It's my pleasure to welcome you at my personal web-site devoted to untrivial or unknown aspects of military history, military and political issues of contemporary world and future military developments. That's the reason why the title of this web-site is "Military History and Futurology". Military futurology means scientific approach towards military aspects of the future of mankind or, in other words, military forecast of the future.

Due to a specific character of my education, professional experience and research interests (my short CV is here), I am interested mostly in psychological aspects of war - morale of troops, information and psychological warfare, national character and national style or way of war. Besides, I'm strongly interested in general aspects of Russia's geo-strategic stance yesterday, today and especially tomorrow in close connection to the analysis of essence and types of future traditional and nontraditional types of warfare.

This last aspect is especially important, as the amount of accessible sources on it on the Russian web-net is absolutely insufficient. Even experts do not fully understand such concepts as guerrilla and people's war, asymmetric conflicts, the Fourth generation warfare, strategic paralysis, battle swarming, chaos as strategy.

As far as I know, nobody has dared to look at warfare through a "double prism" of national and gender psychology. A conflict between strong and weak opponents, between regular troops and insurgents/terrorists, to a certain degree, may be compared to a collision of interests and behavioural patterns of men and women in a quarrel. E. Messner: pointed out clearly: "Mentality of a regular army may be compared to masculine psyche; but irregular force's mentality is close to feminine psyche". That's a pity, an outstanding Russian military thinker made no further steps in this direction... We try to do that instead of him (my essay on this topic may be found here).

Slyness, deviousness, emotionality, flexibility, "softness and weakness" are clear advantages of guerillas and insurgents and essential forms of their activity against a strong enemy - the state and its armed forces - in an asymmetric conflict.

On the other hand, isn't the feminine type of the Russian national character a key reason while the masculine-type West ignores gender approach in international relations, considers Russians to be aggressive, sly and devious (compare the movie images produced by Hollywood!) while we consider ourselves to be peaceful, sincere and kind? The West does not understand Russia, as well as it does not understand the World of Islam or China. Civilizational differences are so tremendous and sometimes antagonistic that a possibility of a clash of civilizations becomes inevitable. These ideas could be found here in some of my works dedicated to the history of Russia and China relationships.

What is fighting against international terrorism - so topical and frequently used wording in today's political statements, popular articles and research projects? For some reasons, it is considered politically incorrect to say the truth. Terrorism is only a method or a way of activities of certain political forces inclined to terror as a key way of their actions. And what are these forces? The majority of politicians as well as experts prefer not to touch this issue at all. There are few people who call spade a spade: today our world faces clear danger of "jihadizm" - the extremist and aggressive sect of Islam.

Dear Visitor, if you have not left my web-site yet, I assume that questions mentioned here are interesting to you. On my side, I will try to not disappoint you.

All materials of this web-site are structured into several sections. If you press any knob on the left margin of this page - you go directly to the first page of the appropriate section. Topics for these sections are selected on the basis of my research interests. That's why on this web-site you may find seemingly incompatible topics such as Ancient China history and theoretical discussions on future warfare. But it's only at the first sight...

Igor POPOV,
Independent Military Expert

Necessary guidelines

First of all, this is a Russian web-site and the language used here of course is Russian. Sorry for inconvenience...

Next, all materials of this web-site reflect my personal vision (if there is no reference to another person), and do not pretend to be 100% correct. Materials of this web-site are my intellectual property. While using them further or citing them - please refer to their source and the author. Thanks for that!

Dear Visitor, if you have a desire to send me your comments or to share your views and ideas with me - feel free to write me a letter or simply press a button with my address below and drop me a line:

Your opinions and views will be met with full respect, and your proposals - with constant interest. At the same time visitors interested in more detailed information on my views on future warfare, may visit my additional web-site "Future Warfare" - just click a knob: