Instant war in the theory of network society

Abstract

The information revolution produced major social changes at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. The new social theories were required in order to understand and explain social phenomena in modern, changed society, as well as to understand and explain the very society itself. One of the most influential contemporary social theories was offered by Manuel Castells, whose network society provides excellent analytical insights into many social phenomena, including war. The paper explains Castells' theoretical view of the division of war in the modern world into instant war and prolonged war. Instant war has been made possible by breakthroughs in technology that have been achieved in recent decades, but the need for it arose in the appropriate social context and on the basis of certain political decisions. In modern developed countries, conclusions have been drawn that war is acceptable for their citizens under three conditions: if ordinary citizens are not engaged in war, but the professional army is; if war is short and does not require a large expenditure of human and economic resources; and if war is viewed as clean, with the precise destruction of justified targets. The explanation of the social context in which the war transformation has taken place is also the subject of this paper. The main hypothesis that is being proven is that the theoretical concept of instant war enables the understanding of the perception of acceptable war, from the perspective of a modern, consumer society. The paper critically discusses the possibilities of conducting instant war, and it hypothetically-deductively derives dangers that the transformation of war and the army brings to modern democracies.