War is a violent means of the interstate conflicts’ settlement. Nowadays, war is condemned and forbidden by the international law as a result of long historical development and tragic experience of the two world wars.
Among the major reasons for this kind of conflicts are different contradictions (economic, territorial, religious and others) between the states, nations, people, classes, etc.
Depending on the character and parties of the contradictions, which generate war and confrontation, the latter ones are subdivided into civil and interstate, religious and economic, fair and unfair, etc. In accordance with the scale, it is possible to distinguish world, regional and civil kinds of war. The last one can have interclass, religious or interethnic contradictions as its reasons.
The unity and distinction of wars and confrontations is expressed in their political, technical and operative aspects. The political dimension includes the corresponding kind of motives and goals. Political aims are usually formulated long before the war break out and define its preparatory phase – the reorganization of army, economics, diplomacy and ideology. All the wars lead to qualitative changes of all aspects of society’s lifestyle and represent one of the most ancient forms of social mobilization.
Technically, war differs from a confrontation on the more significant scale and various applications of means of the armed struggle. Today, one of the most important roles in wars is played by air offensive operations, as well as the data, collected by the of space investigation.
In operative sense war assumes, first of all, application of the armed forces of the state, and also the militarized civil formations (a national home guard, guerrilla groups, etc). Now, with the termination of the cold war, new ones arise from confrontations on interethnic basis or because of territorial disputes between states.