Iran’s turn to the East: assessment of the Caucasian and Central-Asian policy of Ebrahim Raisi’s administration

The article considers the Caucasian and Central-Asian policy of the new administration of Ebrahim Raisi in Iran. It’s already clear that the Eurasian region has become a priority of Iran’s diplomacy, and President Raisi has been demonstrating these changes during the first year at the helm. The author uses comparative methodology to outline the differences from the previous administration’s policy. The research methodology is based on the theory of the constructivist school of international relations which focuses on the ideological level and analysis of actors during the decision-making process. The purpose of the research is to study the changes in international politics which have already made the new administration follow the new approach focusing on the Eurasian policy.  The author believes that the reasons for such a transformation are: 1) Tehran’s will to reconsider the central role of nuclear treatments as a core of its foreign policy; 2) the economic crisis in the country which makes Iran’s politicians search for alternative markets and partners; 3) an aspiration to escape the international isolation, and the importance of Eurasian bilateral and intergovernmental relations; 4) the change of threats perception by Tehran caused by the recent events in the Caucasus and Afghanistan. The author supposes that the combined impact of these factors has made Raisi’s administration consider Eurasia as Iran’s foreign policy priority, and if this trend continues, we’ll see a more balanced approach in the future, unlike the previous periods, when relations with the West and events in the Middle East defined the central line of Iran’s policy.   

The reform of the Bundeswehr and the future of Germany’s peacekeeping activities

The reform of the Bunderwehr has been in the focus of attention of Russian and foreign research since the unification of the country^ when Germany started speaking about its responsibility for peace and political stability. Germany’s army had to not only rearm and optimize military personnel, but also to conceptualize its new role in the world and extend its global representation for the purpose of conflict settlement. However, over the last years, the consideration of problems of the Bundeswehr reforming and development has become especially important due to the fact that the Bundeswehr faces new challenges and threats, including those of a non-military nature. The reforms of Germany’s army, which have been covered in the recent documents aimed at the substantiation of the increased use of the Bundeswehr abroad, reflect the political leaders’ aspiration to make it a more effective instrument of protection against hybrid threats and prevention of conflicts affecting Germany’s security. The purpose of the article is to analyze the reform of the Bundeswehr and their influence on Germany’s peacekeeping activities. The study is based on discourse-analysis and the analysis of the main documents, determining the directions of modernization of Germany’s army, and the documents, regulating peacekeeping activities, official reports of the Ministry of Defense, official reports of the Ministry of Defense, and mass media materials about the state and the problems of the armed forces. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the fact that it considers the reform of the Bundeswehr in its close correlation with its peacekeeping profile as the main sphere of using Germany’s army. Based on the analysis of the recent documents, regulating its activities, the author comes to the conclusion that its reforming is aimed at the expansion of peacekeeping activities, while peace-enforcement operations are considered as a last-ditch measure.   

The Characteristics of the Nordic right-wing populism

The last two decades have seen the rise of right-wing parties in Europe, spurred among other things by a series of crises, the latest of which being the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic. Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark did not find themselves isolated from the political and socio-economic shocks and aftershocks of such events, and right-wing populist parties and movements belonging to the Nordic region have also gained strength, sometimes even being a part of governments. However, these parties have certain characteristics that distinguish them from their counterparts in the rest of the Europe, given the specific social, political, economic and historical context of the region. Such traits can be listed as welfare chauvinism, right-wing egalitarianism, authoritarian positions on sociocultural issues, and populist, anti-establishment drive. At the same time, these parties have demonstrated their high pragmatism and ability for adaptation to the current political situation in their countries. In this work a quick overview is presented of the principles of four major right-wing parties in the Nordic region (The Finns Party, Sweden Democrats, Norwegian Progress Party, and Danish People’s Party), and the differences and similarities in their motivations are discussed.

Radicalization of the rightwing in France: from the failure of the European constitution and “La Manif Pour Tous” to Éric Zemmour

The author of the article uses the newest French scientific literature, Mass Media materials and analytical research of social organizations to study the evolution of the process of polarization of political life in France and radicalization of the rightwing, in which moderate ideas give way to the rightist ones. The failure of the European constitution referendum in 2005, the legalization of same-sex marriage by the French Parliament in 2013, François Fillon’s victory in the primaries of the rightists and the centrists in 2016 - are the crucial steps in the process of radicalization of the rightwing in France. The author gives special attention to Éric Zemmour’s ideas and his role in the modern political system of the Fifth Republic. Zemmour intentionally puts the question of preservation of national and religious identity of France and the problem of the spread of Islam in the country to the centre of political discussion, adding the islamophobia issue to the Marine Le Pen’s arabophobia and trying to make a new core of France’s political life out of the confrontation of the moderate and the radical ideas, as it was with the struggle of the rightwing and the leftwing before 2017. Zemmour has no chances to win the 2022 election, and his participation is questionable, however the popularity of his ideas can lead to the formation of a new pole of France’s politics as a result of the 2022 election - Identitarian, conservative and Catholic.   

“Digital Geopolitics” in the Regional Context: Challenges and Prospects of the European Union on its Way towards Information Sovereignty

The COVID-19 pandemic and the coronacrisis have clearly exposed the strong dependence of modern companies on data governance, the stability of information networks and digitalisation and significantly strengthened the Europeans' belief in the need to achieve strategic autonomy in the development of their own digital solutions. The article aims to define the place of the European Union in the international information and communication space in the context of global data governance policy. The methodology is based on the principles of the multi-paradigm method used for extrapolating some provisions of Robert Gilpin’s hegemonic stability theory on the modern technological competition among the countries on the international arena through a regional approach. The article considers the term “information sovereignty” based on the principles of international law within a constantly changing international environment. The research addresses such documents as “A New Industrial Strategy for Europe”, “A European Strategy for Data”, and the decision of the European Court of Justice concerning the transatlantic Privacy Shield agreement. As an example of the European digital policy, it examines the ambitious GAIA-X project designed to create an open digital ecosystem and common requirements for a European data infrastructure. The article formulates the recommendations in order to ensure effective governance in the digital sector and proposes a multi-stakeholder model, which would help achieve information sovereignty based on European values and ideals.

Eurasian Economic Union: comparing the target and the actual models

The article contains the results of research held within the project “Monitoring of integration processes in EEU”. Based on the analysis of a wide range of sources, the authors compare the key characteristics of the target model of the Eurasian Economic Union, and the current state of things, and the summarized results are represented in the table.  To solve the research tasks, the authors use general scientific research methods: analysis, synthesis, hypothesizing, and various comparative approaches. The authors note the reasonability of assessing the processes of Eurasian integration as compared to the models of the EU, since the elements of institutional similarity allow fixing the essential differences more precisely, and taking into account the positive and negative experience of the EU helps improve the Eurasian project management. The comparison of the target and actual characteristics allows concluding about the differences between the strategic concept and the current state of the model of Eurasian integration. When considering the factors influencing the slowdown in moving towards the target model of the EEU, the authors give special attention to the situation causing the risks of achieving the political limits of economic integration and the disruption of the cost-benefits trade-off. The authors conclude that integration, based only on economic mechanisms, causes the risks reducing its stability in a crisis situation, therefore it is necessary to further develop the confidence mechanisms, strengthen the role of legal integration, and extend cooperation based on the package agreements mechanism. The effective use of a package agreements mechanism helps to unite the isolated national strategies for the mutual benefits of participation to outweigh the expenses of each participant.  

Liberal world order and economic coercion in modern foreign policy of the U.S.

The article studies the evolution of liberal world order within the framework of conventional directions of the U.S.’ foreign policy. The purpose of this work is to reveal the peculiarities of development of the U.S.’ foreign policy in terms of liberal world order. For this purpose, the U.S.’ foreign policy is considered through the prism of Walter Russel Mead’s “four schools of American foreign policy”. The author analyzes the development and transformation of liberalism in the context of using economic coercion in the U.S.’ foreign policy. The article also considers the topical problems of development of the liberal world order faced by the realist and liberal paradigms. Representatives of both groups realize the failure of the liberal world order, but offer different strategies of defining the U.S.’ foreign policy course. Representatives of the liberal paradigm believe that the liberal world order entered a phase of self-destruction because of accelerated integration of unequal states in a single system. Realists, in their turn, claim that transformations in the structure of the global system determine the functionality of the liberal world order. Specifically, the revisionist position of Russia and China is a reaction to the imposed principles, and serves as a basis for the transition to the multipolar system. Thus, conflicts of interest between the parties cause the use of measures of coercion.

Political-military relations in the South Caucasus in the context of the Iran-Russia-Turkey Triangle

The research subject is the peculiarities of modern political-military relations in the South Caucasus in the context of the Iran-Russia-Turkey Triangle. The author considers political-military relations in the region through the prism of national interests of regional actors, such as Russia, Turkey, and Iran; analyzes military and technical cooperation in the South Caucasus based on the example of Armenia and Azerbaijan; studies military expenditure of the countries of the region and military budgets of Armenia and Azerbaijan, which are one of the hotbeds of tension and conflicts of interests of Russia, Turkey and Iran. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the systematization of ideas about the modern state of political-military relations in the South Caucasus in terms of the regional actors’ influence on the regional security system. Based on the documents, facts and research works, the author formulates a conclusion about the condition and the prospects of development of modern political-military relations in the South Caucasus in the context of the Iran-Russia-Turkey Triangle. The success of Turkey in terms of strengthening its positions in the South Caucasus against the background of rising competition in the region is undoubtable. Turkey has managed not only to position itself as a strong regional actor, which is able to indirectly influence regional disputes settlement, but also to promote the military triumph of Azerbaijan, its key ally in the region. It will result in further extension of export of Turkish weapons to Azerbaijan, and deeper cooperation between these two countries in other spheres. It concerns Russia and Iran, which are interested in maintaining the balance of powers in the region.  

On the issue of the synthesis of geopolitics and racialism in the early days of contemporary history

The purpose of the research is the consideration of the problem of synthesis of racialism and geopolitics in the late 19th - the early 20th century and the substantiation of such a new concept in geopolitics as geopolitical racialism which hasn’t been used before neither in Russian nor in foreign science. To solve this task, the author applies the fundamental geopolitical dualism methods to the analysis of supremacist and imperialist mindset typical for scientific and sociopolitical life in Britain and the U.S. of the considered period, which became a core for the formation of Anglo-Saxon exceptionality, and formed the basis for the foreign policy of these states. The author arrives at the conclusion that until recently, Anglo-Saxonism was considered as a result of the Western elites’ fascination with the ideas of social Darwinism rather than as a geopolitical form of racism, since its analysis was mostly based on the peculiarities of “blood and descendance” of Anglo-Saxon peoples rather than on their “thalassocratic nature” or the influence of natural and climatic factors on their development. The differentiating feature of continental geopolitics was, vice versa, not only distancing from social Darwinism, but also the repudiation of the possibility of ultimate victory in the struggle between the West and the East. Theoretical and practical importance of the research consists in the fact that based on the analysis of the works of the Western authors of the late 19th - the early 20th centuries, both already known and left out in the cold, the author substantiates the definition and characteristics of geopolitical racism in its Anglo-Saxon variant, upholding the supremacy of maritime powers (thalassocracies) over land powers (tellurocracies) predefined by geographical factors, which in many aspects predetermined the development of the Western geopolitical mindset in contemporary history.

Fight against poverty in China in the context of the idea of Community of Common Destiny for Mankind in 2013 - 2020

The goal of the research is to study the fight against poverty in China in the context of Xi Jinping’s concept of Community of Common Destiny for Mankind after his coming to power in 2013. The tasks of the research are: 1) to demonstrate the process of fight against poverty in China within a doctrinal approach with the “fine control is the basis” theory, a new model of fighting against poverty with the Chinese specificity, and other political and economic tools; 2) to consider the institutional approach to the fight against poverty in China and at a global scale; 3) to study the Community of Common Destiny for Mankind concept as a global “drive” of the fight against poverty in the form of interaction with international institutions. The research subject is the political, economic, and social tools of the fight against poverty in China in 2013 - 2020. There is ample debate about eradication of poverty in China, Russia and other countries of the regional dimension, both in Russian and foreign scientific communities, aimed at studying its origins, approaches to its measurement, its socio-economic consequences, the process of the fight against poverty in the context of COVID-19 isolation period, etc. In this context, the author's special contribution to the research of this issue is the consideration of the problem of poverty in China and in the world within the concept “Community of Common Destiny for Mankind”. It hasn’t been studied sufficiently enough in Russia yet. The author arrives at the conclusion that the idea of the Community of Common Destiny for Mankind ensures an effective and positive result of solving the problem of the fight against poverty in various regions of China and in the world.