ABSTRACT
Political actors can use significant events within or between countries to circumvent normal barriers. Oscar Jonsson (2019) argues convincingly that the Russian government sees war and peace not as binary states but as a spectrum, with information warfare now being capable of achieving political goals commensurate with war. The sowing of controlled chaos, promotion of dissension and disorder: these are not incidental effects, but rather consciously deployed instruments aimed at the weakening of trust within society and the undermining of its domestic institutions. The alternative to drawing category distinctions is to accept that contemporary conflict can be better understood as a spectrum. The “exceptions” of wartime behaviour are justified by reference to a change in context: between war and peace. The declaration of war is a community’s articulation and recognition of a new and exceptional context.
