The conflict between Russia and Chechen Republic Essay

The conflict between Russia and Chechen Republic - Essay Example But, the 1st Chechen war turned out to be Russia’s Vietnam as Russian army was forced to retreat in 1996. In 1999, Russia started the second Chechnya war which was officially declared successfully over by the Russian federation in 2009. Both the wars caused thousands of causalities and devastating economic and social effects for both the sides (Mirovalev). Even though Russian military operations were officially declared over in Chechnya, the continuous series of terror attacks in Russia, such as 2002 Moscow theatre hostage, 2003 suicide attacks in rock concert, 2004 Russian passenger planes bombings, and in recent, 2010 Moscow subway suicide bombings put a serious question over the Russian government’s declaration of the end of war and the control of situation (Trenin 2; â€Å"Timeline†). The purpose of this research paper is to analyze the Russia-Chechnya conflict through various aspects. By means of various researches and available data, the paper discusses history of the conflict and evaluates overall trajectory of it. Definition of war has always been controversial as there isn’t universal agreement among experts over specific characteristics and attributes of conflict that would categorize it as a war. Political science also doesn’t offer convincing and detailed definition of war (Moseley). For instance, the Correlates of War Project (COW), an academic scientific study on wars, defines war as a military conflict in which the number of battlefield deaths is more than 1000. The definition is clearly invalid as according to the criteria of this definition, the Falklands War, which involved about 900 deaths, can’t be called as a war, but less significant â€Å"Football War† between Honduras and El Salvador with about 2100 causalities qualify as a war (Gvosdev and Stigler). The definition of war is highly dependent on the individual’s perceptions on free will and determinism. Marcus Cicero defines war as â€Å"a violent struggle†; while Karl