqi Freedom"), original methods were also used, in particular those related to blocking accounts, accompanied by an indication of the line of conduct necessary for unblocking them.

Operations in the Middle East, in a certain sense, do not have a time limit. Rather, they fit into the strategic design, representing the links, support platforms of a flexible management system consisting of the following elements::

* maintaining high combat readiness of troops in conditions of almost permanent mobility or low-intensity combat operations;

* external control over key/critical areas and the environment, maintaining quick access to hot spots;

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* building syncretic coalitions, establishing communications and complex interaction of various forces and agencies in an aggressive environment;

* testing of innovative methods of conducting combat, intelligence and logistics operations, including non-traditional ones; testing of equipment and weapons;

* use of private military corporations, creation of short-term operational-tactical alliances and hybrid coalitions.

As a result, it is not a "complete and final" victory in a particular conflict that is important, but something else: intercepting and retaining the strategic initiative, creating effective management in a mobile, decentralized environment - where "events guide plans". However, in the event of a significant limitation of US involvement in "hot" conflicts, the transfer of a significant part of the combat load to NATO allies and partner Islamic coalitions is not excluded.

Nevertheless, these are modifications of the usual way of military operations, however, with significant additions. So, the list of areas of confrontation has expanded: cyberspace has been added to the traditional list of land, sea, air and space, and in the process of formation - the psychological and social domain. Moving in this direction, comprehending and accumulating ideological / metaphysical dimensions of confrontation, military practice masters the formulation and cartography of internal efforts and active motives.

The transformation of the armed forces and the reform of national security systems are taking place in different regions today. In early 2016, China announced a radical transformation of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), not only a military but also a political and economic giant whose functions also partially merge with the internal security systems, after a large-scale anti - corruption campaign. By the way, unlike other countries in China, the head of state is not the commander - in - chief: the main body of military administration is the Central Military Council (CMC), despite the fact that the Ministry of Defense is a rather secondary character in this hierarchy. The supreme command is carried out by the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, which, as a rule, but not necessarily, is the current Chairman of the PRC (also known as the General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee).

The changes relate to almost all elements of the military organizational structure, the emphasis is placed on interspecific interaction, mobility, the introduction of information technologies, and constant combat readiness. Considerable attention in the PLA is paid to cyber intelligence (3rd Directorate of the General Staff) and electronic warfare (4th Directorate), which in the reformed structure merge into a new branch of the Armed Forces - Strategic Support Troops, which also perform other tasks. The former General Staff was replaced by the integrated Joint Staff.

WISE POWER

In a mobile environment, the very language of war is changing. The importance of not only high-tech tools, interspecific connectivity, speed and strength of social interactions, interdisciplinary synergy, information and communication technologies is growing, but also rapid orientation in a complex world, the use of extraordinary assets and skill in creating situations that "exceed the capabilities of analysis, forecasting, developing the right decisions and their implementation" by the enemy [World War..., 2015].

Intellectual bankruptcy leads to military defeat. The vector of planning is now directed to the multidimensional projections of power, the otherness of the general situation per se, and not to the already known and formalized constructs. Awareness of the facts concerns the actual state of affairs, but the caught trend reveals something new-

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it includes preadaptation as a regulation of action. In the new operational concept of the US Army under the characteristic name " Victory in a complex world. 2020-2040 " it is postulated that future battles will become complex, the nature of threats-uncertain, the composition of enemy alliances-unstable. Military operations "will be carried out in an unfamiliar environment and in an unfamiliar place. At the same time, the army will be confronted by unknown enemies who are part of unknown coalitions" (David Perkins) [ibid., p. 406].

It is possible to apply new regulations and show the ability to preadapt to the "Schrodinger wars" only if there is significant cultural capital, especially in the form of implicit/personal knowledge and cognitive abilities, intellectual advantages and cross-cultural competencies. Psychophysical modulation is on the way (in the experimental phase).

Insights of "sinister intellectual superiority" (Karl Polanyi) are developed, tested and applied in practice. These are not only experimental weapons and new means of domination, but also smart defense architecture and revision of existing organizational structures, concepts of managing multi-factor systems and principles of action in conditions of uncertainty. And applied elements of nonlinear dynamics, for example, crisis management technologies, have been directly adopted for twenty years. In the United States, in addition to the Santa Fe Institute, a pioneer in the study of complex adaptive systems (physical, mathematical, biological, and social), the Advanced Defense Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Advanced Intelligence Research Agency (IARPA), and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Center for Complex Operations Research (CCO) of the US National Defense University (NDU), the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), the Smart Defense Center (CSD) at West Virginia University (WVU), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), etc. A separate topic in this series is the demons of the future world order and the weapons of tomorrow forged on the edge of planning.

The eclectic, uncertain status of post-modern confrontation - a kind of" fog of peace "as a metaphor for such a superposition - is a symptom of the general transformation of the sociocosm, indicating a high probability of its immersion in a state of permanent dynamic uncertainty"no peace, no war". Looking for an" explanatory premise", it is really time to think about the similarity (coherence) of" nonlinear political science " with the postulates of non-classical physics. By the way, the current US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has two higher degrees: he is a specialist in medieval history and a doctor of theoretical physics.

In general, as Alice liked to say, " the world is getting more and more wonderful.".. And the war, too.

SYRIA: SYMPTOMS OF A FRACTIONAL WORLD WAR

Hybrid, complex warfare is a synthesis of aggressive actions using a wide range of means that create complex combinations of direct and indirect threats, expand the capabilities of conventional politics and are aimed at deconstructing undesirable circumstances, subordinating or destroying the enemy in order to reorganize the existing or establish a different order. 2 Sample plot

2 " Modern military conflicts are fleeting in nature, accompanied by the active use of military and non-military means. The composition of the various forces involved in defense and the range of issues of interaction between them and state structures are being expanded. Political, diplomatic, economic and other measures, including those of a covert nature, such as the use of non-governmental international organizations, are gaining more and more weight in achieving military-political goals.-

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The "fractional world war" [Pope Francis, 2015] - the situation in Syria, where several dimensions of the topic intersect: global, regional, confessional, ethno-national, and postmodern.

The integration of these spaces in the public consciousness into one node is connected with their territorial fixation and the magnetism of the Islamic State phenomenon as a synthesis of geopolitical stress, geo-economic opportunities and geocultural futurism. The cross-border and potentially transcontinental DAESH (DAESH al - Dawla al-Islamiyya fi Iraq wa-sham, a group whose activities are banned in Russia) accumulates fears and hopes, presenting the world with the outline of an innovative political organism, a distributed set of its mobile enclaves, and a growing number of those who swear allegiance. DAESH is transgressing the emotional status of Europe with images of millions migrating, fears of "invisible brigades", and a sense of traumatic hypershock. However, the content of events is wider than the obvious boundaries of the phenomenon.

The Syrian plot combines the sum of conjunctural alliances and stable confrontations, reflecting the actual intentions of players with different destinies and specific weight, overlapping, mismatched, opposing interests operating in different political registers. Within the region, these are battles between the majority of the population and the ruling Alawite minority, which combine the uprising against the regime with a general Sunni-Shiite confrontation and the possibility of a new state demarcation in the region. These are the actions of the armed Syrian opposition, independently, jointly, and sometimes in conflict with the Kurdish militia (Free Syrian Army/Democratic Forces of Syria), national and international, Salafi and jihadist formations (totaling several thousand), i.e. everything that represents the edges of a national and confessional crisis [Kuznetsov, 2016].

December 18, 2015 The UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a draft resolution supporting peace in Syria. According to the resolution, the UN should take over the organization of negotiations between the government of Bashar al-Assad and the opposition, and all parties to the conflict should stop fighting. The plan calls for the creation of an interim government and the election of a president. A working roadmap prepared later by the White House called for an 18-month transition period. So, on January 25, negotiations were scheduled in Geneva between the Syrian authorities and the opposition (they started behind schedule and were actually disrupted soon), in April - the creation of a security committee and the holding of a partial amnesty for some representatives of the government and army, as well as leaders and fighters of the moderate opposition, after which there may be A transitional Government has been formed. The Syrian parliament is scheduled to be dissolved in May, followed by the Security Council's recognition of the Transitional Government. Further steps to transfer power include political reforms and the appointment of an interim legislature. Over the next six months, a new constitution must be written, the text of which is put to a referendum in January 2017, and in March of the same year, Assad leaves the presidency and leaves the country with his inner circle. On January 11, Vladimir Putin hinted that Russia might grant Assad asylum, although he noted that it was premature to discuss the issue. At the same time, he recalled that Moscow granted asylum to the former employee of the US CIA and NSA, Edward Snowden: "It was more difficult than granting Assad," Putin noted [Focht, 2016].

telecommunications and private military companies. An example of this is the events in Syria, Ukraine, and the activities of Greenpeace in the Arctic. The reaction time to the transition from political and diplomatic measures to the use of military force has been maximally reduced. Decisions on the creation, use and maintenance of groups of troops (forces) are made in real time. Military actions are shifting to information and outer space" [Gerasimov, 2014].

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This is also an international conflict, which increases the complexity of the assembly and the degree of risk. The conflict, which since September 2014 involves a coalition led by the United States, uniting more than 60 states and acting against both the Assad regime and DAESH, and the anti-terrorist alliance of 34 Islamic countries led by Saudi Arabia, which was separated from it at the end of 2015. The kingdom's Defense Minister, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, announced the alliance's intention to coordinate efforts to fight terrorism in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, and Afghanistan, opposing not only the Islamic State, but also "any terrorist organization that appears before us" [Saudi Arabia..., 2015]. The statement of the new coalition emphasizes: "Our duty is to protect the Islamic nations from terrorist groups and organizations, regardless of their names, which cause death and destruction, trying to intimidate civilians" [ibid.]. The formation of a new coalition suggests a planned transfer of responsibility for the Middle East/Syria hub from West to East (with support from Saudi Arabia and Turkey) in line with Barack Obama's policy of reducing the US presence in conflict zones, and the possibility of progress in the confrontation between Riyadh and Tehran in the region.

It is also a vigorous defense of the Assad regime by Russia, interspersed with hesitation about the design and demonstrative actions directed against Daesh. Russia is able to exert direct pressure on the Syrian president and, to a lesser extent, on some other parties to the conflict, acting as a mediator. Present in the plot are the Iranian Guards of the Islamic Revolution, "Hezbollah", sporadic surgical actions are performed by Israel. Obviously, Turkish opposition to both the Assad regime and the progressive autonomy of the Kurds is an additional layer of paint on the Syrian palette.

Turkey's support for Turkomans acting on the side of Assad's opponents, and the resulting Russian-Turkish crisis in relations, quickly led to a serious incident that could expand the scope of the conflict and take it to another level. The frequent violations of the bloc's air borders in various geographical latitudes last year turned into a crisis when a NATO member country shot down a Russian Air Force combat plane. Over the past two years, the Russia-NATO partnership has already noticeably shifted towards the former block confrontation, drawing the eastern arc of instability of the North Atlantic alliance along the Russia-Donbass-Crimea-DAESH-Syria line.

DAESH is at the same time a challenge to modern values, not only from confessional and traditionalist interpretations, but, which is not always obvious, also a kind of postmodern challenge, i.e. a successful simulacrum containing its own game and value component. In accordance with the canons of the play, the elastic, illegitimate, but legal (unlike Al-Qaeda) reality of the Islamic State can be interpreted and positioned as a social demarche against the melancholy of civilization, the materialization of the dark depths of the subconscious [Kostyuchenko, 2016] or aggressive-escapist dreams in the style of a 1a Dune3. DAESH's inherent activism, actionism, futurism, elements of political franchising, and even sporadically soaring "black swans" cause a corresponding resonance among people who are depressed by the current status of the global community,

3 Как пишет пользователь Twitter с никои Bint Emergent, "The bottom line is that the Islamic State is the classic scifi underdog battling a seemingly all powerful Evil Empire America against impossible odds - and in the very best scifi tradition - they are winning". ("The bottom line is that the Islamic State is a classic victim of injustice in science fiction, which, despite everything, fights against the seemingly invincible evil empire-America, and in the best traditions of science fiction, it wins") [Cottee, 2015].

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especially young people 4. This is a countercultural fetish, implemented today in an Islam-oriented environment, but having, paradoxically at first glance, a more significant and broader cultural potential, and regardless of the real reality of DAESH and its future fate.

The Macabre version of "journey to the East", taking over the baton from the Christian mission and verifying its status with the mirage of a historical breakthrough, is conceived and implemented by sympathizers and proselytes as an outcome from a hateful existence, a personal existential experience, the conversion of hopeless social alienation into a hopeful cultural one, coupled with the acquisition of separate maps of the future. The synthesis of disgust-craving for the world of glamour with the energies of historical initiative leads to the sublimation of rejection into the chosen one, outcastness into heroism. Further progress towards universal jihad is read as a personal and social upheaval, i.e. an active and sacrally motivated change in individual destiny and the world.

As a result of combining post-secular claims to ontological primogeniture with the energy of post-modern romanticism, the number of foreign fighters in the ranks of DAESH has almost doubled over the past year and is currently estimated at about 30 thousand from 86 countries [Soufan Group, 2015] (including approximately 5 thousand from Russia).5. In the opposite direction, the human flow is directed (mainly from Syria), which spilled out more than 1.5 million refugees to the lands of the Old World in 2015.

list of literature

Gerasimov V. V. Value of science in foresight. New challenges require rethinking the forms and methods of conducting combat operations / / Military-Industrial Courier, 2013. N 8.

Gerasimov V. V. General Staff and Defense of the country. The role of the General Staff in organizing the country's defense in accordance with the new Regulations on the General Staff approved by the President of the Russian Federation // Military-industrial courier. 2014. N 4(522).

Kuznetsov A. The United States has scheduled the resignation of Assad for March 2017 - http://www.rbc.ru/politics/06/01/2016/568cf0049a794748ee34e42c (06.01.2016).

Kostyuchenko E. Kizilkhan Ilkhan: "This jar with a live child inside hung in the heat for a week" (interview) / / Novaya Gazeta. 2016. N 1.

Magomedov M., Shvedov G., Malashenko A. Northern Caucasus: old New problems? - http://www.svoboda.org/content/transcript/27458041 .html (30.12.2015).

World War II. All against all. Newest concepts of Anglo-Saxon combat operations / / Comp., introduction, zakl. E. S. Larina, V. S. Ovchinsky. Moscow, 2015.

Navon I. How David Ben-Gurion made decisions // Making strategic decisions as a psychological problem. (International Seminar, Moscow, 5.09.2007). Moscow, 2008.

Pope Francis. "Where there is no memory, evil still holds the wound open" - http://ru.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/04/13/обращение_папы_франциск_к_армянскому_народу/1136350 (13.04.2015)

Saudi Arabia announced the creation of an Islamic military coalition to fight terrorism - http://www.newsru.com/arch/world/15dec2015/svoyalliance.html (15.12.2015).

E. Putin commented on the possibility of granting Assad asylum in Russia - http://www.rbc.ru/politics/12/01/2016/5694899a9a79471c28eadfB6 (12.01.2016).

Kholzoda N. From Russia to the "Islamic State": how are migrants brainwashed? - http://rus.ozodi.mobi/a/27129082.html (15.07.2015).

Ban Ki-moon. UN Chief: 34 Groups Now Allied to Islamic State Extremists - http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_UNITED_NATIONS_ISLAMIC_STATE_THREAT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT (5.02.2016).

Cottee S. The Challenge of Jihadi Cool // The Atlantic. 2015, Dec. 24 - http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/12/isis-jihadi-/421776/.

Soufan Group - http://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/2510144 (9.12.2015).

4 "IS [Islamic State] has a bottomless youth recruitment pool for the next 35 years, and like IS says, the fighting has just begun. You Are Not Prepared" ("...IS has a bottomless source of youth recruitment for the next 35 years, and as IS says, the battle has only just begun. You're Not Ready") [Cottee, 2015].

5 The number of Russian citizens recruited by ISIL is estimated at 5-7 thousand people [Magomedov, Shvedov, Malashenko, 2015].

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