International Affairs No. 5, 2019 – Table of Contents

Key words: Russia and Bulgaria, 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations.

Question: Today, just as 140 years ago, Bulgaria remains strongly attached and grateful to Russia for restoring Bulgarian statehood. How does Russia feel about Bulgaria? …

Armen Oganesyan, Editor-in-Chief of the journal International Affairs: Eleonora Valentinovna, Rossotrudnichestvo will turn 95 next year. This is an important date. How did the agency come about and what are its current goals?

E. Mitrofanova: Rossotrudnichestvo is a governmental organization promoting international cooperation in culture, science, education, public relations, and cultural and scientific circles in other countries. …

Key words: NATO, Russia, North Atlantic, security, confrontation.

THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, first and foremost its northern stretch, is what NATO considers its exclusive zone of vitally important interests. This idea is supported by the fact that it is the site of vital lines of communication and transport bridging North America and Europe, as well as strategically important military and civilian facilities, the protection of which is becoming one of the Alliance’s key objectives amid what Western sources call an unprecedented increase in activity by the Russian Navy and Air Force in this subregion. What’s more, the definition of the North Atlantic is being enlarged to include not only its strictly geographic area, but the entire water surface of the Baltic and Barents seas. These bodies are now considered a single theater of operations in the case of a military conflict with Russia.¹ …

Key words: European Parliament, Eurosceptics, European defense, Russia-China interaction.

ELECTIONS to the European Parliament that took place on May 23-26. 2019 reflected the far from simple processes that have been unfolding in the European Union for several years now. They confirmed the desire of a fairly big number of voters to see new people among the political elites. The Right and Left centrists that had dominated the parliament for many years lost their traditional majority and, therefore, the chance to elect the chairman among themselves. This was not the only surprise. …

Key words: Chinese market, partnership, Chinese investors, German-Chinese trade and economic relations.

IN 2016, China for the first time became Germany’s main foreign trade partner, replacing the seemingly unshakable U.S., which came in third place after France. This event was an indicator of certain changes taking place in modern world trade and in international relations in general – what would seem to be the emergence of a trend toward the establishment of a new balance of power in world politics. The basis for such a turn of events was China’s adept and very balanced economic diplomacy against the backdrop of Washington’s rather impulsive and sometimes rash actions. …

Key words: conflicts, development, peacebuilding, post-conflict reconstruction, security, preventive diplomacy, national resilience.

THE UNITED NATIONS has time and again revised its concept of post-conflict peacebuilding and still has not come up with a definitive opinion. …

Key words: Caspian Sea, Russia, littoral states, Fifth Caspian Summit, convention, legal status, diplomacy.

THIS AUGUST will mark the first anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea. The heads of the coastal states unanimously regarded the signing of the “Caspian Sea Constitution” at the Fifth Caspian Summit in Aktau on August 12, 2018. as a historic and extraordinary event. Russian President Vladimir Putin called it epochal. The completion of more than 20 years of negotiations on the main Caspian treaty, coupled with the signing of intergovernmental documents on cooperation in the fields of economy, transportation, incident prevention, combating organized crime, terrorism, and the work of border agencies, opened a new chapter in the history of the Caspian Five regional mechanism.¹ …

Key words: Caspian Region, convention, economic cooperation, energy cooperation, Caspian states.

THE CONVENTION on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea signed a year ago, in August 2018 at the Fifth Caspian Summit in Aktau (Kazakhstan), clarified the future of the Caspian region and offered the littoral states more chances of economic cooperation. This is confirmed by the intention to mark the International Caspian Day and the first year of the Convention by the First Caspian Economic Forum to be held in Turkmenistan on August 12. …

Key words: media, Russia, USA, information space, informational influence.

ONE FEATURE of the modern system of international relations is the increased influence on it of the information component. The transnational nature of the media space is being actively utilized by world actors to achieve their foreign policy objectives, leading to a clash of their interests and the beginning of information confrontation. The goal of modern-day confrontations is not only to fight for resources or territory but to fight for control over minds and public loyalty. In that respect, today it is strategically important to all states that they be viewed positively by the international community and successfully get the mass audience to form a favorable perception of their positions on the world stage, achieving understanding and acceptance of their actions and objectives. …

Key words: media, Russia, USA, information space, informational influence.

ONE FEATURE of the modern system of international relations is the increased influence on it of the information component. The transnational nature of the media space is being actively utilized by world actors to achieve their foreign policy objectives, leading to a clash of their interests and the beginning of information confrontation. The goal of modern-day confrontations is not only to fight for resources or territory but to fight for control over minds and public loyalty. In that respect, today it is strategically important to all states that they be viewed positively by the international community and successfully get the mass audience to form a favorable perception of their positions on the world stage, achieving understanding and acceptance of their actions and objectives. …

Key words: foreign policy, Russia, regions as subjects of the Russian Federation.

BY THE END of the 20th century, foreign relations maintained by individual constituent territories of various countries had become a generally accepted element of the global political system. Practically ever since politicians and experts have been focusing their attention on the relationship between such contacts and Russia’s foreign policy as the presence of individual Russian territories in the international arena was seen as a potential challenge to the centralized character of the country’s foreign policy, to its security, and to its territorial integrity.¹ Foreign contacts established by the administration of constituents regions of countries in seeking greater autonomy and solutions to regional political problems have been labeled “protodiplomacy.”² …

Key words: Russia, Belarus, military-technical cooperation.

MILITARY-TECHNICAL COOPERATION between Russia and Belarus takes place in the context of a common and broad political partnership between the two countries and very close political, economic and sociocultural ties. …

Key words: Kazakhstan, foreign policy, evolution, phases, multidirectionality.

THE COLLAPSE of the Soviet Union together with the emergence of new independent states, a major 20th-century geopolitical upheaval, put a difficult task before Kazakhstan – as one of these new states, it needed its own foreign policy. Despite its 550-year history of statehood, this time Kazakhstan again had to build a system of government from scratch. The new Kazakh state set about building dialogue with the international community, taking international transformations and new challenges into consideration. …

Key words: Kosovo, Serbia, President Vucic, NATO, Russia’s military-technical assistance.

International Affairs: Mr. Minister, thank you for finding the time to talk to us at such a difficult time for Serbia, when the Kosovo problem has gotten worse again. In your opinion, what is the reason for that? …

Key words: international relations, global problems, World Academy of Art and Science, the Club of Rome.

TODAY, international relations, global problems and the scientific community are much closer connected than at any time in the past. The mounting wave of risks and threats demands scientific studies, analyses and assessments as the starting point for dealing with multiplying crises and defining them. No wonder scientists with adequate knowledge and adequate instruments of research sounded an alarm in an effort to arrest the movement to the point of no-return. Their concerns about the processes and the phenomena that might endanger the very existence of mankind developed into an important factor of international life long before the movement acquired organizational forms and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) was set up in the United States. …

Armen Oganesyan, Editor-in-Chief International Affairs

TODAY, we’re going to raise one of our most acute issues, the sanctions against Russia. I expect that, in the course of our discussion, we’ll find out objective trends in the entire phenomenon of sanctions. It’s a very important point that sanctions that are imposed on entire sectors of our economy become geopolitical measures. Ratcheting up sanctions may set off a frontal confrontation. …

Key words: USSR, Germany, Red Army, international treaties.

TODAY, when it has become a humdrum to say that World War III is raging in the space of information, we should look in the mirror of history to ask Clio for hints and clues. …

Key words: 75 years, anniversary, Currency and Finance Department

THE HISTORY of financial services support for foreign policy activity dates back many centuries, and I would like to make a brief digression into the past events preceding the establishment of the Currency and Finance Administration on August 12, 1944. On that day, the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs issued Order No. 221 on the reorganization of the Currency and Finance Office as the Currency and Finance Administration (CFA). …

Key words: CFD, CFA/CFD veterans, Currency and Finance Department, Currency and Finance Administration.

Question: Boris Galeyevich, you have worked at the Foreign Ministry’s central office, the currency and finance division, and Soviet and then Russian missions abroad. Surely you were lucky enough to work together with Currency and Finance Administration/ Currency and Finance Department [CFA/CFD] legends? …

Key words: Russian State, House of Romanovs, Principality of Moldavia.

HAVING BECOME THE CZAR of All Russia, the Grand Prince Ivan III (1462-1505) defined in a nutshell the foreign policy doctrine of the Russian State: to gather under Moscow’s power all lands that had belonged to Kievan Rus. …

Key words: Normandy, memoirs, landing operation, Molotov, audio cassettes.

EVENTS commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landing are over. However, the taped dictations of Admiral Nikolai Kharlamoy recently found in his family archive, remind us that Soviet military personnel were present and active in the English Channel and Normandy itself in 1944. …

Key words: Vietnam, 65th anniversary of the signing of the Geneva Agreements on Vietnam, International Commission for Supervision and Control of the ceasefire in Vietnam, demilitarized zone, 17th parallel.

ON JULY 20, 1954, an agreement on the cessation of hostilities in Vietnam was signed at a conference in Geneva of the ministers of foreign affairs of the USSR, China, the U.S., Great Britain, and France. The conference was convened at the initiative of the Soviet Union at a meeting of the foreign ministers of the USSR, the U.S., Great Britain, and France (Berlin, January 25-February 18, 1954). …

Key words: internment at Gallipoli, first wave of Russian emigration, V. V. Nabokov, General A.P. Kutepov, M.A. Bakunin.

I WAS LUCKY. Early in the 1990s, I was appointed correspondent of the Trud newspaper to Benelux. It was in Belgium where I met Russian emigres of the first wave. As children, they had left Russia together with their parents immediately after the revolution or during the Civil War and never thought that they would never see Russia again. They grew up in foreign lands, started their families and taught their children to love Russia, the country the younger generation never saw. …

Key words: foreign policy, geopolitics, Latin America, international relations, Russia.

GEOPOLITICAL ANTAGONISMS besetting various parts of the world are a much more serious problem today than ever before due to globalization. One of the scenes of clashes of geopolitical interests is Latin America, which lays claim to being a sovereign actor in world politics. Geopolitical issues in Latin America are a subject that is being investigated by many Russian scholars, mainly researchers working at the Institute of Latin American Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Led by the consulting director of the institute, Vladimir Davydov, they have spent quite many years exploring these problems [1; 2; 4]. However, some interesting work has been done by other Russian scholars as well. …

Key words: Middle East, Central Asia, megatrends, “hybrid regimes.”

EACH NEW BOOK by Irina Zvyagelskaya* is groundbreaking – and for good reason. The author of the newly published monograph “The Middle East and Central Asia: Megatrends in the Regional Dimension” is a well-known specialist in international affairs whose academic interests, although broad, include two leading research areas related to the regions featured in the title of this monograph – the Middle East and Central Asia. However, to consider a book groundbreaking, we must ask: What is it about, and can the author’s conclusions be considered a qualitative contribution to the development of the branch of scientific knowledge the author specializes in? Does Zvyagelskaya’s new research project meet the requirements? …

Key words: Arab Spring, Middle East, European Union, ISIS.

IN HIS TIME, Russian poet Alexander Blok, greatly impressed by the ambiguous and tragic events of the uncompleted revolution of 1905. wrote an outstanding poem that began as …