More in Expectation Than Hope

Naum Birman’s Chronicle of a Dive-Bomber (1968) was one of a trio of strikingly unconventional war movies produced at Lenfilm in the late 1960s, along with Vladimir Motyl’s Zhenya, Zhenechka, and the “Katyusha” Rocket (1967), and Viktor Tregubovich’s War Is War (1969). This chapter explores how the highly specific emotional atmosphere of Birman’s film was created during production, transforming a script that editors had thought rather weak into a remarkable study of the boredom and frustration, as well as courage and idealism, of the war effort. As I argue, collaboration was fundamental to the successful development of the film: first, Birman himself substantially rewrote the script (and was later credited as co-author), and later, the designer and composer, as well as the film editor, made extensive contributions (which were gratefully acknowledged by Birman in the studio discussions).

Survive to be critical: The Wartime Graphic as a ‘masquerading’ media in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905

By focusing on unconventional war imagery of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) in The Wartime Graphic, a widely popular pictorial war magazine in Japan, this article uncovers an art of publishing critical materials under the difficult circumstances of modern total war. The magazine’s contents suggest that it was a ‘masquerading’ media which provided critical cultural space while circumventing censorship. Examining the space and expressions in the middle ground, this article will shed light on considerable yet hitherto overlooked dimensions of wartime Japanese press and Japanese society, challenging dichotomous understandings of ‘pro-’ and ‘anti-’ war.

Addressing Hybrid Threats: Priorities for the EU in 2020 and Beyond

This article discusses hybrid threats and the steps that Europe, through various national, EU and NATO initiatives, has taken in recent years to address them. Although these threats do not constitute a new challenge for states and international actors, they became a major concern for European countries following Russia’s conventional and unconventional war in Ukraine in 2014. The article argues that addressing hybrid threats is a constant, never-ending process that requires the development of societal and governmental resilience. Hybrid threats are constantly changing and evolving, which means that our response to them also needs to be constantly evolving in order to keep up. The article also provides some recommendations for European policymakers on the next steps that Europe, especially the EU, should take when addressing hybrid threats.

War

Modern war is often defined as armed conflict within, between, or among states, although other political communities partake of war: ethnic and religious groups, ideological movements, terrorist organizations, large drug gangs, and other “non-state actors.” The narrowest meaning used by historians is war as the art and science and record of military operations. More general discourse sub-classifies war according to an ascending scale of participation—rebellion, insurrection, insurgency, guerrilla war, civil war, and regional war—culminating in three synonyms for armed conflict at the largest scale: systemic war, global war, and world war. War is also categorized by the types of weapons used to conduct it, as in the terms “conventional war” and “unconventional war.” A controversial distinction is made between limited war and total war, in which wars are typed by scope, the declared or discerned objectives of participants, and the degree to which militaries target civilians, enemy morale, or economic infrastructure. Social science literature defines a minimal threshold of mass political violence as war, as opposed to riot or other communal use of force, if deaths reach one thousand. That is an arbitrary definition, not universally accepted or normally employed by historians.